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Bimba and Piruleta are nervous. Accustomed to settling around the enormous estate of its owner in Camarma de Esteruelas , a small town in Madrid , these two gages, who seem more like whistles, now have a little trouble getting their little cubicle in the animal protector Alba, two kilometers away. .

There is no other: the man died of Covid-19 and someone had to take them in. Not far from them a pony and a sow graze, strangely well avenues: «Buf, those two! They were walking together on the A-42 [the road between Madrid and Toledo], we saved them and now they are inseparable ».

Carol Corral , 48, saw the one coming at her - what we will call the bitch life of the coronavirus pets - when on Sunday March 15, with the Government establishing the state of alarm by decree, she received a phone call of the Local Police of Paracuellos del Jarama .

"I had just been called by a crying woman. Her husband was in the ICU with covid. Her adoptive daughter had been taken away by Social Services due to the danger of contagion, and she had to be admitted to the Ifema Hospital also with symptoms. He had no one to leave his dogs with. In the residence where they were left on vacation they were not taken: covid . The municipal kennels of the entire Community of Madrid are, logically, to burst. They called desperately, one Sunday night, I came to pick up an injured kitten and ... ».

And Carol had no choice but to shoulder her. "I went home and said to my husband, who is a civil guard: 'Well, I have to go to a house with Covid to get some dogs out of there.' And he: 'Damn, be careful . ' And I: 'Now, man, now, don't worry.' And there I went. I put on a green jumpsuit that I have, I gathered my hair ... And palante ».

When she arrived, Carol found two dogs "40 kilos each, Bonka and Mas, a pitbull crossbreed and a hairy mastiff crossbreed, and they started giving me things, of course: the primer, the leashes ... And I I would ask them to put everything in a bag to disinfect it later , because there was covid in that house and I was going to take it with me ».

Upon returning to Alba's shelter, Carol called her partner Antonio: «'Look, man, with what I am bringing here I am going to need help and a lot: can you come to help me bathe them?' Because, of course, without bathing and disinfecting them well we could not put them in our cages. And there we both started to bathe them at eleven o'clock at night, when the poor dogs shook themselves and threw everything on us and we didn't have any glasses to protect our eyes. What a foam party!

The reverse of the story is that of a woman from Parla who also contacted Alba, but not to leave but to welcome: «Her husband was undergoing cancer treatment and had a CT scan, I remember it perfectly, on March 13. Well, the woman, scared by the one who was arming herself, calls the hospital and asks if her husband has to go anyway, with the danger of contagion. They say yes, do not worry, that there is a clean and a dirty area, that you will not get it. After two days, he begins to develop symptoms. Because he is an immunosuppressed person, even though he was young, he dies quickly . And the woman calls us to welcome some animal. I myself brought him a very loving kitten that we had, that we called him Pelota. Can you imagine the love that animal can be giving to this woman? ».

In November the 254 dogs a guy had in a basement in Arganda. Some he sold for 1,000 euros!

Then there are the bailouts in the midst of confinement. For example, from a family of 10 kittens in the Metro Delicias, in the center of Madrid. «It was April 18. They called us, that there was a family of cats in a tunnel, that if we could take care of them. How could we say no? We already had the experience of a greyhound who stayed inside again, they did not give us permission and a train blew him up, so we asked for the appropriate permits , we had to wait for the last train to pass and we entered at 1.30 a.m. . And we were there until four. In the end we were able to get them all out, and bring them to the shelter, but imagine the psychosis: the subway is the place where there is the highest concentration of viruses in all of Madrid, it doesn't know what you have touched and what hasn't ... Crazy.

This is how Carol Corral's Noah's Ark has been filling, which Alba set up "20 years ago now, putting a thousand pesetas each, several friends and I, building this with our own hands . " She, who had studied Physiotherapy, suddenly found herself saving animals seized, for example in police operations: «In November the 254 dogs that a guy had in a basement in Arganda. Some sold them for 1,000 euros! ».

The Covid-19, which has entered our lives as a shell, has done the same in Alba's. But Carol doesn't lose her smile «because they don't lose it either. I see her".

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

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