Lotka, Reks and Diana
There were always dogs in the house in Bytom. The first one is Lotka. Ratlerek, the devil incarnate. It flew around the house like ball lightning. She was hard to catch. Sabina probably loved her more than her father (a pit miner), who had a heavy hand. Especially when he drank. She often had to run away from home with her mother and siblings. “He even drank on Christmas Eve,” he recalls. – The Christmas tree was up to the ceiling, with presents under it: oranges and bananas obtained from under the counter. Even when he was sober, he sang Christmas carols with us. Then, under the influence, he beat me.
Despite this, the siblings turned out to be human. My brother finished school and repaired trams. My sister studied in evening classes and worked in a car wash. Sabina repeated the first grade of primary school twice and ended up in a special school.
– I was in the Scouts and my team and I went to the animal shelter – she recalls. – I cleaned the pens, fed the dogs, took them for walks. I felt good, I felt like I was at home. One day, the manager, Mrs. Janeczka, asked if I would take Reks, a German shepherd. I took him home and, wisely, the first thing he did was put his muzzle on his mother’s lap. And then he pissed on a white, antique tiled stove. That is, he marked – in his own understanding – his own territory. I loved Reks, but his father sold him for apples after three years. Then I saw him on a walk with his new owner. He rushed to me, and I to him. But what could I do?
She poured all her wounded love into Diana: a black-brown, faithful and home-defending ratter dog. She was kept by her grandparents, with whom Sabina lived.
– I quickly went to work: I cleaned trams, I worked on the so-called a gag, i.e. a washer – he recalls. – I met my future husband, Arek, during the May weekend. He had an upholstery workshop and played the accordion beautifully. Just in my twenties, I gave birth to a daughter, Ania. And that’s all I got out of this life, because then the descent began.
Blue knife
She separated from her husband. Problems with the law began. She went to prison for a year for burglary. After her release, she found herself in a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with personality disorders with suicidal tendencies and depression. She left and returned to the psychiatric ward, as she says, twenty-odd times. Due to her illness, she received a pension.
– Ania was first taken care of by her grandparents, then by her youngest sister and her husband – she recalls. – I wanted to see my daughter, but they forbade it. Finally, after another refusal, I beat my brother-in-law. They put me in jail for another year and three months.
– I remember her first night – says Sabina. – She was sitting in a playpen in the yard, right under my window. I heard her crying and I cried with her
Right after leaving prison, she visited her friend Krzysiek. His door wouldn’t close. Friends came and went. When she went out to get some cigarettes, Krzysiek was lying in bed and watching TV. When she returned, he was still lying there, but his face was covered with the blanket.
– I lifted the blanket and he had a blue-handled knife stuck in his chest. He wasn’t breathing, he recalls. – I flew around the floors to let people call the ambulance and the police. The police arrested me immediately. In a circumstantial murder case, without strong evidence or motive, I got 15 years.
For the first years in the Lubliniec Prison, she was as if trapped. It didn’t dawn on her that she had to serve a long life. As a robot, she got up at 5.30, had roll call, breakfast, went to work in the laundry and returned to her cell. And then her loved ones started dying. First the older sister passed away, then her husband, and finally her brother. Ania, already a teenager, lived with Sabina’s youngest sister and did not want to have contact with her.
– I thought: why do I live, it will be better for everyone if I die. I cut myself, but they saved me, she says. – So I saved up 70 sleeping pills. I swallowed them on Christmas Eve, five minutes before midnight. I woke up three days later. Doctors said I had one foot in the other world. I wished I could die again.
When she cut her wrists once again, the director of the Lubliniec Prison asked: “Sabina, what can help you?” Without thinking, she replied, “Dog.”
Tong, Amstel and 20 inmates
– I remember like it was yesterday: the director of the ZK in Lubliniec called me and asked if we could meet – recalls Tomasz Wójcik, a dog therapist and dog trainer. – In those years, I ran an animal shelter in Lubliniec, where, among others, I prepared abandoned dogs for adoption. It turned out that the director was talking about the inmate Sabina. Specifically, so that she could visit our dogs. I said yes.
Initially, as Wójcik says, everything looked comical: Sabina arrived with her teacher and the director of the school. As a guard, she walked the dogs and cleaned the pens. She took a liking to two Amstaff dogs abandoned by their owners, Tonga and Amstel, who immediately adopted her as their own. The teacher said that she smiled in the shelter for the first time in years. Always withdrawn and withdrawn, she suddenly started talking to him.
– Unfortunately, after a few times, Sabina stopped coming – recalls Wójcik. – She used special occasion passes to visit us, which other inmates did not like. I thought that since she couldn’t come to the shelter, the shelter would come to her. And that’s how I became a prison volunteer and a dog therapist.
The director agreed to dog therapy in prison. So Wójcik brought his dogs to the prison common room, which other inmates, apart from Sabina, could meet with.
– These were difficult groups, 20 often aggressive women with long sentences – he recalls. – There was tension in the air. The dogs sensed this and hid behind me. After some time, however, they and the women gathered in the common room calmed down and came to an understanding. And Sabina? Sabina’s eyes lit up with joy when she saw my dogs.
Letter to the Ministry of Justice
Tomasz Wójcik admits that he watched with satisfaction how the dogs influenced Sabina. She started keeping diaries, cut out pictures of dogs from newspapers and hung them above her bunk. She lived from one meeting to the next. Wójcik thought that it would be good if there were many more meetings as part of resocialization. Ideally, the dog could be in prison permanently.
– I wrote a long letter to the Ministry of Justice on this matter – he says. – I described Sabina’s case, sketched an idea for stationary dog therapy and listed its advantages. I argued that a dog could have a better influence on an inmate than coloring children’s pictures or painting jars with angels. In prison, a dog can become a link between a therapist and an inmate who will do more for the dog than for another person. Deep down, I was hoping for a positive answer, but when it turned out that the ministry was interested in the project, I was shocked! I had the principal’s consent, now I just had to find a dog. I knew it had to be a tough, smart animal with a strong character.
Mirosław Dubiel, the owner of the SONGO Dog Work Center, helped in choosing the dog. – It was a difficult task – he says. – We were looking for a dog that could cope with the difficult conditions in prison: noise, crowding, but also the range of emotions emanating from the inmates. I knew it had to be a dog resistant to stimuli, with a moderate temperament, but strong enough to be a challenge for Sabina.
Dubiel admits that he bounced around the doors of many kennels: locking a dog in prison had bad connotations. He finally managed to find a suitable puppy in a Ukrainian breeding farm for Central Asian Shepherd Dogs.
“Rishka was a unique piece,” he recalls. – She passed all the tests flawlessly: she was not afraid of limited space, she passed the height tests (important, due to the large number of stairs in ZK), and she socialized quickly.
For several months he went with her to prison, where she eventually stayed for seven years.
Rishka herds the inmates
– I remember her first night – says Sabina. – She was sitting in a playpen in the yard, right under my window. I heard her crying and I cried with her. Fortunately, after two days she calmed down and we started to develop our daily prison rhythm.
She was going down to Rishka just after breakfast. She let her out of the pen to run around the yard, cleaned up after her, and fed her. Then she would take her to a cell or a common room. Before lunch they went for a walk again. – At 5 p.m. I locked her in the pen and with a heavy heart I went to her cell – she recalls.
Rishka quickly got used to prison life. Only sometimes the shepherd’s instinct awakened in her. When the inmates went out for a walk, she made them walk in a line. Sometimes, while playing – they all wanted to pet her – she would tear off their gloves and tear them to shreds. Most often, however, she behaved not like a feisty sheepdog, but a calm Labrador. Sabina taught her to respond to commands: sit, give a paw, hide. When she said, “High five,” Rishka raised her front paw. When she said, “Give me a kiss,” she brought her muzzle closer to her face. On command, she moved between her legs, she responded flawlessly to the command: “Hide”, and when Sabina said: “Big teddy bear”, she gently rested her paws on her shoulders.
– I loved her and she loved me – says Sabina. – I took care of her as best I could. I ordered her good food. We went to the vet. Every year I organized her birthday: there was a luncheon meat cake with frankfurter candles. I also wanted her to see what life was like outside ZK.
Fortunately, they quickly started going – with guards, of course – to a center for disabled children, a veteran’s home and a day care home for seniors. Rishka calmly endured strange sounds and smells. She knew she couldn’t jump on the bed, so she put her front paws on it so that the person lying on it could touch her.
– She once jumped on my lap so that a person in a wheelchair could pet her – Sabina recalls.
Freedom
Sabina wanted to be released early – also for Rishka. She appeared before the penitentiary court five times and was allowed to leave early. Each time the prosecutor protested these decisions. She had to serve the entire 15-year sentence. For Rishka, it meant seven years behind bars.
– Sometimes old demons came back – says Sabina. – What was going through my mind was that it would be better for everyone if I died. But then a thought came to mind: what will happen to Rishka? Who will take care of her when I’m gone? So instead of thinking about death, I started thinking about the future.
She knew that they had to leave together, but Rishka was “in custody” of the Lubliniec Prison. Fortunately, the management came up with the idea of selling the dog to Mirosław Dubiel for one zloty. Sabina, now free, was supposed to receive Rishka from him as a gift.
– I started applying for a place to stay. We had to live somewhere, he recalls. – The city gave me a studio apartment in an old tenement house. For general renovation. I saved money from my pension, paid salaries and looked after the workers. Work was going on in the kitchen, and I was sitting in the room with the guard. I wanted Rishka to have company, so while I was behind bars I bought (in installments) Jupiter, a long-haired German Shepherd. I paid for his stay at the kennel.
Rishka and Sabina were released on June 14, 2022. It was difficult for them at first. The old, familiar stimuli were replaced by new ones: the noisy life of Bytom, an open space, a cubicle that became their new home. Rishka also had to get used to another dog, Jupiter. And this one came to them in poor condition. Emaciated, with a broken tail. He didn’t want to eat, he couldn’t climb the stairs into the house.
– Rishka taught him everything – says Sabina. – Initially, they sat alone all day long because I went to work. I was cleaning the mall. Only for a few months, because then old health problems reappeared: a spinal hernia. All I have left is a pension from which I have to pay for the apartment and food for Rishka and Jupiter. I may not finish eating, but they must have a full bowl. I may be sick, but – especially for the increasingly frail Rishka – I have to go to the vet. I owe it to her. She gave her life to me.
