Meet my Dogs

Soon after my divorce in 2006, I had to make a very hard decision: leave the dogs at the house with the children.  I also thought it would be better for the dogs as that was their home and taking them away would make them unhappy. Besides for about 2 years I lived in a flat which was far from being a suitable home for them. Melina was only a puppy then and she still needed her mum who passed away last year.

This is Melina the beagle. She was born on April 7, 2006. She is playful, lively but obedient and apart from dog food, she loves to eat souvlaki and lamb chops.

This is a picture of Nefeli taken about a year ago in my daughter's bedroom. Born on May 22, 2001, she is a fine labrador retriever and our guardian angel. She generally gets on well with Melina and loves to eat chicken and ham.

Romantic Weekend

Here I am back from a very relaxing and very romantic weekend at Coral Bay in Paphos. As I needed to have both my flat and the school refurbished, I had to split my holidays in weekends rather than take 10 days in a row. So, after Protaras it was Paphos. We stayed at the Coral Beach Hotel in a beautiful suite with a private terrace furnished with umbrellas, sunbeds , a wooden coffee table and a small rattan outdoor lounge. Alkis and I had the time to relax and unwind while enjoying the sun and the sea. Before leaving, we also visited the Bird and Animal Park at the nearby village of Peyia where an albino wallaby kangaroo was born 8 weeks ago. This is the 4th wallaby in the world - the last one was born 30 years ago in the UK. Only the birds live in cages with the exception of two parrots whose home includes a huge umbrella to protect them from the sun and the rain. All other animals live in their natural habitat in spacious places and are well taken care of by the staff of the park.

Wild Life in Danger!

Throughout the world, animals are exterminated because their furs have a high market value. Fashion bears a heavy responsibility for the hunting of these wild creatures. Ocelots and jaguars are slaughtered in South America; cheetahs in Africa; leopards in Asia. All the large cats are in danger of extinction, although they are among the world's rarest and most beautiful animals. Would you wear a leopard-skin coat, if you knew that fourteen of these animals had been killed to make that coat? And this is only the beginning. Whales are slaughtered and are in danger of extermination because whale oil is used in cosmetics. Turtles are becoming rare partly because some people eat ...turtle soup! Crocodiles and alligators are killed to make handbags and shoes. Expensive scent is based on musk from civet cats.

Great damage to the animal world is also inflicted by wasteful and cruel methods of hunting animals for zoos, wild-life parks, circuses, and the pet trade, although the first two of these have done great service in protecting rare species. The whole whole subject of animals in captivity raises questions to which one may give different answers. Naturalists and nature lovers are individuals. They do not all think alike. While one may enjoy seeing elephants performing in the circus ring, another would be sickened by the sight of animals trained to perform tricks for our entertainment!. To my mind, it is a crime to take such creatures from their natural habitat and tame them, thus turning them into something different from what they are by nature.

Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, man often seems to be living in an artificial world of his own making, too far removed from the rest of the natural world. Perhaps he needs to learn afresh that he cannot survive if he destroys nature's network - the fabric of life in a living world.