After arriving in Tg-Jiu at 7 pm we naturally headed straight away to the shelter in which Carmena and Patricia were already waiting for us. Also the only worker of the shelter, Vasile, was still there likewise Diana who is helping Patricia with the education and therapy dog programs. We heard that Diana and Patricia had been cleaning the shelter for four days before our arrival.

The guardian dogs of shelter were attentive and delighted for the reunion! We were relieved to see that Kiti was in a better shape and cheerful again. Although it was already quite dark outside we quickly checked the extension part of shelter (the "city part"). There were many friendly dogs but some of them were clearly sick and weak and in a need of medical care.

Then it was time to move to our hotel. In the reception we were clearly told: "NO DOGS". We smiled and assured that we wouldn't bring any dogs to the rooms. As usually we accommodated ourselves to the rooms and had some evening snack in the hotel's restaurant before going to sleep.

On Thursday morning we woke up early and after breakfast we headed to Kaufland's supermarket that had become very familiar to us. During our numerous Tg-Jiu visits we have bought lots of equipment for the shelter from this supermarket. So we did this time again.

We arrived at the shelter around 10 am and were welcomed by the guardian dogs and a guardian cat. We had some delicious frankfurters to share with them. After this "ceremony" we headed to different duties around the shelter. Anu was quickly taking the warehouse building of the shelter under her command like she had done many times before, began to clean up the cages and recruited Carita to help her. Patricia told that there were a couple of piles of rags and junk nearby the shelter that we could go through and take the useless stuff to the landfill site. Heli and I began to clear up these piles while Patricia helped us by giving instructions. Jukka's job was to unpack all the equipment we had brought from the supermarket and mingle with the dogs.

There are always so many things to do at the shelter that on our trips during the daytime we have hardly any time to gather up and chat. Everyone is always doing their best to help at the shelter and of course whenever we have some time we try to ask Carmena and Patricia about some things that we find puzzling. 

On our first day we had the chance to see a bit more closely how they are treating the dogs in the part of the shelter that the city maintains. The shelter is taken care of to some extent but the truth is that the dogs don't even get enough food to eat. Already on the first day we had to witness the sad fate of a young female dog that had died the previous night. There were no other visible causes of death than a completely dried up and empty stomach. 

During the day Carmena took two puppies from "the city's side" to Pro Animals Romania's side of the shelter. Otherwise the dogs would most likely have died in there. They also let us enter inside "the city shelter" so we managed to get a real look at what was happening in there and how were the dogs doing. Sure there were dogs looking good and healthy but since the females and males are there all together, there are sometimes serious fights especially between the males. There was actually already a badly injured dog in the warehouse building; the dog had gotten into a fight with another male dog. And since the females that are not spayed and males are mixed in the city shelter, you can easily imagine what that leads to.  

Carmena also told us that dogs disappear from the city shelter very often and no one is willing to tell what has happened to these dogs. A sick dog had already disappeared during the first night or early morning of our trip when no one had been there on the spot to witness.