Every year I go to my native Suriname to sterilize dogs with a team. I’ll never forget the day we drove into a poor neighborhood to pick up dogs a few years ago.
Dirt roads, dilapidated houses and way too many dogs. Pregnant, skinny, mangy. Puppies with little chance of survival.
A volunteer had donated two super deluxe crates (wire cages) to the shelter. She proudly handed them over to me and showed me what you could do with them. Door, wheels, everything equally beautiful.
A black barnyard dog, named Blacky of course, had the honor of being the first to be transported in the crate.
While loading the dogs, we discovered that the tailgate of the animal ambulance did not close properly and we tied the flap closed with a rope.
The ambulance was in dire need of replacement, but there was no money for it.
We were driving on a busy highway and the dogs in the back of the bus were squealing anxiously. Suddenly I heard a loud crash behind me and looked back.
The flap had flown open and there was a crate, with the dog still in it, in the middle of the road. The cars behind us were approaching at great speed.
“Stop,” I shouted at the driver, jumped out of the bus and ran to the crate. The approaching cars did not appear to slow down.
It took forever to get to the crate. An eternity in which I had plenty of time to ponder the value of a dog’s life and my own.
And the vulnerability of both. I heard someone shout: “This is not possible!” “That’s right,” I thought, “this isn’t possible,” but I kept running. The oncoming cars stopped.
The crate was cracked, the wheels were scattered across the asphalt. The dog looked at me with an indignant look, but seemed unharmed.
The lady who donated the crate was at the shelter when we arrived. She stared at the crate in horror. I explained to her what had happened.
She was about to burst into tears. “If it hadn’t been such a good crate, the dog might not have survived,” I said.
Her face lit up. “It’s just material. Fortunately, dog is unharmed,” she said.
I nodded and went back into the operating room.
The Friends of the Surinamese Animal Protection Foundation supports the shelter in Paramaribo with the help of donations from the Netherlands and organizes annual sterilization campaigns. Information: dierenbeschermingsuriname.nl
Chris Polanen wrote the novels Waterjager and Centaur.