A goalkeeper for Deportivo Pasto in Colombia, Diego Martinez has been combining his passion for football with his love of dogs for five years. The 34-year-old spends time and money rescuing them from the streets and from abusive situations to find them a new family with whom they can live a full life.
By Diego Martinez
My love for animals runs in my family. When I lived with my parents, we always had cats and dogs – they love them. Today my mother has four cats and three dogs in her house, and it’s not a particularly big house.
That love for animals is in my blood, but the one who made me start my project to help as many street dogs as I can was Totty, my French bulldog who came into my life five years ago.
My wife and I don’t have children, so we decided to adopt a dog for our home, to keep us company and to give us all that animals offer to a family. There is no love more faithful than that of a dog. So, we looked for a very well-known foundation in Medellin that is dedicated to rescuing French bulldogs called ‘Animal Libre’. Here in Colombia, as I understand happens in much of the world, it is a breed that is exploited for business, to produce offspring.
This is what happened with Totty. At the foundation we were presented with her case: Totty had spent her three years of life in captivity and had already given birth five times. When she was rescued, she was in a very bad condition. They used her to make money.
We became so obsessed that my wife travelled to Medellin to look for her. Before that, we went through all the adoption procedures, which are very strict, almost as if you were adopting a child. When she went to look for her, Totty was hospitalised, she was full of illnesses. Her name was Esperanza, but as she had suffered a lot of mistreatment and that remains in the unconscious of the animals, part of having a new life was to change her name.
When Totty arrived home, she wouldn’t go out the door to go outside. She was trembling. To get out of the door we had to go through a long, delicate, arduous recovery process. Luckily there were people who helped us and today we have the companionship, loyalty and happiness that a dog gives you. The happiness it gives them to see us is so great that it has given me much more love for them. Rescuing Totty from her bad life gave me the desire to help many more dogs.
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