What i learn from Pumi
By Lee von dem Bussche
Pumi is about three to four years old, has already given birth to several puppies, and, weighing 6.7 kg, is a little bundle of energy with boundless love and gratitude for life. Pumi got her name because she looks like a little puma: wild and authentic.
We found her in a place where we had encountered animal suffering before. When she saw us, she crawled out of the thick blackberry bushes across the small road toward us. Her fur was completely matted and covered with ticks, and her injured hind legs dragged across the stony ground. The wounds on her delicate legs were very deep, some down to the bone. Pumi sat up and whimpered. To me, it sounded like the cry of a soul: Take me with you!
We learned from a neighbor that Pumi had been bitten in the back by a large female dog from the neighborhood five weeks earlier, probably breaking a vertebra. The owners live in difficult circumstances; they had money for a vet but no compassion for the dog’s suffering. It is a miracle that Pumi survived in the heat of summer. When we felt her bony, dehydrated body, we knew that without help she would probably die within hours.
The owners left her with us and we took her to the hospital. The doctors said that surgery was no longer possible because her spine had already grown together crookedly. According to the X-ray, the animal should not have had any reflexes or sensation in her hind legs, but fortunately that was not the case; her mobility was limited, but at least she could move a little.
My partner and I took Pumi to our home, where we often care for animals with special needs. Living with this dog is a real journey of the heart. But first, I had to grapple with a difficult question: Was I going too far with my love for animals—providing a dog with a wheelchair, diapers, and so on? The suffering of this creature, which was now in my care, caused me to feel a pain in my heart that I had never experienced before.
But her unconditional will to live and her joy touched me deeply. There is no feeling of lack or inferiority, only pure gratitude for every moment of life. Pumi is remarkably self-confident, enjoys her role as a guard dog at the garden gate, and races (rolls!) with the other dogs, always winning.
I was born in 1963, at a time of economic boom with the stale smell of the post-war period and the illusion of the American Dream – with sugar, sex, and plastic happiness. My mother, a refugee child of the Second World War, had a great zest for life and a compassionate heart for people and animals. So I grew up in a small zoo, where we often kept a wide variety of animals and where species that are normally sworn enemies lived together. Thanks to my mother’s care, animals of different species such as ducks, cats, and small pigs got along well. Compassion and help for animals in need were still relatively unknown in our village at that time. Animals were there purely for the benefit of humans. Farm animals were used as a matter of course, just as people had been exploited as slaves in the past. Calves were weaned and locked up in the dark so that their meat would remain beautifully white…
Theologian and animal rights activist Christa Blanke summed up this injustice aptly: “130 years ago, the Church remained silent because it was only black people. 60 years ago, the Church remained silent because it was only Jews. Today, the Church remains silent because it is only animals.”
Visiting a chicken concentration camp as a nine-year-old left a lasting impression on me. The chickens are kept in cramped conditions and inevitably injure and kill each other. At the time, we pulled a chicken that was still breathing out of a pile of corpses and nursed it back to health. “Clementine” lived to be eight years old, was part of the family, smart and affectionate, and, as far as I can remember, laid an egg every day.
One day, my father brought home a handful of kittens that he had rescued from a construction site after hearing pitiful cries coming from behind a freshly built wall. This heroic deed has remained in my heart.
Isn’t that incredible? Despite all its achievements and intelligence, humanity has remained stuck at the level of a barbaric culture when it comes to animals! I think that violence towards helpless beings has to do with the fact that we unconsciously pass on to the weak the pain, oppression, and restriction of our potential and vitality that we ourselves have experienced. The last in the “chain of pain” are children and animals.
Gandhi said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
I long for a world in which all beings in this creation find a home. Where people can get to know each other in their different qualities and are allowed to develop for the benefit of all. Where we learn to complement each other instead of comparing ourselves. I long for a system where people no longer kick those below them and bow down to those above them, but where we recognize in our own hearts what cooperation with all beings looks like. Humanization, for me, is a learning process that fully affirms life, where many energies and potentials come to conscious development. A first step in this direction is to begin this healing work within our own wounded inner selves.
Through Pumi, I came into contact with a victim of a brutalized life situation among humans. I hold her in my arms. Do I see her courage to live and her beauty? Do I take her pain protectively under my “wings”? Or do I slip into a dark corner myself by seeing her as a burden?
I have come to know both aspects within myself. On the one hand, I realized that I had found a healing mission in this dog. That was no coincidence. At the same time, I was unsure, even paralyzed: What am I supposed to do now, with a dog that can’t walk, a creature that needs a lot of help and will have a significant impact on my life?
I am very grateful that I followed my heart. In the meantime, I have learned to structure the daily routine around Pumi so that it fits in with my professional life and other activities. When I’m away for a little longer, I get help.
Pumi has an off-road wheelchair that she uses to whizz around the garden and go for walks. She is fully accepted by other dogs and behaves very confidently. When I’m exhausted and think that it’s all too much for me, after a moment’s reflection I usually realize that the real cause of my despair lies elsewhere. Very often, there is repressed heartbreak that radiates in all directions of my being.
True joy in life has nothing to do with superficial strength and perfection, but with truth and authenticity. The question is an exciting one: Which moments touch us so deeply that we feel them on a deeper level – right at our core, so to speak? Something comes to rest here.
I see it as part of my life’s work to leave superficial perfection behind and look for where real, vibrant, and nourishing life can be found.
I started my life as a promising and privileged person, feeling like a potential winner. I had to go through a period of arrogance, experiencing the harshness of the strong towards those who do not possess certain attributes valued by society. Pumi is now showing me the other side of life. She is teaching me to recognize the constraints of social convention within myself—and to let them go. Because ideas about youth, flawless beauty, achievement, etc. do not last forever: if you base your self-confidence on these superficial things, feelings of inferiority and fear of failure will emerge sooner or later.
It is healing to abandon the arrogance of the supposedly strong and invite compassion for all beings. A kind of humility before creation is a quality that many of us need to rediscover. We cannot define ourselves separately from the whole. We are much more than that.
Thank you for the moments of deep connection. Thank you for the principle of grace. I pray that, especially in these times when warlike energy is raging so fiercely, the powerful call of life will continue to knock on our hearts and remind us of the truth beneath the surface!
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The author lives in Portugal and is involved in the organization Dog Heal https://dogs-heal.org and the so-called dog sanctuary Tameras for the rescue, care, and rehoming of stray dogs: https://https://www.tamera.org/dog-sanctuary/