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BBC Learning English

Video Words in the News

12 February 2014

Every dog has its day

Transcript¹:

It's a dog's life… but not for these strays.

They'd been happily roaming the Olympic Park in Sochi. That's until the authorities began to see them as a nuisance and threatened to have them put down.

But dog lover and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has come to their rescue.

He's paying for this makeshift shelter where 140 dogs collected from the streets compete for people's affections. The top prize - becoming a pet.

Vocabulary:

a dog's life a very hard and unpleasant life

strays domesticated² animals with no owner

roaming walking aimlessly

put down to subject an animal to euthanasia

makeshift poor quality, made of whatever material is available

Exercise:

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports.

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.

a dog's life / strays / roaming / put down / makeshift

1. In the middle of a new camp for the scared and the desperate, made up of hundreds of __________ shelters clustered around a road, I saw a familiar face.

2. A wallaby thought to have been __________ around north London has been captured on a tennis court. The RSPCA was called to reports of a "large wild animal causing chaos³" in York Rise, near Kentish Town, earlier.

3. It is almost impossible to walk the streets of Bucharest for more than five minutes and not encounter a __________ dog. According to official estimates there are 65,000 of them - one for every 30 residents of the Romanian capital.

4. In a statement, the Wiltshire park said it had no choice but to __________ a lioness and her cubs⁴ because they displayed "odd aggressive behaviour".

5. Our conversation lulls⁵ as the night deepens. Premchand's voice breaks the silence. It is his turn to ask me a question: "Why do you ask about the beauty in our daily lives? Of green hills, lush forests, peacocks, sambars and the full moon? Ours is __________. We have built homes with a 'pucca' roof but are not destined⁶ to sleep in them. In this smelly quilt, I will pass my life, and in death I will bequeath it to my son to sleep in."

Answers:

1. In the middle of a new camp for the scared and the desperate, made up of hundreds of makeshift shelters clustered around a road, I saw a familiar face. Source: Analysis: South Sudan's bitter divide

2. A wallaby thought to have been roaming around north London has been captured on a tennis court. The RSPCA was called to reports of a "large wild animal causing chaos" in York Rise, near Kentish Town, earlier. Source: North London wallaby found on Kentish Town tennis court

3. It is almost impossible to walk the streets of Bucharest for more than five minutes and not encounter a stray dog. According to official estimates there are 65,000 of them - one for every 30 residents of the Romanian capital. Source: Bucharest dog cull⁷ plan divides Romanians

4. In a statement, the Wiltshire park said it had no choice but to put down a lioness and her cubs because they displayed "odd aggressive behaviour".

5. Our conversation lulls as the night deepens. Premchand's voice breaks the silence. It is his turn to ask me a question: "Why do you ask about the beauty in our daily lives? Of green hills, lush forests, peacocks, sambars and the full moon? Ours is a dog's life. We have built homes with a 'pucca' roof but are not destined to sleep in them. In this smelly quilt, I will pass my life, and in death I will bequeath it to my son to sleep in." Source: Curse of a full moon (Hindustan Times)