Hi there,
Today I am going to tell you about a dog that was abandoned when he was little in Campanhã (Porto) and now he is loved and cared for by all the neighbors.
When I moved to Porto, one of the days when we were waiting for the bus in September 2022, we saw a brown dog who was a little shy. After a while of calling him, he finally came, and I pet him. I got the impression that he was an abandoned dog.
Since we didn’t know his name, we decided to give him a typical Portuguese name: Joãozinho.
When we started to take care of Luna, Joãozinho lost his fear of us and always came to be behind Luna. He loved her. Luna was afraid of him at first, but then she gained confidence and would jump on him and grab him by the neck with her paws. Many times, we felt sorry because it seemed like she was beating up Joãozinho. From then on, he got used to coming every morning to pee at the gate of my house.
When we started going to CrossFit by bike, we realized that he seemed to live in a house so maybe he was not abandoned.
The first few times Joãozinho would come out furiously barking at us. As I saw that when I got off the bike, he stopped barking, I tried to pet him, and I realized that that was what he wanted. That’s how he stopped barking when we were on the bike because he already knew we were friends.
The routine was born: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we went to CrossFit, we went to pet him on the way there and on the way back we stopped at what seemed to be his house to spend some time with him.
Joãozinho turned out to be the cutest thing you can imagine. Every morning, he was there waiting for us. Many times, he would hug Diego’s leg so he wouldn’t leave.
We tried several times to get Joãozinho to come to the house with us, but he would stop at a corner and turn back. That was the street where they sold drugs and maybe he was afraid.
One afternoon a lady told us that he and a little female dog had been abandoned when they were very small. The female dog had a tumor and the neighbors collected money to pay for her operation. This dog came many times when we were with Joãozinho, sniffed us and left. Besides, Joãozinho is jealous and would get in the way so we wouldn’t touch her.We called her Luazinha.
We then noticed that the neighbors put food and water in the street for him and that when it rained, Joãozinho slept in the doorway of the house where he always was.
Another day we tried to go down another street and Joãozinho followed us running happily and even accompanied us to the post office.
All the neighbors who saw him running with us shouted at him and asked him what he was doing so far away from his area. Joãozinho was quite a celebrity.
The more we shared with him, the more we realized how many people knew and loved him.
Joãozinho started to accompany us to the house when we returned from the CrossFit and even stayed with us for a while playing in the garden. But we couldn’t close the gate because he would get nervous, he needed to know that the gate was open, and he was free to leave whenever he wanted.
We tried feeding him dog food, but he didn’t like it, he was used to the neighbors feeding him human food.
It was amazing that a dog who lived on the street and had no care at all, was in such good condition.
We thought about adopting him, but Joãozinho was used to his free life.
Since we had fleaed him a few times, we thought about bathing him the next time he came into the house. We realized that he had never been bathed in his life because he didn’t know what water was on his body. In fact, he didn’t have the typical dog reaction of shaking and rolling around; he just kept looking at the area where we poured the water on him as if it was something he didn’t understand. We decided to leave him alone and just buy him a flea collar. After we tried to bathe him, he spent several weeks without wanting to enter our house again.
One day he came after us and we were surprised. He accompanied us halfway. Another day he also tried to accompany us, but we met another dog and Joãozinho returned terrified.
On the third attempt he came with us to the CrossFit. We thought he would go back because there were a lot of people and he would be scared. He stayed with us during the whole class.
That’s when we knew he could join us whenever we wanted. We took him to see the Parque Oriental and the river beach.
It was amazing how a street dog was so well-behaved. He was always by our side and was super obedient.
He also started spending more time at our house and no longer got nervous if we closed the gate; he would just let us know when he wanted to leave.
Thus, this abandoned dog from Campanhã became a great friend.
