Dog Bites Man (Emotionally)

I've hired a private physio through gumtree because I am supposed to be doing an hour's physiotherapy a day to sort my knees out (I have a hole in both my patellae) but it’s so very, very boring.

My nosey Babcia neighbour must think I am a madman. Every week a woman comes round and bends me into all manner of postures, such as the one in this photo, and then after an hour I hand her 60 zinzillas.

I got through two private physios quite quickly because (like most people I hope) when I’m embarrassed or shy with a stranger I tend to crack bad (very bad) jokes. It’s like some sort of instant idiotic banter button has been pushed when you suddenly find yourself telling your Physiotherapist that her massage technique is nothing like the one you get in Bangkok (disclaimer – never been to Thailand!)

Aside from being rather harder for me to quickly read emotionally, Poles are rather more formal in initial meetings than the easy-come, easy-go nature of some interaction between customer and staff/server that you’ll get in the UK and other Western Anglo-Saxon culture. When I think about the number of highly intimate and sometimes terrible things I learnt about the relative strangers I served when 16 and working in a delicatessen, I shudder and almost reach to turn off my covert surveillance equipment.

Anyway after yesterday’s physio I went for a walk in Las Kabacki and, turning to follow the railway track which leads to the ZTM slidings past the nice pond, found an agitated young dog lying in the grass, panting in the heat and quite distressed and zdenerwowany. I sat with him for a while but he had no collar and no owner turned up. After 40 minutes I could see he was utterly lost and didn’t have a clue where he was or what to do. I squatted in the grass by the side of the railway chewing the mental cud as four silent greyhounds and their owner tinkered past, blankly surveying us like soldiers passing civilians in a time of war.

I couldn’t leave this adorable and terrified pies alone and rang the Straz Mieszka to find out what to do. They said they’d “send a unit down later” and asked for an address. Not knowing exactly how to describe where I was, I called to an elderly Babcia bent over her field of crops in the late afternoon sun what the address of her house was, “Could the Honourable Lady tell me the address here, because I have a lost dog and I am calling Straz Mieszka” says I. “No” she reluctantly shouted back, “here is the forest, there’s forest there and forest here.” Now it could be I completely misunderstood her, but her body language said: eff off and leave me to my berry picking.

It’s one of those times that I’d deeply like to insult her in English just to get a gratifying feeling of revenge but wasn’t quite sure whether I’d quite read the situation right. So I took pies, who I nicknamed “Toast” because of the colour of his fur - to a friend who works with dogs and lived nearby and waited for the dog detectives to turn up. I can't take him in - the landlord wouldn't allow it and, frankly, I couldn't afford him either. It wouldn't be responsibile.

Why is it we form such a deep bond with dogs? Toast wouldn’t leave my side and having decided to trust me and follow me to the house, he never left my side for the rest of the day. Somehow a bit of that faithfulness and bond also seeped into me. We had to wait several hours for the dog unit to turn up and as they unceremoniously hauled him away, as he desperately struggled with them to return to me, I cried and cried. It was probably the most painful event that’s happened to me in at least two years.   

So if this your dog or you know him, you can find him at the Paluch dog place and please, next time put a chip in him and keep him on a lead... because my heart is a little broken today.