One More Passenger at the End of the Day

After everything else that happened today, apparently the day still had one final story waiting for me.

It had already been a long Saturday. We had started at 06:00, dealt with house matters, driven into Chișinău to inspect the renovation, wandered through the National Wine Day celebrations, eaten, drunk, talked to people, discovered new wineries, watched enormous quantities of meat rotating over charcoal, and eventually headed back towards Vita’s parents’ house. By that point I was ready for the day to become considerably less interesting.

Instead, while I was driving uphill along the street towards the house, I noticed a group of teenagers running down the road. They kept looking backwards as they ran, which initially seemed slightly odd but not especially important. It took me a few moments to understand what they were looking at. A very small puppy was running after them as fast as its tiny legs could manage.

The teenagers passed my car and continued down the hill. The puppy did not.

It ended up almost directly in the middle of the road.

There are situations where there is not really a decision to make. I was driving uphill, there was a tiny animal in front of the car, and continuing forward was obviously not an option. So I stopped the car on the hill, got out and went to find the puppy. There was no reason for a completely ordinary Saturday evening to finish with a tiny dog being killed in the road simply because everybody else had kept moving.

And now what?

I looked back down the street. The teenagers were already gone.

That left me standing there with a puppy and a very obvious practical question: what exactly was I supposed to do with it?

The dog was extremely small, black with brown markings around the face and legs, and clearly not in particularly good condition. Its eyes were the most obvious problem. There was visible discharge and crusting around them, and it looked uncomfortable. Whether it had an owner somewhere, had been wandering outside for some time, or had simply attached itself to the teenagers I had just seen, I had no way of knowing. What I did know was that leaving it in the middle of the street was not a sensible option.

So I did what any completely normal and sensible person would do.

I put the puppy in the car.

Apparently this is becoming something of a pattern.

When I reached Vita’s parents’ house, I called my father-in-law and asked him to come and see what I had in the car. It took him approximately one second to pick up the puppy. There was no discussion, no detailed assessment and certainly no committee meeting. He simply grabbed the little thing and carried it away.

My mother-in-law required perhaps another minute before beginning the entirely predictable commentary about Andreas bringing these things to the house again. I cannot reproduce the exact speech, but the broad theme was clear enough: why does Andreas keep arriving with animals, what are we supposed to do with this one, we already have enough things to look after, and so on.

By this stage I have learned that such complaints and the actual treatment of the animals are two completely separate matters.

The family emergency network activates

The next person to be informed was my step-daughter in the Netherlands. She had already helped us with the previous puppy, so she has somehow become part of our unofficial international animal-rescue support network. She immediately sent us the contact details for the veterinarian we had used before. Unfortunately, by then the clinic was already closed.

The puppy’s eyes were still worrying me. They clearly needed attention, but this was Saturday evening and we were not going to invent veterinary treatment ourselves. For the moment the most sensible thing we could do was keep the eyes gently clean and make the puppy comfortable until somebody qualified could examine it. I therefore contacted Vita, who was elsewhere that evening helping a friend whose husband had recently died from cancer, and asked whether she could stop at a pharmacy on the way back and buy some physiological saline — soro fisiológico, as I still instinctively call it after years of using the Portuguese term.

Not exactly the message she had probably expected to receive from me at the end of National Wine Day.

But the saline arrived, the puppy’s eyes were gently cleaned, and at least some of the accumulated discharge could be removed. It was only basic cleaning, not an attempt to diagnose or treat whatever is wrong. The real objective is to get the little animal in front of a veterinarian as soon as possible, ideally on Sunday if we can find somewhere open, otherwise on Monday.

My father-in-law and the question of accommodation

Then came the matter of where the puppy should sleep.

My father-in-law’s first idea was the old dog house outside. From his perspective this was presumably perfectly logical: dog, therefore dog house. The puppy did not appear to share the logic. It was tiny, uncomfortable and clearly unhappy there, and after a little while even my father-in-law conceded that perhaps a different arrangement was required.

The puppy was moved to the front of the house for a while, where it settled down on top of some sandals after we had cleaned its eyes. This resulted in one of those scenes that are becoming increasingly normal around Vita’s parents’ property: one very small rescued puppy trying to sleep outside the house while two cats sat nearby observing the newcomer.

Noah’s Ark, Dumbrava branch.

Every time I think we have reached the sensible maximum number of animals around this property, something else appears.

Later, my father-in-law apparently upgraded the accommodation again. The last information I received was that the puppy had been put into a box with blankets inside the outside summer kitchen. That made me considerably happier. It is still outside the main house, which presumably represents the negotiated settlement with my mother-in-law, but it is protected, has something soft and warm underneath it and is no longer sitting exposed beside the door.

For one night, that will have to do.

Tomorrow is another problem

I have no idea yet what happens next.

Perhaps somebody nearby knows where the puppy came from. Perhaps it belongs to someone. Perhaps it has been outside for much longer than we realise. The condition of its eyes certainly needs professional attention, and I do not want to build a story around it before we know anything. Tonight we have only one photograph, one very small dog, and a series of unanswered questions.

There is also the rather more immediate question of whether it will get through the night comfortably. It is very young, it looks tired, and it has clearly not had the best day of its life. At least now it is off the road, sheltered, wrapped in blankets and surrounded by people who may complain about its arrival but have already rearranged the evening around making sure it is safe.

That is perhaps the funny part of the whole situation. Nobody planned to acquire a puppy today. I certainly did not leave the house this morning thinking that between checking renovations and drinking Moldovan wine I would eventually be standing on a hill rescuing a dog from traffic. My father-in-law did not expect another animal. My mother-in-law definitely did not request one. Vita was dealing with something far more serious and emotional elsewhere. My step-daughter was in another country. And yet within a short time everybody had somehow become involved.

One person picked up the puppy. Another complained about the puppy. Somebody in the Netherlands found the veterinarian. Vita found the saline. My father-in-law found a box and blankets. Two cats provided supervision.

And I am apparently the person who keeps bringing animals home.

There are worse reputations to have.

So this is how a day that began at six in the morning with construction work and eventually passed through one of Moldova’s biggest celebrations ended: with a tiny black-and-brown puppy sleeping in a box in the summer kitchen.

Tomorrow, we start working out what comes next.

Tonight, it is enough that I did not drive past.

AI Assistance Disclosure: This article is based entirely on my own experience, observations, photograph and recollection of the events described. Artificial intelligence tools were used as editorial assistants to improve grammar, wording, structure and presentation, and to organise the sequence of events into a coherent narrative.

No attempt was made to diagnose the puppy’s condition. References to its eyes describe only what was visibly observed and the temporary cleaning performed before arranging professional veterinary attention. The experience, humour, opinions and conclusions remain my own.

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