A Year in the Life of the Iglesiases: June 2013

I have made reference to the Goat Lady, or Ziegefrau as we call her at home, before and I thought it was high time to explain this a bit further. Pablo was not a huge fan of bringing Blackjack to Germany, maintaining that it made absolutely no sense to cart a dog overseas in the belly of an airplane. I agreed that it made no sense, but maintained that was no reason for us not to do it. In a triumph of love over logic, Pablo finally agreed to bring Blackjack with us on the condition that we not let Blackjack's presence deter us from jaunting about Europe. So when we arrived, one of my first priorities was finding a kennel for Blackjack. Since we don't have a car over here, it also had to be one that we could access via public transportation.

Having learned the proper word for kennel in German, Tierpension, I set about finding information on the Internet. There was very little. There were some great places that I couldn't reach and some other places within the city that only take small dogs. Finally I found a reference to a Billy's Tierpension that was run by someone that also raises Boxers. It turns out that the owner, a woman not named Billy, runs a dog kennel, raises Boxers and also raises goats. She has an internet site for her goats, but nothing on the kennel. Really, after finding that out, Ziegefrau seemed to be a far better name than Billy's Tierpension. The Ziegefrau is not only great with dogs, but also one of the most cheerful and kindest people I have met anywhere. And people warned me that East Germans were typically closed and not immediately friendly!

She has a house and a barn not too far from the Elbe river on the outskirts of Dresden. Taking first a tram, then a bus, and finally walking through a barley field it only takes us an hour to get there! To call this place a kennel is somewhat misleading - there are no boxed in enclosures in sight other than the chicken coops, although she must surely have some means of separating dogs that don't get along with each other. In any case, Blackjack sleeps either in the house or in the barn. Periodically all the dogs get taken out to run (freely, I might add, although she made sure to ask if that was alright) along the Elbe. Occasionally Blackjack apparently goes swimming in the river too. Whenever we pick him up, he smells distinctly of goat, so he must spend some amount of time in the barn. When we picked him up from the last trip, it had been raining all week and she warned me that Blackjack had taken every opportunity he had to play with a Labrador Retriever in large muddy puddles. So he smelled of goat and stale pond water. Mmmmmm! But he's always excited to go there, so it's worth the trip and the bath when he comes back.

Goats and barn


Barley field

The Elbe river flooded the house, barn and even the entire barley field unfortunately, although the damage was not quite as extensive as the major 2002 flood. That time the river filled the house almost all the way to the ceiling of the first floor, and this time it came only 2/3 of the way up to the ceiling. It's been a little over a week since they could navigate back to their home, and things are getting back in place. Apparently the goats won't come back for a few months until the nearby grazing area has regrown fresh, healthy grass instead of silt-coated grass. Hopefully dogs will be able to go back by the time the kids are out of school on July 12 as we want to go on one more trip before we return to the States!

When we arrived in Dresden in August, there were advertisements all over for a 10 yr anniversary exhibition about the 2002 flood. I hadn't really known about a Dresden specific flood before - Dresden wasn't particularly on my radar screen and any flood information I may have heard merged into a "European flood" vague memory. Pablo, of course, was not only aware of the flooding at the time, but also managed to remember it as a distinct event. In any case, it was supposed to be the flood of the century, and there are high water marks from that flood all over the place: the model train store on the way to where the kids help at Cub Scouts; a house on the way to where Blackjack stays with the goat lady when we travel; the bridges across the Elbe river; the restaurant where the International Ladies Group eats lunch every month; and many other places. We have seen these marks and marvelled, knowing that the water must have reached that far and that high, but not really able to imagine it.

Well, we are now getting too much of an illustration. It's been raining for weeks, with an occasional sunny day thrown in, and apparently all the reservoirs are full. By this past Saturday the river had risen up as high as we'd ever seen it, but was still easily contained with the wide flood plains that run through the city. Since then the Elbe has been rising about 3' every day for the last five days. Hopefully the high water mark has been reached now and then there will just be the mess left afterwards. At least this time around there are a lot more flood defenses in place than in 2002. The city center has survived without much of a problem and the small tributary that is nearest us has stayed within its new higher walls. In 2002 that tributary flooded the school Vicente & Miguel attend and also completely flooded the main train station. So at least the train station is okay, school wasn't cancelled and we haven't lost power, water, or anything like that. The area where the goat lady lives and the church where the kids go for Cub Scouts haven't been so lucky. They've been completely inundated.