As long as I remember I have been afraid of dogs. The only exception was when I was ten years old and a lovely stray dog turned up in my neighbourhood. We became friends instantly. Since my parents didn’t want to have an animal he slept in the shed but at least he could stay. After three weeks some neighbour had called the police to have the dog taken away, which they did. Until this very day I fail to understand why this had to happen and still find it surprising that no one did anything to prevent it; it took a very long time to get over it.

In Seychelles my wife and I adopted two beautiful stray dogs and we became practically inseparable; getting something from the kitchen: a dog walks with you, going to the beach: not without the dogs, even the bathroom wasn’t private but we didn’t mind at all we loved them dearly. It was those two dogs who took away my fear of dogs completely.

Unfortunately some, still very unclear, problems with the local authorities made that we were kindly asked to get the hell out of the country (within four days); we had to leave practically everything including the dogs. That was a hard one to get over although the dogs are fine now as we have heard; they both found new homes.

Once in Thailand we were a bit reluctant to have dogs again because we wanted to make sure we were able to stay in the country. Once that was settled the idea of a dog came up again and we decided to have one.

At the shelter it was impossible to choose so we took two dogs, Abby and Susy. When we found our present house with an enormous garden we took three more dogs.

I am just crazy about dogs and being a volunteer is something I have to do although it will never be enough since there are so many neglected dogs but it needs to be done and one needs to start somewhere.