Dishevelled, matted, and slightly burned, little Loukoumakis the dog was barely distinguishable from the piles of ash inside the back of a brick barbecue where he was found hiding from a Greek wildfire in Mati.
Coughing and afraid, he was coaxed out by the soothing voice of volunteer animal rescuer Artemis Kyriakopoulou, 21, who with a team of volunteers that banded together on social media has been rescuing animals from the deadly blaze since it started last week.
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Loukoumakis was treated to a grooming after suffering only light burns on his fur. A vet prescribed antibiotics for the dog’s cough and told volunteers that if the fur hadn’t been so matted, the burns would have been far worse.
Kyriakopoulou took him to fellow volunteer Diana Topali, who will shelter him until a permanent home is found. At first, he was aggressive, Topali said.
“He was (in shock). And with every movement, he reacted by growling, by biting. I offered him food and he would bite my hand … He slept for endless hours. … Then he was given a treat. We found what he liked to eat, so then we became friends,” she told Reuters TV.
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Seeing her after his rescue, Loukoumakis licks Kyriakopoulou’s face and excitedly wags his tail.
“In the beginning, I felt (relief) because he was alive,” she said as she pointed to where she found him in Mati.
“I won’t say that I didn’t cry. I was crying a lot … because to find — in such a destroyed area where everything is dead — something so alive, you see that it has hope inside of it.”
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Kyriakopoulou had seen the brick structure and thought if anything had survived, it would have been hiding in there. She said it was the first time she has ever volunteered for anything, and has been overwhelmed by what she saw.
“Certainly, these images cannot leave your mind very quickly. There is no way that in one week, two weeks or three you can forget this,” she said.
The group has seen countless animals that perished, she said, more than they could save.
“The truth is, I had never done anything so important in my life. When I said that I wanted to volunteer, to contribute, I never imagined it would be like this. I thought it would be something more light,” she said.
Loukoumakis, as he has been named by the vet after a Greek traditional sweet, is believed to be a stray, aged about four and a half years.
Kyriakopoulou has received several calls from people wanting to adopt Loukoumakis and other animals she has rescued, which are taken to local animal hospitals.
Hundreds of pets and strays are believed to have perished in the blaze, which swept through the seaside town in a matter of hours.