A goalkeeper for Deportivo Pasto in Colombia, Diego Martinez has been combining his passion for football with his love of dogs for five years. The 34-year-old spends time and money rescuing them from the streets and from abusive situations to find them a new family with whom they can live a full life.
By Diego Martinez
My love for animals runs in my family. When I lived with my parents, we always had cats and dogs – they love them. Today my mother has four cats and three dogs in her house, and it's not a particularly big house.
That love for animals is in my blood, but the one who made me start my project to help as many street dogs as I can was Totty, my French bulldog who came into my life five years ago.
My wife and I don't have children, so we decided to adopt a dog for our home, to keep us company and to give us all that animals offer to a family. There is no love more faithful than that of a dog. So, we looked for a very well-known foundation in Medellin that is dedicated to rescuing French bulldogs called ‘Animal Libre’. Here in Colombia, as I understand happens in much of the world, it is a breed that is exploited for business, to produce offspring.
This is what happened with Totty. At the foundation we were presented with her case: Totty had spent her three years of life in captivity and had already given birth five times. When she was rescued, she was in a very bad condition. They used her to make money.
We became so obsessed that my wife travelled to Medellin to look for her. Before that, we went through all the adoption procedures, which are very strict, almost as if you were adopting a child. When she went to look for her, Totty was hospitalised, she was full of illnesses. Her name was Esperanza, but as she had suffered a lot of mistreatment and that remains in the unconscious of the animals, part of having a new life was to change her name.
When Totty arrived home, she wouldn't go out the door to go outside. She was trembling. To get out of the door we had to go through a long, delicate, arduous recovery process. Luckily there were people who helped us and today we have the companionship, loyalty and happiness that a dog gives you. The happiness it gives them to see us is so great that it has given me much more love for them. Rescuing Totty from her bad life gave me the desire to help many more dogs.
I started to get to know rescue places here in Pasto, the city where I am playing and living, but I wanted to do it privately, without getting involved with anyone because it is a complex economic issue. I remember that I did my first rescue in a very big park in front of my house. It was 10 or 11 o'clock at night and it was very cold. I was walking by and I saw a little dog alone, lying down. I went into my house and looked out of the window every now and then. It was still there as I had seen it the first time. The situation did not let me sleep peacefully.
I spent a week seeing him alone in the park, so it was obvious that he had been dumped or lost. I went to bring him food and he chased me all the way home as if to say, ‘help me’.
That's how Monkey became the first rescue of many, he is my emblematic dog. From then on, I had a period when I would see a dog in the street, I would stop the car and take it up. But it wasn't sustainable. As someone who is in the animal environment told me, you can't save everyone's life, but you can change some people's lives.
I have rescued more than 50 dogs. Of course, I don't have room to keep them all but I do pay for day care and food for them. I had 20 in my care at the same time! Today I have 12. Luckily, we have been able to give them up for adoption. And we do a follow-up for all of them: we keep in touch with the families who receive them to see how they are doing.
There are usually no problems. The adoption process we follow is just as strict as the one we did with Totty. I personally go to the house to see what the conditions are like, who is living there. After all these years of doing this, you realise who really wants a puppy and not just to look after a farm. I can sleep peacefully because they have all found a real family.
I have rescued dogs that are tied up, in yards, on farms, in houses that don't give them food, dogs that are kept as if they were just anything, in very bad conditions. What I do is go with the police, with my lawyer and we do everything legally. The rescue is done and the dog is taken away.
That's where Sandy, a lady I work with, comes in. She helps me by opening her home for the dogs until they are put up for adoption. She takes care of them and deals with emergencies. She is a person of very limited means but with an enormous heart. That's why I do it with her, because she doesn't do it for business like other people who try to take advantage.
Of course, I pay for everything. Financially it is difficult to maintain but luckily today I have the resources. There was a time when people helped me a lot with food and medicine.
I am the goalkeeper for Deportivo Pasto and when it became known what I was doing, I started to receive a lot of messages. My team-mates also helped me but I never received money directly because I don't like it. We agreed to pay for a sterilisation or directly at the vet for what had been used.
Today, parallel to football, I have a small business whose profits go entirely to support the dogs. I sell football boots. Guayos, as we call them. I sell to a lot of players and it's a way for them to help me. They know through word of mouth that I sell and now I'm creating an Instagram profile called Crack Colombia. A lot of times I don't sell what I need and that's where I get my money from but I try to balance the monthly accounts.
I have been told to create a foundation but for now I don't think it is possible. As a footballer you know where you live today but not next year. And to set up a business and then have to run it from a distance or leave someone in charge doesn't seem right. You have to keep an eye on things.
Maybe I will do it when I retire and live in a fixed place. I hope I can have a big space, a country house, a place where I can put 100 dogs. It's a dream I want to aim for.
