Frankie, this is the name given to this young, pitiful creature from Pata Ativa. Volunteers from this organization met this dog while visiting the public animal shelter. He landed there because he lived on the streets of Paderne where he had been abandoned.He had already been given up in the animal shelter, but the helpers from Pata Ativa wanted to fight for him, visited him, bathed him, helped him to get up with the help of a towel and to take the first steps … It quickly became clear that Frankie was not just missing a family. He carries a whole rucksack of problems on his young shoulders. They asked us for help and so we took Frankie in Place for Strays.

When Frankie came to us, he was very weak and we almost had to carry him into his box because he could not walk well. He only took a few steps and then lay down from exhaustion. Touching it was torture for him and he screamed out loud with every touch. In his box, he walked around in circles for the first few days, totally traumatized and lived in his own world.

Fortunately, the food tasted very good to him from the start, so we can use the feeding well for training. When feeding, we try to stroke him gently so that he loses his fear of contact. In addition to the food, he is given vitamin paste, medication for his bones and a natural sedative.

Since Frankie has been here, we’ve been training with him every day and in small steps it gets better and better. We firmly believe that he feels that we want to help him. He absolutely doesn’t like being touched by the collar. Putting on a harness is still a difficult procedure. He quickly saw through our little tricks, the clever fox. But once we have him freewheeling on the cross-country leash, he is like a different one. Then Frankie walks straight ahead and is happy about his freedom. He still ignores other dogs.

Through this daily training he has built more muscles, he now runs much faster and has more stamina. He has also gained weight, which we are very happy about. If you now walk past his box you have the feeling that he is now more aware of his surroundings and he no longer appears as traumatized as at the beginning.

At the end of April we had the professional dog trainer Pedro Paiva from Lisbon to visit, who trained with Frankie for two days and passed his knowledge on to our helpers on site. He created a training plan for Frankie, which we will now implement for a month. After that, Pedro will come back and set up another training plan for Frankie.

We are very happy about his progress and even if Frankie will need a lot of time to find his way around our world, we firmly believe that he too can become a relaxed, healthy and happy dog.