I am a volunteer in an Animal Shelter in Madrid for one year now.  There are several reasons why I decided to share my time with abandoned animals. I used to have a dog when my brothers and sisters and I were leaving with my parents. Maria flew with us from Argentina to Madrid in 2003 and shared a total of sixteen years with my family.

It’s been seven years since she left us. After that, rental politics left us with no change but to resign about having one again. Years passed and when our lives became more scheduled I tried to find some part jobs related to animal care and only found shelters looking for volunteers. I was barely doing things during the weekend and I took the decision to participate in the project. This shelter, in particular, has a fluent communication with other ones in Germany. Twice a year, volunteers attend adoption fairs. One of them was tomorrow.

I woke up and the sun was shining again and there was no trace of rain around. As I was preparing my things, Hans approached me to ask what my direction was. I told him I was going back to Frankfurt and he offered me going together. Unfortunately, a few minutes later he came back to tell me to go on my own as the weather was so nice that they were going to take one more day to get home. With that not being a problem, I set off after saying goodbye to the ones left in the camping area.

It was not early, but we were not in a hurry so I set the GPS to small roads. I didn’t have the address of the apartment I was going to stay with other volunteers but I had the one from the Shelter and it was not too far from there. My friends were driving that day so they were not checking the telephone much. Other two girls took a flight and they were also unreachable.

After forty minutes, I ran into a village with a lot of detours in it due to civil works. It took me a while to figure out where to go as my GPS was recalculating the route in every turn. I thought it would be better just to turn around and go back a little to get to another crossroads and while I was on it, Hans appeared. He was driving with Stephanie, his wife, and Jörg, another Vulcanier Germany member. I waved at them to make them stop. The road was closed and we needed to figure out another way. Hans told me they canceled their plan and they were returning home because it was going to be raining all day long on Sunday and they didn’t want to risk it.

During our ride, I did miscalculate the kilometer range I could do with the benzine I had. We were driving on the highway and there was no attempt of stopping in a petrol station. After eighty kilometers with the reserve light on, I separated from the group to fill the tank as fast as I could and catch them again. Hopefully, they would have seen that I was missing. I stopped in two different gas stations but couldn’t meet them there. I did not have their phone numbers so that was also a problem. I resign myself and continued the last kilometers alone and under the rain. Hans did offer me to sleep at his house and I didn’t remember where that was located. After being set in the apartment, I received a message from him asking if everything was OK. When I told him where I was, he said: ” I live five kilometers from there!”.

I was a long day on the road, but I had to catch up on the YouTube channel and kept editing the videos up to three o’clock in the morning. While working, I was entertained by the thunderstorm outside.

It kept raining until five o’clock in the afternoon. Although there were people at the fair, the rain may have depleted their will to come. There were not many places to stay dry rather than the bar and the warehouse. The shelter organized some different contests among the attendees who came with their dogs and later the Firefighters Rescue Team showed us how capable their trained dogs are on the field. During the day, some of the adopted animals of our shelter came to visit us with their adopters. It is such a wonderful moment when they recognize us and we see the new life opportunity they have been given.

Not so late, the party was over. We packed everything and went to have dinner. I was deciding whether or not to stay overnight there. My friend Jürgen had sent me a message and he was already expecting me at his home. It was dark already and clouds were gathering together in the sky. For some reason, I decided to go because I thought a little bit of rain was not going to be a problem. I underestimated it. The road I had to take was under construction and for more than eighty kilometers I was driving between guardrails with no road shoulder space. The rain was too thick and it was really hard to see. Driving on those conditions made me very tense as there was no possibility to cover from the rain or stop somewhere just to give my mind a rest. In the end, I made it safely but arrived completely soaked.

I stayed with Jürgen for a couple of days. He had work to do and I took some time to put together some pending videos. By then, my brother Federico had already told me about gimbals. Gimbals are some camera and phone accessories which stabilizes the camera to help you get better shots. I went to Gießen to have a walk around the city but I had to move to Frankfurt to look for bigger shops to find them. After a couple of hours looking, I found only two shops who had some which you could actually try. Unfortunately, I was going to use them for my hand camera and all of them were mainly phone related accessories. Buying a proper hand camera gimbal was much more expensive and bigger. The major problem with my camera is that it has to be placed on the base to record properly and not on the edge. Using a phone gimbal was going to be a nightmare so I had to dismiss the idea. Later that day, I met Jürgen after work and had our last dinner together, this time in Frankfurt.