El Perro Andaluz is a story of metamorphosis, hope, connection, respect, and friendship between a human and her dog. It's a story that raises from the black waters of despair and sadness to a magical flower garden; a happy-ending story with a sad start.
Once upon a time, a gentle soul was spending his happy days together with his favorite people in the world, but suddenly things began to change. From a happy puppy that got everyone's attention, he developed into an unwanted adult dog, a burden that had been starved, neglected, beaten, and eventually thrown away like a piece of garbage directly into the hands of death. He spent his days behind the bars thinking about what he did wrong, and what mistakes he could have made so that his best friend threw him away. His best friend could have told him what he did wrong, so he could not do it ever again. But of course, this was not the case. Drowned in sorrow and helplessness, he gave up on life. He thought that no life is worth living without a best friend by his side, so they can go together on adventures, play, and laugh together. A human best friend was all he ever wanted.
But many months later, someone read into his deep brown eyes the story he has to tell, they connected and a new tale was about to emerge. A new tale about a dog that bloomed alongside the right friends, a soul that morphed into the most wonderful being and who was now spending his days under the Andalusian sun, running on the beaches and swimming in the Mediterranean with his best buds.
Being wrapped into all these beautiful Andalusian flowers and blooming oranges, a girl puts together the last piece of his broken heart using the kintsugi technique as symbolism for embracing the old and used and giving a second chance to a shelter dog. The black ghostly dogs emerging from the flowers, stand for his past traumas that started dissipating, from being on the death row in a high kill shelter to being beaten, being terrified, sad, and overall having a sad life.
El Perro Andaluz invites to a change in human perception towards animals and tries to shine a light on two poignant issues: the high rates of dog abandonment and pit bull types of dog discrimination.
In the United States only, around 6.3 million animals are abandoned or given up to shelters each year, while around 920,000 shelter animals are euthanized each year including 390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats (Source: Pet Adoption Statistics - World Animal Foundation). Overwhelmingly, many more Pit bulls and Pit mixes come into shelters than are adopted. Pit bulls come into the shelter more than any other breed, and they are euthanized in the greatest numbers as well because of their very low adoption rate. Breed-specific legislation that targets pit bull dogs makes their adoption even harder and public opinion on Pit Bulls is rarely a wealth of accurate information and contributes to lowering their adoption rates even further. Not many people know that Pit Bulls have averaged an 83.4% passing rate with the American Temperament Test Society. That’s a better score than Golden Retrievers and the popular Border Collie (both known for being family dogs), which scored between 79.6% to 82%, respectively.
All in all, the bond we share with our dog friends is indeed magic, doesn't matter the breed of the dog, and this type of bond should be experimented at least once in a lifetime.
