Meet Fuego – a sweet and chirpy podenco currently waiting in a shelter to find his forever home after the passing of his previous owner.

First things first – let me share some quick things you might might want to know about him:

• Around 6 years old
• Available for adoption at a lovely shelter (Galgos del sol) that are able to help with adoptions in my countries around the world
• Already house trained
• Gets along with other dogs
• Breed – Podenco

How/where to adopt him

Like mentioned, Fuego is currently living in the GDS (Galgos del sol) shelter in Murcia, Spain, but worry not – GDS does adoptions at many places across the globe and arranges for the dog to be transported closer to your home. You can simply get in touch with GDS by clicking on “Adoption interest for Fuego” button on his profile.

Alternatively, you can get in touch with me! I will be very happy to hear from you and guide you through the adoption. To reach me, you can email me at dinika@greyllama.cc or check out the “Contact” section on this website.

Background

Now that I’ve introduced him, I want to share a story about his past and why I care about finding him a home (spoiler alert – some of it is guilt but most of it is because he’s a gooood boy).

In February 2025, I got accepted to work at Automattic as a full time engineer. The first thing I did was send in an application for dog adoption at one of my favourite (and closer) animal shelters – Galgos del Sol (aka GDS). At the time, I already had a pet greyhound and I wanted her to have a pal. (There are obviously a ton of other reasons I wanted another dog, but this post is not a place for me list them 😄.)

Galgos del Sol, suggested Lady – a 6 year old greyhound. She looked so sweet and scared. She also had a rather sad story – she used to live with Fuego (the podenco above) in Spain. Their owner passed away in December 2024 and they were handed over to the shelter.

The two of them can be seen together in the video below. O gosh! I wanted to hug them so badly.

For a number of reasons, I could only adopt one dog, so I was really unsure if adopting Lady, as suggested by GDS, was the right choice. I did not want to separate her from Fuego but after years of following animal shelters, I also knew that often pets that come together are kept in different kennels so that ( among other things) they can learn to grow and live independently (which increases their odds of adoption). Of course, there are exceptions, and I do not know for sure if GDS did that in the case of Lady and Fuego, however, they did mention on the website that the two dogs can be adopted in different homes.

I really did think hard about this – given that I cannot adopt 2 more dogs, should I adopt one and “separate” them from each other? In the end I thought – what is more likely – finding someone who can adopt both of these or someone who can adopt the remaining one? To me, it seemed clear that the latter is far more probable. So, I welcomed Lady to my family that month.

Why not Fuego, you ask? Well again, there are a number of reasons. I’ll mention just a few.

Lady is a galga, just like the dog I already had at home so I thought that it will be easier for these two to bond. Lady is also a bigger dog than Fuego, very scared of humans, and black, all of which can make her adoption a tad more difficult than Fuego’s (or so I thought).

Which brings me to now. It’s been nearly 3 months that my partner and I adopted Lady and we couldn’t be happier. She’s every bit as adorable as we thought and more, but, of course I feel sad and guilty about leaving Fuego behind. I know he’s around some of the kindest and most well equipped people at GDS but a forever home would just be so nice for him.

To be clear, I am not just writing this post out of guilt. I genuinely believe that Fuego would be a great companion to anyone. Just look at his friendly eyes! I’ve been following his journey through GDS’s facebook and instagram posts and he looks very comfortable and happy around people. He likes treats and he seems to be quite well behaved too!

I’ve spread posters for his adoptions at a number of places and shared his posts with many people and this blog post is yet another medium I want to try. Since joining Automattic, I am starting to realize the power of writing and blogging so I’m hoping I’ll have more luck with this :).

If by some stroke of luck, Fuego does get adopted by some family close to Geneva, Switzerland, or Barcelona, Spain, I’d be more than happy to organize play dates between him and Lady – the long lost siblings. That would be a dream come true. But, honestly, I’ll happily settle for his adoption just about anywhere in this world where he finds his kind humans.

Please consider sharing this post with anyone you know who might be interested in adopting a dog and thank you for reading ♥️.