Jack the dog

  JACK

Hi, my name is Jack. I am a dog.  A German Shepard. For the past 7 months I have been living in a tiny, wired compound and a very small cage in the town of Kupyansk, Ukraine. One day, after a nice morning nap, I was awakened by what I thought was thunder. The sky was clear blue. Then as the thunder got closer, a bunch of men in strange uniforms ran into our yard. They were firing their guns. My human parents ran out of our home and ran into the gunfire and were shot. Then bombs hit the house with one landing so close to the kennel that I have a headache and shrapnel wounds. One in the back was really starting to hurt.

The guys in uniform were the Russian army. They terrorized the residents of the town and would tease and hit me and not take care of me. My human neighbors would stealthily come in the night and feed me scraps of bread if they had some. For water I would lick the wires of the cage. When they could the kids would bring a bowel of water.

The Russians would tease me, kick me, especially after drinking, and would not release me from the kennel. It was hard to put up with the noise of battle. The crate was becoming intolerable to live in, every now and then the children tried to clean it.

Then one day another group of men came to the village, different uniforms and spoke the language of the village. It turns out they were the Air Recon of the 112^th brigade of the Ukrainian army. One of them saw me in deep depression in the crate and had me pulled out. It was Oles Malaryvich, a sergeant in the group.

The next thing I knew I was clean and had a full belly. They took care of some of the superficial wounds but the ones with shrapnel were beyond their scope to fix. They treated me as family, and I was ok. I still had the symptoms of a concussion from the bombs being dropped on my village.

Once they cleaned me up and cleaned my collar, they found the name Jack on it. It was a relief to hear my named called out.

They decided I needed to go to the vet hospital in Kiev. Oles , who was and still is a movie producer, called his friends in Kiev. Oles threw me into a car and we went on a 390 mi trip through war territory to take me to a veterinary clinic in Kiev.

Once we got to the hospital, the doctors took out the shrapnel and cleared the major infection on my back. Then there arose another problem. They didn’t want me to go back to the front lines. Who would take care of me?

Oles had a friend in Kiev and I was introduced to Palo Bocelli the son of Andre Bocelli. I liked him and we seemed to hit it off. Soon, I was on my way to the Bocelli estate in Italy. It was there I meet my savior, Andre Bocelli.

He is a singer of renown fame, and he is blind. When I met with him, he reached out to me, took me in his hands and moved them all over my body. It felt good. It was his way of making a connection.

Now I have a family and a home. I give thanks to the Ukrainian soldiers, to the Veterinary doctors and nurses and the Bocelli family and their friends that have given me a new life.

Fate moves mysteriously. I am good, but the fate of my country is in doubt.

Go Ukraine……..Jack

Kindness is a human trait that is missing all over the world….Jack

You can watch his story at the link below. The narrative unfortunately is in Ukraine…For  English translation click the wheel “settings” then subtitles Auto translate and pick English…..Ignore the commercials at the beginning  and the end.

https://youtu.be/MXTvxQEqh3E?t=92

If you never heard Andre Bocelli here is song he made popular with Celene Dion

The Prayer with Bocelli and Dion