TALLINN, Estonia (AP): Zorik was never the guy who ate his tail or licked his hands. But that didn’t stop the free-spirited stray dog from winning many hearts.
When the black-and-white mutt, who had a long presence in a Tallinn neighborhood, was brought from the Estonian capital to the countryside earlier this year to live the days in a safe and quiet backyard setting. of a family, he was lost so much that the residents immortalized him with a statue.
“People gave for the monument. They wanted it and they follow their destiny even though it is already old and fragile, ”said Heiki Valner, an animal rescue volunteer who came up with the idea for the Zorik statue and organized the fundraiser.
Donations were collected and a local artist was commissioned to image Zorik, with upright ears and hairy hair on his snout, along with a cat lying against him.
The statue, which now stands in front of a shopping mall, is understood as a tribute to both Zorik and his fellow animals as well as all the lost. Zorik once had a dog companion who died in a car accident. He then caught stray cats and was seen often, even while sleeping.
Residents say Zorik first appeared as a puppy about 12 years ago in a coal storage area in a nearby port, and that he had since been an apparatus in Kalamaja, a working-class district that is transformed into a magnet for hipsters.
In a society where the divide between ethnic Estonians and ethnic Russians is sharply felt, Zorik managed to save the division, beating the Russian-speaking old women who fed it, as well as Estonian hipsters, including a group that now he opened a cafe called “Zorik.”
“Zorik was a dog that could disappear, it was a dog that everyone knew in Kalamaja, that touched everyone, big and small, Estonian and Russian,” Valner said. “It was a point of social integration.”
It was so beloved that sometimes the residents fed it from the best beef slices. But no one was able to capture and domesticate him.
“When people tried to regularize it or restrict it, it escaped,” Valner said. “It was just a free spirit.”
Viktoria Ger, who has given Zorik a new home, in an enclosure with a dog kennel behind her own family home, describes him as a “quirky dog.”
“He doesn’t want to be around people, so he doesn’t like to be petted,” he said. Nearby, Zorik was sitting and trembling as a light dust of snow covered the ground and the pines splattered the garden.
“He’s probably been hurt by people during his lifetime, so he doesn’t trust people,” he said.
Valner said Zorik finally had to be removed from the city for his own safety.
“In the end he was so senile that he would only fall asleep on the railroad or tram tracks or just on the road, so cars had to drive around him,” Valner said, pointing to the Kalamaja area that had long been that he was at home. to the dog. “We got several calls a day when he was on the road, so we finally had to take him off the street in his own interest.”
Initially he tried to escape and return to his former itinerant territory, but now his fragility has finally gained his free spirit.
As expected, there have also been over the years who did not want the dog to be around.
“This was a contest of good and evil,” Valner said. “There were those who demanded that he be captured and removed and others who protected and fed him. This time, kindness has won.
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One Good Thing ”is a series that highlights people whose actions offer lights of joy in difficult times: stories of people who find a way to make a difference, no matter how small. Read the story collection at https://apnews.com/hub/one-good-thing