I WATCHED intrigued as the plastic bucket moved around my feet, bumping into my toes and then retreating to the skirting board. I was standing in the cattery of the National Animal Welfare Trust in Watford with my wife Myra. She was preoccupied by a litter of puppies sitting in a cage so hadn’t noticed my foot dancing with a plastic bucket.
I decided to investigate and got down on my hands and knees and gently lifted the rim. In a flash something attached itself to my beard! I cupped the little creature in my hand and turned to Myra. “I think I’ve been chosen” I said as I held this tiny puppy in the palm of my hand. He had a black coat with a white bib, giving the impression that he was wearing a dinner jacket and so I called him DJ.
This was to become a life changing experience for me. DJ was just another victim of the dreadful puppy farm trade in Wales: discarded and thrown in the back of a van. But for me he was magical. He became my gate keeper.
He was a spaniel-collie cross. He had bad hips which was why he had been dumped but he was a great survivor and, along with Fynne, the lurcher-whippet puppy Myra had fallen for that day, became part of our ever growing pack of rescues.
What made DJ so special was the ability he had to listen – always a plus if you’re an actor.
But not only did he listen, he responded as well. If ever I was troubled he always sat next to me and put a large paw on my arm as if to say “What’s the problem?” He had a natural empathy. As our friendship deepened, I found that when I looked into his eyes I saw all animals and so he became my gate keeper: he led me into a world of animal understanding which transformed me from being just an animal lover to becoming an animal advocate – a voice for all the voiceless.
THIS journey has, in the intervening years, taken me all over the world. From China to South Korea, from Afghanistan to Philadelphia and recently from Bosnia to Romania. Romania has been particularly challenging and defines the cultural division between Eastern and Western Europe, often described by the phrase “Western Europe regards dogs as companion animals, Eastern Europe describes them as vermin!” I wanted to find out if this was true and so embarked on a series of documentaries directed by my friend Maria Slough. Dr Roger Bralow, a UK vet, and I were presenters. We completed our first film, The Strays Of Sarajevo, last year and we finished our second, The Homeless Dogs of Romania, in the summer. It premiered at the EU Parliament on Tuesday.
Maria has done a fantastic job on both films and has captured our harrowing and uplifting journey through both countries.
Romania was particularly disturbing on many levels. You can’t go far without seeing stray dogs wandering the streets or corpses lying by the side of the roads. There is a general acceptance of the stray dog problem and little effort from the public to try to solve it.
Perhaps it is not surprising when you think that Romania is a country struggling to find its place in the 21st century but held back by a clear and present problem. I asked every person I met what they considered to be the major problem facing Romania today, the reply was uniformly articulated: corruption.
I wondered how we would be able to address the issue of animal welfare in a country which was apparently lacking an infrastructure for human welfare.
The answer quickly came as we visited the area outside Bucharest and in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. The stray dog problem had become an epidemic during the period since Nicolae Ceausescu had been deposed leaving his country with a dismal legacy of corruption and mismanagement.
From major cities to villages the stray dog population was getting out of hand, exacerbated by the fact that the government and the greater part of the population have little will or interest to tackle what has become a virus.
In any crisis there are always human angels who step in. Throughout Romania there are amazing people dedicating their lives to saving these poor dogs. Dogs which have been dispatched in the most dreadful ways imaginable. Beaten with iron bars and spades, poisoned or incinerated or left to starve by local government and communities who have no interest or understanding of animal welfare. I met my first angel in the foothills of the Carpathians: Cristina Lapis is an inspirational figure in the war against cruelty in Romania. She, along with her husband Roger, not only founded and runs her dog shelter, Millions of Friends, in Brasov – where at any given time she is sheltering up to 1,000 dogs – but she also founded the Liberty Bear Sanctuary, a 160-acre forested area in Transylvania now home to more than 100 rescued bears. A mammoth operation and a tribute to her and her team.
A MOMENT I will never forget at the bear sanctuary was witnessing a cat, a wolf and a dozing bear interacting by a pond in the most beautiful way, no species threatening the other, it was truly inspiring. At the other end of the spectrum is Georgiana Neagu, a remarkable young woman who works tirelessly rescuing strays and battling local indifference and government lack of interest. She has been physically attacked and had her life threatened, just because she wants a better life for the strays of Romania.
There are hundreds of people like Cristina and Georgina working tirelessly to solve this mammoth problem. There are, of course, also the Britons working tirelessly to help these local heroes. One of our greatest exports is animal welfare. It seems that the idea of animal welfare, throughout not only Eastern Europe but also in Western Europe, is predicated by the parallel need for human welfare.
I believe these concepts are ethically and morally interdependent. Each needs infrastructure but most importantly they need the commitment of care and compassion.