My husband was all for finding Genghis a home in Cyprus, mainly due to the substantial costs involved in flying him back, so following our trip to the supermarkets with our flyers we called at a smallholding by Alagadi beach not far from where we had found our new lodger. We had passed by many times and noticed that whoever owned the farm kept horses, donkeys and even ostriches. More importantly the animals all appeared to be well housed and cared for. Despite the challenges of the Cypriot climate, which does not allow for lush green fields most of the year, all the animals had large paddocks with plenty of shade and big water troughs and the horses were fed hay and could be seen happily munching away. I remained in the car with Genghis, air conditioning blasting away, while my husband walked up the drive to speak to the owner. As soon as he got to the gate a pack of assorted dogs appeared barking and trotted happily after him, so it was obvious that this person was a dog lover too. Some time later he re-appeared. He told me that the owner was a very nice German lady who had lived in Cyprus for many years. She did not ride the horses but enjoyed looking after them and the other animals on her property. The lady had not wanted to see Genghis because she knew that if she did she would want to keep him and she had too many dogs already. This was quite a blow because I knew Genghis would have been happy there running around the farm and playing with the other dogs and he would have been well cared for.
Vanessa, a Welsh friend living in Cyprus who worked at the local rent a car office, expressed an interest in seeing Genghis when we mentioned him, but when we took him to see her she didn’t seem too sure about committing herself. Her Cypriot partner mentioned that he knew a man who trained gun dogs for hunting and he could pass Genghis on to the trainer for us. But this would mean that we would not know where he would end up or with whom as the trainer sold the dogs on once their training was complete. That was not all. I had heard that some of these gun dog trainers would abandon a dog if it proved no good for hunting or worse still shoot it!!
Tick tock, tick tock I was aware of a massive stop watch hanging over me counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until I would have to go back to the UK and still I had not found a home for Genghis…