Russia's Dogs

When we walked into a Russian orphanage we smelled bad things.  Things like urine and layers of dirt.  We heard bad things.  Things like impatient footsteps rushing down long dimly lit hallways and hostile tones and cries.  We saw bad things.  Things like peeling paint, rust stains, water damage, an industrial kitchen...decayed and unfathomable, grey everything, kids...all with shaved heads, sores and scabs on sallow faces.  We saw distended abdomens and children drooling.  And children rocking.  And a frightened & severely malnourished child performing.  Performing for the strangers who came to take her away.  From that place.  The same kid who had rickets in her bones and parasites in her feces.  The one who weighed 28 pounds at the age of four and a half and didn't walk till she was three.  The one who carries multiple physical scars from God knows what. The one who decided right on the spot...It's better to run from this hell hole clinging for dear life to this woman and this man who I have never laid eyes upon...the ones who don't speak my language...than to stay and rot.

Dogs?

That's nice, people.  Whatever lets you sleep at night.