Sitting on the sidewalk, at the corner of Juana Azurduy and Avenida Cabildo, in the heart of the Núñez neighborhood, he watched the Buenos Aires bustle with a calm worthy of a children’s book. “Let’s see what happens, if he follows me, maybe I can help him,” thought Soledad Ortiz de Rosas as she watched him with the patience of someone who knows how to approach a stray animal.
She called him, they crossed the avenue together, and without knowing it, that afternoon in 2012, Chicho—as she named him—took the first step of a journey that would take him across the ocean. “I kept him with me for a few days while I posted him on various media hoping to find his family. No one showed up.”
Soledad had recently moved out on her own. She thought then that, even though the dog would spend several hours in the apartment while she worked, it would be much better than being alone on the street. So she decided to adopt him.
The adjustment, however, had its ups and downs: the change in diet caused a memorable digestive upset that left traces all over the apartment, including the bed. It was a trial by fire.
Soledad soon discovered that Chicho’s past was a mystery. He seemed familiar with car rides, but his behavior on the street betrayed the codes of urban survival.
Chicho was blond, and his marked and intense reactions to certain uniforms and trades led family friends to give him a nickname laced with dark humor: Chichén. Chicho would go from absolute calm to launching himself with barks and bites at cardboard collectors, mail carriers, soda delivery men, garbage collectors, construction workers, bicycles, and trains. Several trainers tried to channel him, but only managed to mitigate the intensity. One of the greatest achievements was getting him to stop chasing bicycles, a skill that would prove vital for the future.
“What cardboard collectors, mail carriers, garbage collectors, delivery men, construction workers, bicycles, or trains have in common is that they appear unpredictably, make noise, have particular movements, carry large objects, wear caps or buffs, or greatly modify their silhouette. For a dog with high emotional sensitivity, these stimuli can be perceived as potentially threatening,” explains Baltazar Nuozzi, veterinarian from the National University of La Plata and clinical ethologist CFVET Diploma in Learning Management and Canine Behavior UCASAL.
“The origin of this behavior,” he adds, “is multifactorial: genetic predisposition, insufficient or negative early experiences during the socialization period, learning throughout life, and often pain or diseases that modify the emotional state.”
A few months after the rescue, Soledad met who is now her husband, a German citizen living in the north of his country. During a year and a half of long-distance dating and transatlantic trips, Chicho was left in the care of Soledad’s mother and a compassionate neighbor who walked him along with her own dog, Canela.
But the final destination of the family that the couple and Chicho had formed was in Europe. After the wedding, the time came for the move. The trip was planned with precision: Chicho flew in the cargo hold inside the largest available carrier so he could turn around on his own axis. He landed in Frankfurt and then continued by car to Hamburg, which would spare him the stress of a connecting flight.
Germany welcomed the family with its strict rules and a new set of challenges for Chicho’s reactivity: now added to his blacklist were electric scooters, skateboarders, ducks, geese, and cows.
In addition, Chicho suffered from acute separation anxiety that made him cry and bark for hours when left alone, a complication the family managed to overcome thanks to the enormous patience of their German neighbors.
In the Old Continent, the search for answers continued. “A trainer suggested checking his hormones, and the clinical diagnosis shed some light: Chicho had hypothyroidism. The treatment helped, but I read and studied everything I could: I devoured books on canine behavior and redesigned every walk to anticipate stimuli.”
Hypothyroidism, a chronic disease that “occurs in older animals and mainly in breeds like Labradors, Dobermans, Boxers, Irish Setters. Symptoms include dull coat (sometimes with dry seborrhea) with alopecia or areas where hair is missing behind the ears, thick skin, tendency to overweight, and muscle weakness,” details Patricia Paredes, Veterinarian at the Natural Life team (M.P 7387).
“Hypothyroidism can be associated with behavioral changes such as irritability, lower stress tolerance, anxiety, and even increased aggressive or reactive behaviors in some individuals. This does not mean it was the sole cause, but it was certainly a factor that may have further diminished his ability to regulate his emotions,” clarifies Nuozzi.
In the end, more than an “aggressive” dog, “he was probably a dog living in a state of permanent alert, interpreting many everyday stimuli as a threat. That shift in perspective is key to understanding this type of case. It’s not about labeling dogs or controlling behavior, but about understanding that evaluating emotional and social health is as important as physical health. As professionals, we need to understand animals without judging them and, together, try to improve their well-being,” explains the ethologist.
Curiously, Chicho got his EU passport immediately. Soledad, on the other hand, had to pass the basic German language exam to get married, reside in the country for three years, reach an intermediate level, and submit a mountain of paperwork before obtaining citizenship.
The dog found in Núñez had become a European citizen long before she did. Her husband, who had never lived with other animals, adopted him in his heart without reservations and paid for each of the complex medical battles that would come later.
The years brought ailments to Chicho’s hips and spine. On one occasion, the pain caused him heart-wrenching howls. A prolonged analgesic treatment was administered without proper gastric protection. “It almost cost him his life due to internal bleeding while we were traveling. My in-laws carried him in their arms to a veterinary hospital where they managed to stabilize him, but the episode revealed a serious injury to the cervical vertebrae,” Soledad recalls sadly.
The surgery was delicate and the outlook discouraging. However, on the day they had to decide whether to operate, Chicho sat up on his own on the stretcher. That small miracle changed the course: he spent two months hospitalized in a cage to prevent sudden neck movements and underwent over a year of physiotherapy. During that time, Soledad also made sure to carry him up and down the building’s stairs for months to protect his back.
para mi es una joda un perro tiene pasaporte europeo antes que la dueña mientras los argentinos de a pie esperamos años todo por este pais de mierda lleno de zurdos el perro es mas patriota que estos progres de mierda viva la libertad carajo
Para mí esto es una cachetada a la clase obrera. Mientras Chicho tiene pasaporte europeo y come mejor que un jubilado, hay pibes sin un plato de comida. Esto huele a clasismo animal, compañeros. La burguesía puede darle ciudadanía a un perro con hipotiroidismo, pero un laburante no cruza ni la General Paz. ¡Viva la lucha de clases, carajo!