Vienna...

Well, we finally left to Vienna at about 1 pm and arrived at about 1 am. We stopped for a break in Salzburg at Martina’s house where we took the eagle and the dog out into the garden and had a nice dinner prepared by Martina’s mum: my new favourite meal, ‘sur’ Schnitzel! The next day, it was Hans birthday and we welcomed him with a mini cake and a candle at our hotel’s breakfast buffet. Then we spent the whole day at the fair. We had 4 shows with Hans and his dog Sirius but nevertheless, it was a bit slow. In the evening we went to the ‘Heuriger’(a typical restaurant where they serve local wine and food)to celebrate Hans birthday. The next day at the fair was much more interesting as somebody arrived with an extremely aggressive dog (a Dutch shepherd) that attacks people and dogs, basically everything that moves, without any previous warnings. His owner had tried to train him as a police dog and one of his trainers had hanged the dog for a while when he wouldn’t bark when he was expected to!!! Starting from then, the dog became aggressive. He was wearing a muzzle and he started by attacking the security guard and then even Hans. Hans worked with him on stage while many people were watching and after a while he just took off the muzzle and snuggled with the dog! It was amazing to see how quickly he connected with the dog and the dog trusted him! Then he put the muzzle back on and asked Martina and me to come on stage to assist him. We had to walk to the dog and confront him, for example by jumping in front of him. The dog attacked Martina and hit her with the muzzle on the chin (that hurts!!). I must admit that my heart was beating much quicker than usual when Hans asked me right after to go to the dog and pet him!! However, I was lucky and nothing happened...after a while the dog became much calmer and by the end of the day the owner wouldn’t stop thanking us for what we had done. She had tried different therapies for years but nothing would work and people had told her that her dog was a hopeless case. Hans said that if she would join us for just a few days, the dog would be completely fine! We left late and finally arrived back home at 2 am!