There are stories that talk about animals.
And then there are others that, in reality, talk about us.
This is the story of Giulio & Lella. Swimming parallel to Life, and belonging to this second category, the work has received two awards and was presented yesterday at Villa Bertelli- Forte dei Marmi, by Martina Alibani, cultural disseminator and writer.
It is the story of a bond that arises from pain, grows in silence, and transforms into a form of mutual salvation. A book that shows how an animal is not “just” a companion in life, but a being capable of intercepting our deepest fragilities, those that we often cannot even name.
” According to the synopsis, it is the entirely autobiographical story of a woman, Lella, who recounts the daily events of her life with her dog Giulio, a beautiful German shepherd who came into her home when he was only two months old, two months after the loss of her previous beloved dog, Lello.
Aurelia Trianni, known to everyone as Lella, was born in Racale (Lecce) in 1970. She graduated with honors in Political Science and has been working in the education sector for over twenty-four years as a tutor in university master’s programs. Writing and her love for animals have always been a part of her life, but it is with this first published work that she chooses to give voice to a story she has experienced firsthand, in her daily life, in her shared breath.
The story begins with a devastating loss: the death of Lello, the dog who had been Lella’s constant companion. The night of their parting is recounted with disarming lucidity: she sleeps on the floor, embracing him until his last breath.
It is a grief that freezes any possibility of a future. When her brother Enzo decides to give her a puppy, Giulio, he does not do so to replace a love—which is impossible—but to offer a chance. Lella accepts with a closed heart, out of a sense of duty, convinced that she can no longer love.
Giulio, a German shepherd born in 2020, duly registered with the canine registry—as Lella points out—but above all registered “in every beat of her heart,” enters her life on tiptoe. He is still a puppy when sudden poisoning threatens to take him away. That night, in the clinic, something changes. The fear of losing him melts the ice: Lella realizes that the bridge between them has already been built. Not with words, but with presence.
From that moment on, Giulio becomes a silent reader of human emotions. He demonstrates this with Maria, Lella’s 90-year-old mother, who is fragile and delicate. Even as a puppy, he chooses to sleep on his side of the bed, as if he senses that this is where the heart of the “pack” is most exposed. After a hospital stay, he arranges Maria’s shoes and doll in the hallway, a gentle invitation to get back on her feet, to return to life.
No training can explain such gestures. Only a deep, instinctive sensitivity.
The moment that definitively marks their story takes place at sea. Lella relaxes on a lilo, and the current carries her out to sea. A trivial gesture that reactivates an old trauma: at the age of eight, she had nearly drowned. The body remembers, even when the mind pretends to have forgotten. Giulio knows this. That’s why he didn’t want her to go into the water. That’s why he kept an eye on her.
When the danger becomes real, he dives in without hesitation, reaches the air mattress, and drags her to shore.
That gesture makes him a “hero dog” in the eyes of the media. The story goes viral, makes it into the newspapers, is broadcast live on RAIUNO, and wins the Indivisibili di ItaliaSì contest. But the book doesn’t stop at the hype. It tells what happens next, when visibility becomes responsibility.
Lella decides to donate the proceeds from the sale of one of Giulio’s puppies to the Soleterre association, in support of Ukrainian children with cancer. It is a fundamental step: love for an animal is transformed into care for others, into concrete attention to those who suffer.
Among the most intense moments are the silent separations, such as Giulio watching the bus Lella boards to go to Trento, standing still until he can no longer see her. Or the letter written “by Giulio” to the doctors at Soleterre, a gesture of tenderness that unites different worlds: animal loyalty and human pain.
Giulio & Lella. Swimming alongside Life is not just a love story between a woman and her dog. It is a profound reflection on how animals are capable of saving us before we even realize it, of guarding our fears, of protecting us even from ourselves.
They don’t ask for explanations.
They don’t make promises.
But they stay.
And sometimes, by staying, they teach us how to live again.
