23/05/2022
In the morning we visited an animal supply warehouse in a town near to the Ukraine border. We were met by John Hill, who runs the warehouse, where animal supply donations are sent to from across the world. John gave us a big supply of dog and cat food for needy animals that we found on the way through Ukraine. We also met our driver, who we had to organise at the last minute because our hire car was forbidden to enter Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus. It actually said that on our Polish car hire contract. The driver and use of his vehicle was going to cost us a small fortune, but we had no choice. We had originally planned to just offer vet help at the Polish border for refugees coming into the country from Ukraine, plus any rescue animals arriving out of Ukraine that required first aid before being transferred on for a full assessment. However, we had to change our plans as the number of refugees had, for now, dropped and so there wasn’t as much work needed, but as we spoke to more and more people, we were made aware of the desperate help needed within Ukraine itself and so we had to get into the country somehow. So, with our vehicle full of animal food and vet medicine and supplies, generously donated to us (We will give a big thank you on a later post) we were finally on our way.
After filling several containers of fuel because Ukraine had none, due to the war, and where they did, the fuel station queues could be a mile long. We drove over the border and then met up with another driver who was to be with us for the rest of the trip.
After 11 hours driving from the Polish border, stopping at multiple armed check points and along some very sketchy roads, we thought that we had finally found our animal shelter, but when I knocked on the door of the house where we had heard some barking coming from, and so thought was the shelter, I was told by a man at the cottage that we were at the wrong place. We had already been driving for an hour through some of the remotest areas and along some very tricky pot holed dirt tracks. The temperature was 25c, the car was like an oven, and we just wanted to get to where we were needed and expected.
We had arrived at a very rural location, where small cottages were sparsely spread along the road. A woman came out of her small cottage and spoke to the man across the road who we had just been asking directions from.
A note about the following posts - that all conversations between us and the Ukrainians from this point on were carried out via Google Translate. Thank goodness for Google translate! Every conversation means that you type in a question or statement, press play, and the message is spoken from the mobile phone device to the other person or people, in either English or Ukrainian. You have to then wait for the other person to do the same. So, this is how it went through the whole time we were there. However, we did have help during some of the more complex conversations when it came to the health and history of some of the animals that we were there to help. In these cases, we contacted Tanya, a volunteer from ‘Transform a Street dog’, who helped with the conversations. Thanks Tanya!
The man had said that there were no animal shelters in the area, but the woman, thankfully, thought that she knew where we needed to go. The man then used his arms as though he was peddling a bike and then disappeared back into his garden. It was just enough to understand that he was going to take us to the shelter and we should follow him on his bike, although, I hoped that's what he had said. Sure enough, a minute later, he exited his home and began peddling up the road and we were in hot pursuit. After about five minutes we came to what looked like an old farmhouse. The gate at the front looked like the description that we were given. The bike man shouted towards the house and then Margo appeared.
Margo and Pavlo run the shelter. The shelter was established not so long ago and was in the process of being upgraded and new kennels were being built. A cattery had recently been completed and already kept many rescued cats inside. There were two dogs on chains in the yard. They were very friendly and later we found out that they were rescue dogs, recently taken from areas of conflict, or where there had been conflict. After spending some time in Ukraine, we understood that it was the culture of the country to keep dogs outside on chains, which were attached to a doghouse/shelter. Pet dogs are also kept indoors, but we saw enough dogs on chains and in gardens or yards around Ukraine to see that this was a common practice, to use your dog as a guard dog.
There were also a number of other rescue dogs in a kennel area. It’s worth mentioning here, that we were in a location where the Russians had come very close to, and Pavlo said that when the war began, he and Margo could hear the bombs being dropped and missiles landing. Tanks around the area were a common sight and in fact one of the areas where some of the worst atrocities have occurred, Bucha, was not that far away. The cats and dogs that Pavlo and Margo had rescued had come from the red zone area, including Ray, who we will talk a little bit more about in another post.
Anyway, we were finally at our destination, where we would be staying for a while until our work had been completed. Our job on this mission was always to offer veterinary care, as opposed to the work we carried out on the previous trip, where we rescued animals out of Ukraine and across the border and supported Ukrainians with their animals. Sadly, although we had been told of other shelters, another few hours drive to the East from our location, where animals were in desperate need of vet care and treatment, our limited time meant that we had no option to travel on from this first shelter to others. We could only prey that other individuals and groups would hear the call and had more time to travel further East into Ukraine.
