A street dog leads a Venezuelan family to a new home in Colombia

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By Anna Bradley-Smith

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — It is hard to start a new life in a different country with no resources, but one exiled family’s circumstances have taken a happy turn. And it started with the presence of a street dog.

Wanger Zuleta and his wife, Maribel, were living in Maracaibo, Venezuela, when they realized they couldn’t put enough food on the table to feed their four children. This was despite the fact they were working double shifts and had sold their two houses, cars and appliances.

It was 2018, and they knew they had to leave the city they called home in the northwestern part of the country.

After 15 years working as a technician at a state oil company and living a stable middle-class life, Zuleta found that Venezuela’s extreme food and medical shortages and skyrocketing prices had turned the family’s life upside down.

“I told my wife, if we stay and resign ourselves to this and give up, what we’re going to get is the government’s food box every seven months. That isn’t enough for six of us, and in order to get that, you have to support the regime and live a lie,” Zuleta told NBC News.

At their children’s school, there were only a few teachers left and very little food to feed the students — and there were no signs of improvement.

Although it was hard seeing his children’s pain leaving the only life they knew, Zuleta said he would rather clean toilets in another country to give them a chance at a good education.

At the end of 2018, Zuleta set off for Bogotá, Colombia, and a week later Maribel, Wanger Junior, 12, Natalie, 11, Nicole, 8, and Thiago, 4, followed. They are part of the more than one million Venezuelans who are now in Colombia, according to the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.

With the last savings they had, Zuleta and Maribel found a room in an apartment where the family shared two mattresses, and they started a business selling cheese sticks on the street.

Without telling his parents, Wanger Junior, left started saving tips he was given to feed a dog that slept on the street nearby.Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez

Each morning, Wanger Junior would go with his parents at 4 a.m. to buy the sticks from a bakery to sell on the street, while Natalie stayed home to look after her younger siblings. Although it wasn’t a secure way to make a living, the family was able to pay rent, eat and set a little bit aside for the children’s school fees.

“We knew it would be really hard to own a house or a car. Now in our new lives, that wasn’t a goal anymore,” Zuleta said. “The most important thing was for the kids to have an education and a future.”

Without telling his parents, Wanger Junior had started saving the tips he made selling cheese sticks to feed a dog that slept on the street nearby. One day he brought the dog, whom he called Shana, to their room and told his parents he wanted to keep her.

source: nbcnews.com