One of the stories about the fearlessness and loyalty of German shepherds comes from Serbia, more precisely the Belgrade Zoo. Gabi, a female long-haired German Shepherd, arrived at the zoo at the age of eight and her job was to take care of the safety of all its inhabitants.
When she was a bit older, something unforeseen happened that made catapulted Gabi into the legends. One night, a female jaguar managed to jump out of the cage and walked all the way to the administration building. At that time, a night watchman and two dogs were slowly approaching that part of the park. Gabi paused abruptly, listened, and after a few seconds ran into the darkness from where suspicious sounds were heard. The worker talked about how another German shepherd, a male, ran in the opposite direction.
From the darkness in which Gabi ran, the guard could hear barking, roaring and the sounds of struggle. Sometime before dawn, despite all attempts to get the female jaguar back into the cage, she unfortunately had to be shot. Only when the danger passed, the workers and the director of the Zoo, Vuk Bojović, went in search of the brave Gabi. They found her in a hallway near the cage from which the jaguar escaped. She was lying in a large pool of blood, half dead.
At the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, she received a blood transfusion and antibiotics, her wounds were sutured and she was sent to the Zoo to recover. As there was no ambulance in the Zoo, she was recovering in the director Vuk Bojović’s office. The recovery was very slow and only after a month, Gabi got up for the first time and took a few steps. Eventually Gabi fully recovered and spent her entire life patrolling the Zoo.
During Gabi’s life, the staff of the Garden erected a monument to her in the Zoo, where she still stands today. The monument reads: