Matteo and Colin - two lives, one soul
We cryopreserved a Caucasian shepherd dog from Padua, Italy.
Its owner is an Italian entrepreneur and film actor Matteo Silvestri (films "Summer Dew" (role: Matteo) and "L'orafo" (role: Forest Ranger)).
This story particularly moved us...
In the fantasy world of Lyra (Philip Pullman's Dark Beginnings trilogy), there are dæmons - the embodiment of part of the human soul in the form of an animal. It could be a dog, an ermine, a reptile, a bird... The main thing - the link between the dæmon and the man is inviolable. One dies, the other dies. A man's pain becomes a dæmon's pain and vice versa. They share the same soul.
And surprisingly (or not?), there is such a relationship, very, very close, on Earth. Maybe it's something passed from fantasy into our world. Or vice versa, the genius of modern literature has sensitively embraced the amazing bond that is sometimes born between a man and his pet...?
Such a striking relationship between two personalities - a dog and a human - we met at KrioRus very recently, at the end of 2022. The dog's name was Colin. Even now, however, when he's frozen in the interim, his name is Colin. It was the name of the voice he had always loved most in the world. The man's name was Matteo. Matteo Silvestri.
Matteo is an entrepreneur and film actor, living the busy life of the modern world. And, it would seem, where is the place for love? Where is it amidst the to-do lists and competition, hasn't it been lost in the waves of information overload, hasn't a dangerous and shocking world hardened hearts?
Colin never asked himself these questions, he simply lived in the world of happiness and love that he found himself in after meeting Matteo.
Five endless and at the same time arrow-flying years... That's how long Colin would have lived if not for cryonics and Matteo's frantic desire to regain his friend, a part of his soul.
But still, how is it that our animal friends fall in love with us? What do we love about them? Is it their grace, unconditional loyalty, the softness of their fur? Or is the stock of love so great in us humans that it flows to those who need it? And who needs whom: us - in them or them - in us
In 2019 a dog, Border Collie (it's a herding dog breed) Chaser, who was described as the smartest dog in the world, died. Her vocabulary was 1,022 words. It seems animals have a deeper understanding of the world than we are used to thinking. But do we love them for their vocabulary? We ruffle their fur, talk to them, joke with them, experience the whole range of emotions with them.
Matteo calls Colin, a huge tiger-coloured Caucasian, his son. And when Colin died, alas of cancer, Matteo did more for him than most people do for their dying relatives, he preserved him at ultra-low temperatures. Now Colin, for whom time has stopped, lives in a world of endless cold, waiting to be revived in the future, a future happy life with his master, his soulmate.
Sooner or later it will happen, unless of course some global catastrophe happens. An asteroid or a powerful gamma-ray burst could land on us, Yellowstone could explode - and humanity would die.
But there will be no man-made or even military disasters on a global scale, we are sure of it. A world with people like Matteo cannot disappear. And dogs like Colin.