Just like so many of his kind in Bucharest, the slender, three year old stray was to be killed.  He was shot through the head and left to die.  But the death-squadron had not reckoned with the will to live of this brown-beige mongrel!

In spite of a jaw which was broken on both sides (the lower jaw was just dangling), the seriously injured animal survived.  No answer to the astonishing question could yet be found as to how he managed to feed himself with a handicap like that.  When Liviu discovered the suffering animal, he took him in, named him Gurita, had him surgically treated and entrusted a little later the German initiative Hand-und-Pfote with the patched-up dog that was flown to safety.

Gurita's X-ray showing the bullet wound

Happy end? No, not really!  Even though the conditions for a better life were finally right, it was Gurita himself who stood on his own toes now. He made it known to all his new friends that even though he was very taken with the ladies, he but did not always appreciate his own gender, neither human nor four-legged ones. His motto "Some men are there to be growled at, most male dogs are interesting to fight with, and even though one does not harm cats, it is fun to chase them" was no good omen in the search of a new family!  All interested persons pulled out rapidly.

What else could Karin Herma, who had taken care of the dog since his arrival, do but take him in herself even though things seemed seriously iffy right from the start; after all she had three non-neutered male dogs in her family already. And surely enough, things rapidly went wrong just as she had feared: War! During one of the heated "skirmishes" Gurita’s just mended jaw broke again and he ended up in hospital for a second time. Yet another operation seemed to have solved the injury but not the urgent question: Where should this quarreler go?

His streak of bad luck seemed finally to have come to an end.  After a tough fight for life and a narrow escape from an early entry into dogs’ paradise he found himself now in a huge, idyllic property and experienced a security that he had never known before. Finally the moment had come for Gurita to prove how right Karin and all his other friends had been by stating that this artist in survival was actually a real smasher.

But unfortunately still things are not right yet even now. Again a mountain raises on the very street that was to lead into a normal life: When in the hospital the support of Gurita’s jaw was taken out, it was discovered that the bones had not mended. The jaw on the right side is still broken - no “bridge” has been built.

Gurita’s friends have given him the by-name "Immortality" because has managed to survive even the dog-massacre of Bucharest.  He wants to live.  And he shall live!  But for this he needs yet another guardian angel.  Where is the specialist who can tell how to stabilize a broken jaw (by artificial implant?).  Gurita and all his friends are holding their breath and waiting for the saving call.