The involved moderator is committed to animals since she was a child. (It is natural to Claudia Ludwig that these animals are all from animal protection.) With her work as a moderator for "Tiere suchen ein Zuhause" (Animals looking for a home) she is trend-setting for placing used dogs.

With her foreign reportage, she repeatedly pointed at the disastrous situations in many European animal shelters. Especially animal protection in Hungary is close to her heart.

Why are pet adoption tv-shows so important?

TV shows like "Tiere suchen ein Zuhause" from WDR or "Tierisch Tiersich" from MDR are often the only chance to get a new home for animals which are too old, handicapped or have bad behavior.

"Tier suchen ein Zuhause" is watched by millions of people every week, therefore the possibility that someone is willing to adopt a difficult animal or an animal which was in an animal shelter for a long time is very high. It often works.

The second important aspect is, that through those TV shows, people are starting thinking of getting a "second hand" animal from an animal shelter instead going to an animal breeder. Also those TV shows helped to make the mutt dog and domestic cat socially accepted and showed animal lovers that it has not to be a pedigree cat or dog to become happy.

To what extent are special broadcasts from different animal shelters something special for you?

With a TV-recording on site the audience get to know an animal shelter, animal protection work on site and hopefully discover that our animal shelters are far from being horrible places, plucking visitors heartstrings, as it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Today, animal shelters are definitely attractive and inspiring meeting places with cafeteria, flea market, roadshow, preferably regular open house, reading and funny mutt dog shows. And hopefully many viewer get in the mood to visit an animal shelter on their own.

 What is the thing in your job that makes especially fun?

To be in close contact with animals is the best and this will never get boring. For me, all my four-legged or featured guests are still exciting and I'm always looking forward to get to know them. And it is of course a good feeling to know that one is doing something very reasonable and supporting animal rights activists with their important work.

Should I be annoyed on a TV-recording, I just need to pet a nice dog or cat and everything is ok again.

Was there a special "animal" moment for you as a moderator.

Once, just before start of a TV production, a little feared dog from the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals Aachen ran away. Everyone was anxious the dog could not be caught because of his enormous fear. We had to start the TV production without him.

But as we introduced dogs from Aachen, animal rights activists were able to get the missing dog and they cradled him in their arms to the studio. The first chairman of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals Aachen, who was presenting the animals with me, spontaneous started crying and so I moved to tears too. Howling we introduced the little dog. The Aachen animal rights activist got a proposal of merrage because the audiance liked that an established man shows feelings so spontaneous.

My unusal four-legged guests were a giant bullock and a young wild boar. I felt a little friable with three very well-fortified geese in the studio.

Do you have pets?

For sure I have pets on my own. As a child I had budgies I loved. The eagerly awaited first dog, a little Cocker Spaniel, moved in when I was eleven, thanks to my older sister. Since then I had the luck to live with at least one dog nearly without an interruption.

Cats were added much later. Today I live with three cats and two dogs and I often have dogs from friends to care for. Of course all our animals are from animal protection cases or emergency. We saved their lives in our holidays or while working on tv-productions.

Britta Berkenfeld