Did you know that in its origins, the Miniature Pinscher played the role of guard dog, maintaining the stability of the estates? He was also known as “Mousecatcher” because he hunted mice on farms. That is, in part, the story of the race of our today’s protagonist. He has the name of an Oscar winner: Denzel (Slovakia, 2018), and his family has theater and acting in their blood.
The family is made up of Pina, Jan, Yolanda and Carlos Chamarro (Barcelona 1968), who you will remember for his role as Jacobo Torres in Viajes Iberia, Julián Palacios in Camera Café or, currently, Esteban Guijarro in La que se cerca.
Denzel, Carlos…
How are you?
We are very good. Some better than others because those who lead a “bitch” life, I think, live better than humans. In general, we are very good.
Name of an Oscar winner… Does it come from there?
Yes, yes, yes… At first we said, “Let’s see what we call this little guy who weighs one and a half kilos?”… At first names like Conan or Ulysses were considered, very typical, but of course, like his mother and I are actors, and he is so black, we decided to name him after Denzel Washington. When someone asks us the dog’s name and we tell them, they always tell us that, “Like Denzel Washington!” Of course, he is a super well-known person.
Denzel is also because he has appeared in the stories you publish on your Instagram @estanentrenosotros…
Well, he has been the protagonist in some episodes as a guest actor, when I had not done any, which, it must be said, was very difficult because it is not a suitable race to do a series like Rin-Tin-Tin or all these police dogs. It has always been said that it is difficult to film with animals because they do, a little, what they want.
Have you worked with dogs?
Yeah! In an episode of the series Gym Tony, I was assigned to a poodle. To make myself look “cool” and look like I’m working with my poodle companion, I said: “Bring him to me a little early so we can prepare.”… Anyway, he almost bit me! and I thought, “How bad he is!… I’m not going to do much with him!” I played a snob who had a beautiful white poodle with a gold collar… It was a lot of fun, but of course, they’re animals, and when you say “action!”, they may or may not do it.
When Carlos tells this, we burst out laughing because the image comes to mind… That’s what happens when, as he says, you’re cool with a poodle.
When Denzel arrived, how was the adaptation? What cost you the most?
It took us longer to get used to the idea that, after being two people for a while, we were going to be three living beings in our daily relationships. At first it was fun; We bought him a stroller to sleep in, we took him for walks, he peed in the house… As we explored our new routines, we realized what a huge responsibility it was to have Denzel. When we remember it, Yolanda always tells me: “See? That’s why I always told you I wanted a small dog.” Of course, they are easier to handle on a day-to-day basis. When we moved, when traveling by plane (with its weight of three kilos, it can be carried in the cabin) or on the train… Denzel became another son for us. Sometimes we stop going to certain places or having a social life because they don’t allow dogs. If Denzel can’t go, we can’t go either.
A short time ago, your daughter Pina also arrived… What relationship do they have?
They told me, “Be careful because you are going to have a baby and dogs are very territorial. Before going home, take a piece of clothing that the baby has worn in these first days of clinic, bring it to the dog so that he can smell it and, above all, “When you go home, you and the girl have to go in first. Then he. Don’t let him think that he goes before the girl.” As soon as Pina was born, when they put her in her arms for the first time, we put a little hat on her that, in fact, got stained with blood, and it was the one we gave to Denzel so he could identify her smell.
There are Jan, Pina and Denzel, to what extent are they good “brothers”?
It’s funny because when we went to visit or he came home, I immediately associated Jan, who is the older brother and lives in Barcelona, ??as the older brother. He didn’t allow himself to be caught by anyone, but he allowed Jan, who saw him in all sorts of ways. He looked at him as if to say, “I have to leave this one because there is something genetic here that tells me to do it.” Not anything else, because he is not a very intelligent breed, but he has incredible intuition. Others have more developed sight, taste, and smell; this, intuition. With Pina, the adaptation is somewhat slower. He avoids her a little because she is a bit more “brute.” She sees us caressing him and tries to do it with slaps or grabs his ears and squeezes them as if they were made of white paper…
Carlos makes a face and reproduces Denzel’s moan at the moment when Pina squeezes his ears… Super descriptive.
At that moment, Denzel looks at us as if to say: “Are you seriously going to allow him this?… Why am I biting?” Poor thing, he is a dog that would never hurt him and would never bite anyone even if they did pranks on him. Even when we play and tease him, he marks you, pretending that he bites you, even though he makes it clear that he could never do it. It’s a love.
The Pinscher is a dog with a lot of character… Who’s in charge?
It’s a bit cool. They say that dogs look a lot like their masters. When we walk down the street, we look and comment “look, he has the same hair as the dog” and Denzel looks a lot like us. We are small, we have a fairly well-proportioned physique… Yolanda says that when he is determined about something he looks like me, because I am stubborn. I say the same about her.
The dog belongs to my wife, but at some point in the relationship, she chose me as a reference. I don’t know if it’s because I’m the other male in the mini pack. Maybe because I started to lower him more, to feed him and it’s like he always asks my permission. Lately, he does something very funny and that is, when he wants to be quiet, he comes and offers me his neck. I bite it, jokingly, of course, and he gives me two licks as if to say “okay, now I can sit wherever I want.”
Do you understand each other?
It is a very independent dog that does not have too many lights. Only three buttons. I say, “Do you want to eat?” and he starts to spin. You don’t get it out of there. He has two stuffed animals that we call Tochi mochis, and when you name them, he brings them to you. There are other things that he doesn’t catch, like the ball; I tell him “Bring the ball” and he looks at me as if he had said chair, Seville, jersey, window or I don’t know what. He’s not a very smart dog. Not at all. He is very lap; Sometimes he doesn’t want to go out and prefers to stay at home on top of us. He sleeps a lot. When we go to bed, he gets into bed with us and, when he wakes up, he gets up so we can feed him and, just as Yolanda, Pina and I start the day, he goes back to bed. He is also a dog that has very short hair and almost no hair left. He is a luxury.
How is eating going?
We follow the Barf diet, which consists of feeding dogs according to their original nutrition as carnivorous animals. Since he has to eat 3% of his weight, we make him some hamburgers of almost 100 grams. We give him one in the morning, another at night and, in theory, the dog should not eat anything else. It’s true that he gets bits of bread or, if we have a little leftover vegetable cream, we give it to him too, but we can’t skip it because we’ve been to the vet and, even though he only weighs 3 kilos, they even told us that he was obese. . For Denzel, 300 grams too much means being obese.
What do you usually do as a family?
No one knows this, but it is such a small and dark dog that, sometimes, we enter places with it in our backpack. It’s a bit annoying because you always have to calibrate which places you can enter and which you can’t. You can’t in supermarkets, nor on the bus; On trains you must carry him with a carrier, because if he starts barking, there will be no one in the entire car who can rest, while if you put him on your lap, it will be easier for him to go calmly. When we take the bus, sometimes, we put it under the girl’s stroller because since he has the fleece cover on the sides, no one knows that he is going there.
In fact, we have sometimes gone to a restaurant where dogs are not allowed, and since we have put them under the cart, no one has noticed anything. When they ever complain and tell us something like “Dogs are not allowed in!”, I look at the person who told us this and say, “It’s not a dog, it’s a guinea pig… It’s a squirrel dressed as a Pinscher.” I understand that rules are rules, but it’s annoying. I put myself in the shoes of people who have had dogs all their lives and I see how bad things are for dogs. When we go on vacation, we always go to places that allow pets. If for whatever reason it is impossible, we use Yolanda’s family or friends who experience Denzel’s visit as a weekend gift.
I understand that, while going on a trip to Vigo, you ended up crying and having an anxiety attack…
Oh my gosh, yes. We were going on vacation to Vigo in our camper van to see my representative. We pulled out of a sandy beachfront parking lot when the car alert came on indicating that a door was open. I thought the back door had been left open when putting the little girl’s stroller in. I went down, closed it tightly and we went to a cove that was 15 minutes away along very narrow roads. Upon arriving, Yolanda said, “Where is Denzel?” We looked everywhere and she didn’t appear. Anyway, we had left it in the parking lot. We had an anxiety attack, crying, crying…
We took the van, as if it were a Formula 1, Pina woke up and Yolanda prepared a bottle for him in the middle of the curves… It was 15 minutes there plus 15 minutes back, so we thought they would have taken him or something worse. We arrived at the dirt parking lot, in the American style, almost without putting on the handbrake, and in the background I saw three couples who were with him. He saw me and licked me while I couldn’t stop crying. I grabbed it and took it to Yolanda, who was looking for it next to her, as if it were the Lion King movie when, at the beginning, they lift Simba up in front of the town. The cries were so intense that they infected the families who had found him and we all ended up crying. I remember that, while I was driving, we were still just as bad and Yolanda kept telling me: “One of us has to be strong and hold on!” to which I responded, through tears, that she had better be because I couldn’t.
He explains it very gracefully, but I can see in Carlos the suffering they went through. My surprise comes when he catches his breath after sharing this experience. This is not ending here!
The next day, returning from Vigo to Madrid, we stopped at an outdoor picnic area, near a river, to rest and eat something. After a while, we return to the road and see some containers, so we decide to stop to throw away a glass bottle and trash. Afterwards, we continued on the road home and when we had reached 20 kilometers of highway, Yolanda said: “Denzel!” On this occasion, her anxiety attack hit her and I assumed the more hopeful part of her saying, “You’ll see how she is at the snack bar.” We returned and there he was with a family who saw us leaving and tried to warn us that we were leaving the dog behind. In fact, they were going to notify Seprona. Since then, every time we take a trip, before leaving, we give each other a hand, a kiss and say: “Have a good trip to everyone… Are we all here? Yolanda? Pineapple? “Denzel?” It’s the way to take the roll call and make sure it doesn’t happen to us again.
It was brutal.
There are times when the loss of an animal is felt more than that of a family member. The fact of expressing that you have had a pet, that you have lived with it for years and that it will no longer be around, makes you, since it cannot speak, feel the duty to explain what that company and that mutual love has meant to you. that you have shared.
What are the mistakes that are usually made when a puppy comes into the family?
The most common mistake is thinking that he will do everything you tell him. It is an animal and when you skip the education that should be given to it as a puppy, you are making a major mistake. Wanting him to relieve himself when you want…
Carlos, what do you value most about spending time with Denzel?
It is said that if a human being pets a dog, it lowers its bad vibrations. It has a relaxing effect. Personally, I highly value always being accompanied. I never feel alone because, obviously, there is a living being next to you. There comes a time when you start talking to him, even, in my case, texting with him!… “Can you imagine he corrects me?”
Carlos… a secret of yours
There is one that only three of us know. Well, three people and an animal.
Denzel knows I have OCD when it comes to poop bags. In some bins in Madrid, which is very cool, there is a little window with recyclable black plastic bags that can be taken out just like paper tissues. My OCD is that I can’t get less than a 5 and Denzel knows it.
After laughing about his OCD, an unspeakable secret, we stayed talking about various things such as the wonderful play he is preparing and that will take me to Madrid next summer, to meet him, Pina, Yolanda and, of course, with Denzel, but well… That’s another story.
