Page 5 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW SPECIAL ISSUE 6

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 0 5

LOOKING BACK

BY GABRIELE SCHRÖTER - GERMANY

Originally published in the Sloughi Club of the UK yearbook 2023.
Reproduced with permission

Only four years after I was born my parents emigrated from Germany to Canada. That
beautiful country is what I remember of my early childhood – a new language, school,
children that took me with them naturally and I never felt anything but integrated. So

that was my home – a huge country, with an enormous rural part where nature and
animals of all kinds were a normal surrounding. I immediately loved it, the soft rolling
hills of eastern Quebec, the different birds and other wild animals, the flowers and trees,
and people who had cats and dogs in their home. Unfortunately we had to move house a
number of times because of my father’s job, so my mother decided a dog would not be

happy with us – I never understood that, I’m afraid.

But a girl in the neighbourhood where we lived for about two years had a lovely black
horse, and she taught me to ride – my first passion was born. And because I thought all
these animals and flowers around me were so lovely I started drawing them – my second
passion… So when there was a competition at school of drawings of what you wanted to
become once you were grown up, I did a watercolour of myself sitting in front of an easel,

painting a horse.

Back in Germany at the age of eleven I learned what it meant not to be integrated –
classmates seemed to prefer to keep at a distance. So, I again looked for animals to feel
safe and happy and to my brush and paper. Horses had first rank in my pastime and in my
pictures then.