She waited two years. Loyalty that knows no bounds (4 photos + 1 video)
This is the story that once happened at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
The Il-18 plane was boarding, flying somewhere to the North. People scurried fussily behind the attendant, rushing to be the first to sit in the quiet places at the back. Only one passenger was in no hurry. He let everyone through because he was flying with a dog. Airfield technicians, witnesses to this story, claimed that the man had a ticket for the dog, but the shepherd was not allowed on the plane - there was no doctor’s certificate. The man proved something, persuaded... He didn’t persuade. Then, at Vnukovo, he hugged the dog, took off the collar, let him onto the concrete, and climbed up the ladder. The shepherd dog, deciding that it had been let out for a walk, ran around the plane, and when it returned to its place, the ramp had been removed. She stood and looked at the closed door. It was some kind of mistake. Then she ran along the taxiway behind the humming Il. She ran after him as long as she could. The plane doused her with hot kerosene fumes and went into the sky. The dog was left on an empty runway. And she began to wait.
At first, she ran after each Ilyushin aircraft taking off along the runway. Here she was seen by the commander of the Il-18 ship, Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Valentey. He noticed a dog running next to the board, and although he had a lot of other things to do during takeoff, he told the airfield services: “You have a shepherd dog on the runway, let the owner take it, otherwise they will run you over.” Then he saw her many times, but thought that it was the dog of one of the port employees and that the dog lived near the airfield. He was mistaken, the dog lived in the open air, at the airfield. Near the runway, from where you could see the Ilyas taking off. Later, after some time, she apparently realized that the cars going into the sky would not bring her a meeting, and moved closer to the parking lot. Now, having settled under the construction trailer, directly opposite the airport terminal building, she saw IL-18s coming and going. As soon as the ladder was given, the dog approached it and, stopping at a safe distance from people, waited.
Arriving from Norilsk, Valentey again saw the shepherd dog. A man who survived Dachau, who had seen a lot of grief in his life, he recognized it in the eyes of an emaciated dog. The next day we walked along the airfield to the IL-18 parking lots. “Listen, friend,” the commander turned to the tanker, “have you seen a dog here?” - “Ours? He’ll probably be landing now.” - “Who does she live with?” - “No one has. It is not given to anyone. Otherwise she would not have survived. She was caught here. And other dogs were tearing, her ear, you know, was dented. But she's nowhere from the airfield. Neither in snow nor in rain. Everything is waiting." - “Who feeds?” “Now we all feed her. But she doesn’t take it out of your hands and doesn’t let anyone get close. In addition to Volodin, technology. There seems to be friendship with him, but she doesn’t want to go to him either. He’s probably afraid of missing the plane.” We saw Nikolai Vasilyevich Volodin's equipment near the plane. At first, suspecting something was wrong with our visit, he said that he had seen the dog, but he didn’t know where it was, and then, having learned that nothing bad was threatening it, he said: “The 18th is driving over there, which means it’s coming now.” “What do you call her?” - “Call me Palma. So, who at the airfield knows her nickname?” The IL-18 stopped, turning on the screws... A ramp rolled from the station to the plane. On the other hand, from the runway, a dog was running - an East European shepherd with a black back, light tan marks and an intelligent, lively muzzle. One ear was torn. She ran slowly and made it to the gangway when the door was opened. “If the owner had been found, I would have sent her to him for his own money,” Valentey said. “And every commander in the port would take her on board...”
The dog stood at the gangway and looked at the people. Then, not finding who she was looking for, she stepped aside and lay down on the concrete, and when new passengers were brought in, she came up again and stood until the door slammed.
What happened next? This question was contained in one form or another in each of the many thousands of letters received by the editors of that old Komsomolskaya Pravda after the publication of “Two Years Waiting.” No, the owner did not come for Palma. But still he was found. In Norilsk, pilot Valentey was given a piece of paper covered in block letters without a signature. The note said that a year and eight months ago the person who wrote it was flying from Moscow to the Yenisei via Norilsk. Signs of the dog: the left ear is torn and the left eye is sick. This detail gave reason to assume that the former owner of the dog actually wrote: I did not tell anyone that the shepherd’s eye was injured. Because of this eye, according to the owner, he was not given a certificate. Now, two years later, he was apparently afraid of the condemnation of friends and relatives for that long-ago separation from the dog and did not dare to announce himself. He had no intention of returning for the dog, but wanted an idyllic ending. It did come, though it was completely different.
Hundreds of people from different cities were going to take the dog home, but it flew to Kyiv. By the time Vera Kotlyarevskaya, associate professor at the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute, reached Palma with the help of airfield employees, the dog was frightened by the excessive attention of both sympathizers and zealous specialists in catching stray animals, who were provoked into activity by a publication in an old newspaper, reprinted all over the world.
It was necessary to overcome the dog's wariness and gain its trust. The matter was complicated. Kotlyarevskaya spent days with Palma from dawn to dusk, showing patience and tact. The day of evacuation has arrived. The shepherd was given a sleeping pill and carried onto the plane. Vera Arsenyev and Palma were accompanied on the journey by a volunteer assistant, veterinarian Andrei Andrievsky.
At first, Palma felt uncomfortable in her new Kiev home. But the large Kotlyarevsky family was well prepared for the arrival of Vnukovsky’s shepherd dog. At home they spoke quietly so as not to scare the dog, they did not close the doors of the rooms so that it did not feel caught...
Gradually, Palma began to take root. Vera Arsenyevna wrote in her diary: “A very balanced dog, with a stable nervous system and a strong habit of people and home.” And one more entry from the diary: “At home I went up to my sleeping daughter, licked her cheek and carefully took her ear with her teeth.”
And then Palma had puppies. Three.
