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POLICE FIND ABANDONED CHILD
BOY WHO LIVED WITH A PACK OF WILD DOGS.
(cutting Daily Mail 20/6/01 by David Gardner)
With a shaky hand, the ten year old
boy carefully drew a picture in crayon of the only family he knew.
They had been with him for more than
two years after he was abandoned by his natural parents. They had
scavenged with him and are said to have suckled him when he was
hungry.
Bu the simple child's picture was not
that of a mother and father. It was a pack of wild dogs.
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Yesterday police told how the boy had been
living in a cave and running with fifteen ferocious dogs in the southern
town of Talchuano, Chile, since escaping from the children's home in 1998.
His story echoes Mowgli - the fictional boy
raised by wolves and the black panther, Baghera in the Indian forest in
Rudyard |Kipling's Jungle Book.
But the youngster called "Dogboy"
by the media in Chile is less than happy about being reunited with his
own kind.
"The dogs are my family" he has
told police."Please let me go back to them"
The child was thrown out of his home when
he was five.
"He lived in a cave with dogs and roamed
the streets for food with them He would eat out of garbage tins and find
leftovers" said Delia Delgatto, head of Chile's National Childcare
Service.
A police spokesman said the child had drunk
milk from one of the dogs He said "There is no doubt they were like
a family to him and they looked after him. A female dog nurtured him.
"But he showed signs of malnutrition
when we found him. He is not happy being back with his own kind."
The boy who has not been named, threw himself
into the icy waters of the southern Pacific Ocean on Saturday to escape
from the police.
"An officer dived into the water and
saved him" said the spokesman.
The boy who has two broken front teeth and
a scar on his left cheek, spent a day in hospital in the city of Concepion
and was then taken to a child care centre.
"He's showing signs of depression is
aggressive and is not speaking much although he does know how to speak",
said Mrs Delgatto.
A social worker involved in the case said"He
is like a modern day Mowgli. He not only survived with these dogs, he
grew to love them as if they were his family.
"We are hoping that he will slowly get
back to a more normal way of life."
Three years ago Ivan Mishukov, a six year
old from Russia, spent two years living with a pack of dogs after being
abandoned at the age of four.
It took police in Reytova, west of Moscow,
more than a month to prise the boy away from the pack of strays."The
dogs loved and protected me" he said
/cutting ends.
I expect any of our dogs would love him to
come to stay!
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