How Belarusian livejournal found its dog

Some people suggested renaming the at sign into “Irgus” after bloggers had helped an artist Nika Sandros find her pet.
Самы вядомThe most famous dog on the Belarusian Internet is the Airedale terrier of an artist Nika Sandros – Irgus Izslav of Asbrook Leroy. He became famous because he got lost.

The six-months old puppy ran away from the private sector near Arlouskaya Street in Minsk on Saturday night. Nika and her friends spent the whole night looking for him. In the morning she wrote about it in her blog. She asked her readers to paste leaflets near their houses.

Nika: "We thought the dog would be found very quickly, I expected someone to find him on that very day because it was clear that the puppy was pedigree and he had a collar…”

However, Nika was mistaken.

Nika: "The first day passed and nobody found him. I started panicking. My readers probably felt this panic in my blog. I am really grateful to them because I do not know what we would have done. The dog was like a kid in our house. People felt this hysterics and there was a huge wave, people printed leaflets and pasted them, they walked thought parks looking for the dog. People who saw the dog started phoning us thanks to the leaflets”.

Emotional reports kept appearing in Nika Sandros’ blog for four days: she was doing everyone who lost a dog would have done. But she also managed to express her feelings the way her readers started helping her in her search. Lyuba, an active participant of the search, says:

"She wrote she needed a car. I know that not many people could leave everything behind and help, and I had a car, so I offered my help”.

Some people pasted leaflets in their districts, others searched for the dog in parks and public gardens the dog was noticed in. Thanks to livejournal, people could track all the events. Lera was lucky to find Nika Sandros’ Airedale terrier:

"I kept watching the search from the beginning… I opened the blog and saw that they were in Bahratsiyon, 67… It was like a thunderbolt. I thought I should go out and search too… I went our, looked up, it was dim up the staircase and – there was something dark lying there. I did not understand it at first. My first thought was – it can’t be true. I went out and there he was, in the lobby”.

The dog has been found and is sleeping after his long trip while Nika may be fined for pasting leaflets at bus-stops. An official from Zavodzki District administration did not believe that strangers helped her paste the leaflets only because Nika had asked for it on the Internet.

Nika: "He replied: I do not believe you and I never will”.

But Nika is sure that officials will feel ashamed if she ever has to explain the case of pasting the leaflets in court because all who helped her will come together with her.

The most important thing is that the dog has been found. Unfortunately, the city administration does not have a scheme of actions to help owners of lost pets. However, the Internet and new technologies help create such schemes and use them thus refuting the stereotype of its “lack of spirituality”. It is not worth anything without our desire to help those who need it.

Nika: "I think there was a kind of revolution in our minds; we understood we should protect each other. Otherwise, what was the use of everything around us?".

When Nika was looking for her dog she suggested making Irgus the dog of the whole community of bloggers, of everyone who helped her. Even a girl from Makhachkala who had no readers from Minsk posted the information about the dog. Readers from Moscow, Warsaw and Vienna supported Nika and suggested pasting leaflets in their cities in case the dog reached them…

So, livejournal has a dog now. It is an Airedale terrier Irgus Izslav of Asbrook Leroy.



Photo by - muha-elka.livejournal.com