Rescuing abandoned animals in Ukraine

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good morning we are about to cross the border to
ukraine wish me luck and this is my first trip hopefully it's gonna go all right we're going
200 kilometers into ukraine it should be about three hours drive we're gonna drop off some dog
food and we're gonna collect some people and some dogs as well. hopefully i can record it on the
way as well to show you what it's really like so we are in ukraine now it doesn't look too
bad at the moment the queue of cars has gone to very little.
It's not like it was three weeks ago
you know with the queues being a few miles long it's much much better so that's really really
good. lots of people still crossing on foot but there's a lot of help and everyone's
very helpful at the border as well so it's lovely to know. also for any of you that are
wondering louis actually doesn't know that i'm going to ukraine he thinks i'm helping at the
border so he will love putting this video together not sure if you can see but right there it's
like a roadblock they doing checks the army guys obviously to make sure that no one's dodgy
getting through. apparently when it all started they had them checks every few miles and even
on the way to Lviv this time the road to Lviv was very smooth to be honest and this is
the first check that we are getting stopped at maybe you can see better now and the first check is over.
It was very quick and
smooth they just checked our documents basically and made sure we are from poland and that we
are not carrying any arms and stuff like that i'm actually not sure i should be saying that and
putting it on youtube so louie do not use that well i hope you can hear me
because the roads are awful and the cages i have at the back are making a racket
basically we dropped the food at the shelter now and i didn't really take any videos there because
i don't like to stick camera in people's faces so you just have to take my word for it
and now we are going to collect a lady her child and seven big dogs and
we're gonna take them back to poland good morning, so today it's our second trip
to ukraine we did set off yesterday but it was pretty dark so it was hard to record and
we drove from poland to Vinnica which is like a seven hour drive and it was a killer not
gonna lie and we slept over in a monastery which was nice and now we are on our way to
Kiyv.
Louis will kill me when he hears that and obviously we're going there because it's the
hardest, well it's not the hardest but it's the safest i would say place that is still being
attacked where people can't be evacuated from so obviously Mariupol or Kharkiv it's
pretty much possible where Kiyv is still just about all right. so we bring some more dog and
cat food and we're gonna collect some animals and some helpers from the local
shelters so they can come to poland hopefully we will get there all right we just got to kiev and we are almost our
destination loads of army and lots of like roadblocks in the way obviously.
There
are also people and cars on the streets yeah hopefully i can make a
recording when we get to the shelter not sure if it shows but in the distance
over there. obviously that must be where a bomb or something has been dropped
so you can just see a smoke coming from one spot. that's the Kiyv town
center pretty much, we are kind of on the not outskirts but like on
the road that's around the capital yeah literally just shit my pants because a bomb
went off or something, louie's gonna kill me so we go to the veterinary clinic yes those are bombs and ukrainian soldiers shooting at russians
and we're going to stay in Kiev tonight because it's too late to leave now we are absolutely
knackered so we are staying at this lovely vet clinic so we can start early tomorrow morning
with people and animals yeah absolutely exhausted i don't know if you can hear the bombs but it's
not great only 10 minutes ago or so we had to go down and hide because the bomb alarm went off so i
had to go in the basement and yeah so that's it yeah those are Ukrainians shooting russians again going off all the time we are quite far from it i think
but you can hear it quite well what you just heard were ukrainian soldiers
defending the country because russian people and russian soldiers not Russian
people sorry russian soldiers are obviously attacking them so
they are defending their country we are at the dog shelter, there
is around 200 dogs here and the lady is not going to give us any animals she won't give us any of the dogs i don't know why she let us take puppies.
We have seven puppies with us so that's
some result to be honest we couldn't take anymore because we only have normal cars but seven
is amazing. no idea how we gonna get them to the border because the law only allows us to
take five per person and we're gonna have about 25 animals with us, but we cross
that bridge when it comes to it i guess you can't see me can you i am driving
in the dark. we just passed the Vinnytsia we are four hours into our journey and we still have another
eight hours to go whoop been up since eight o'clock this morning is half past nine now and
we're not going to get anywhere until six o'clock i imagine or something like that.
So yeah this
is going to be fun fun fun night hello hello well as you can see it's getting light now
yes i have been up for pretty much 24 hours probably 23 or so and i still have an hour and
10 minutes to get to the border and then another i don't know 40 minutes to get to the place
where i'm gonna drop the dogs off. once i do that i'm gonna go back to the border to take
some of the dogs that are in the other cars because we're not allowed to transport more than
five at the time so yeah. i feel like i'm a walking energy bottle.
but yeah look at that view pretty for the sunrise i bet Louis will tell me off for recording
through that dirty window but clearly louis doesn't understand what sleep deprivation is see
you later.
Its 4 o'clock in the afternoon now. i have been at the border since seven o'clock
this morning and they won't let me in we were told and we believe the law states that a person coming
from ukraine can bring five dogs without documents but apparently that's not the case apparently
only ukrainian people can bring those dogs so all the homeless dogs that are left there
and all the organizations that are trying to bring them in are basically stuck at
the border. three of our cars got turn around and my friend said that another organization dutch organization has been turned around as well because they
had dogs that didn't have the documents yeah um the lady, lovely not that lady i spoke to that is
writing me an official refusal so we can sue her said when i told
her you know i've been to Kiyv i haven't slept since seven o'clock yesterday morning and what
do you expect me to do and she says it's not my problem you can come back to Kiyv and get them
dogs sorted you need to get the vaccination passports and chips.
It's war in there you
know in case she didn't bloody know there are no passports there are no chips there are no
vaccinations they hardly have any food we have to go and bring food to Kiyv because there isn't
any food there. i am so pissed off it's beyond the dogs have been now in the cages except
being let out for little walks since 12 o'clock yesterday so it's now been um 20, no i don't know
i can't do the math anymore. no yeah it is right it's been it's been 26 hours they've been in the
cages i've been at the border now since eight o'clock this morning i'm on my own i
can't exactly let them out on my own because they all want to go out at the same time so it's a
bit of a struggle i don't want to lose any of them and i'm running out of water now and i don't have
any food for them i don't have any food for myself no water for myself and i started smoking again
because of this and so i have some cigarettes and that's it oh an energy drink yeah
that much of an energy drink left and seriously this is just beyond a joke
you know as i said i was so happy when this lady from the shelter agreed to
give me the dogs and now i'm thinking you know what i don't blame her for not
wanting to give them to me because this this is just ridiculous absolutely ridiculous good morning so now i have slept a little bit and
i just wanted to show you some of the dogs that we still have here that we are waiting to re
home in poland uh obviously this is kind of like a makeshift home you know we obviously not
very well set up for having so many dogs but you know there was no choice.
You can
hear the puppies in the background this is the little puppy she was very scared at
the beginning but she's coming into herself now over here not sure you can see it that's the
pup that we will be taking with us hopefully here we have our lovely bella she's
like a border collie cross i think and she's looking for a forever home and in here we have three doggies two siblings them little
two ones and a third one that hopefully are going to germany that's our resident dog Refis and these little two terrors one and two
are the other two pups we have come here very energetic very energetic aren't you babies yes you are yes you are we also have five cats
left in here and some of the cats and animals have already been taken by the other car to
foster homes so this is just what we've got left and forgive me for not recording before but
literally i was knackered louis uh i'm allowing him to show you the picture of how i looked
after uh 50 hours on my feet it should come up now yeah i think um that speaks volumes anyway i
show you the cats because no one really wants to see me look at them cutie little pies that's a little
tiny baby he's well cute.
All he he wants to do is play there is another one this one there you can't really see
but he's a little bit scared obviously those two are absolutely beautiful i've sent
Louis pictures on instagram so you can see better this one and that one they were taken from a lady
from Kiyv who found them on the street and adopted them. it was really sad because she was crying
obviously when she was giving them away saying um she just wants them to be safe but she didn't
want to come with us she said.
You know it's her home Kiyv and ukraine so she's not gonna be
going but all she can do is make sure that her animals are safe so heartbreaking really um but we
obviously gonna find great homes for those animals and them two that she gave us they are beautiful
seriously absolutely beautiful as louis would say so we are about to transfer
dogs to the foster homes as you can hear they are right
there not sure if you can see it three in this cage fourth one over there and
here is a little beauty i'm taking home with me we are dropping more dogs off this morning
we dropped some of last night got to Warsaw about three o'clock in the morning because the car
kept breaking down.
We just went to um like i guess rescue place where the some of the dogs live and i just found out that the guy who's organizing it he still has like
58 dogs waiting for adoption that no one wants and i'm absolutely fuming because if he told
me that maybe that's a dog i should have taken anyway as i was saying it was really upsetting
because obviously i love this dog and i obviously want to take her but then part of me thinks
you know everyone wants a puppy so maybe she would have found a home and i could have
taken a dog that has been a shelter for years it's really annoying yeah hello i hope you can see the little one
and there she is.
That's the one im taking i need to really get a grip like i am so sorry for
being so emotional all the time i think it's just tiredness and i don't know exhaustion hunger
everything stress i really don't know but jesus christ i need to get a get a grip. Im
like a shadow of woman i was once at a time. i swear to god when people who
know me will watch this, they will be like bloody hell what happened to her you know.
I'm a hard B**
let's not use the bad words. not this bloody mess that i turned it to. I need to get a grip. i need
to focus on the future and our plan you know um we obviously hope that when we finish
traveling we can buy some land maybe in england maybe in europe we don't know where yet and start
our own rescue center and really you know i need to keep that in mind i can't help all the dogs
right now but i will bloody try i'm gonna try to get
some pictures of the dogs that are in that shelter in poland i just spoke to the guy again he says
some of them are from ukraine some of them are from poland. there's one a disabled little dog
that has been there for five years he does have bad legs as he stood on a mine i think that's
what it's called. you know they all need forever homes you know. obviously transfers from england to poland can be an issue but i'm sure there are
organizations that do it so i will have a look at pictures and stuff and maybe we'll make a post
on instagram or youtube maybe make a separate video of the dogs that need homes and maybe
someone any of you will want to take one as you know we definitely can't take anymore
but i would do all i can to help with finding the homes for them yeah.
We are
on the way to drop the other two dogs off and dropping off some cats as well forever homes
i'm sorry i'm not really filming the drop of bits and also i'm sorry for the camera being so wonky
but i'm driving so each time i turn the wheel the camera turns. yeah but i'm sorry i'm not filming
when we're handing the animals to people but as i said before i it's just not something i want to
do i don't think it's fair you know to be sticking camera into people's faces.
I don't know it just doesn't doesn't feel right so that's why you've got only me chatting
rubbish like louie would say yep this is the road absolutely amazing this
is april in poland great absolutely great i am going to the border now with just my
puppy we dropped all the dogs off yesterday again i drove for 12 hours yesterday and
had four hours sleep puppy was in bed all day so she was a nightmare last night so
i am knackered can't wait to stop driving once i get to the base at the border there will
be a guy that said he's gonna pick me up and drive into romania.
I found him on facebook so hopefully
it's all gonna go well. i'm obviously gonna pay him petrol money no idea how much yet because we
haven't arranged it i just hope it's gonna appear because he hasn't replied to my last message
and i don't have an alternative transport good morning so i had to stay the
night. as expected the guy has never showed up never contacted me just basically stringing me along. thumbs up to him hey anyway basically i just wanted to give you a
quick tour of the place i've been staying which is basically a shade and this is the bed it's
a right mess obviously that's the wood burner there, that i have no wood for. the bathroom is
over there but there is no running water so yeah it's been great absolutely
great so this is a car park that has been turned to some sort of refugee center
there's loads of people here from all over europe i can just hear different languages
french english german obviously polish lots of different stands like on the market you know
where people are giving away free stuff toiletries food teddy bears and everything
just have a look look around, tents set up, heaters just got a phone call from my best friend in
the world that i used to work with and live with and her parents that are like second parents to
me are gonna drive me to romania with the dog even though they kind of don't have the proper
insurance because the car lease won't allow them to enter romania but we will cross this
bridge when we come to it if i have to bloody walk the border with the dog i
will but oh my goodness seriously forever grateful
what can i say it's just amazing and those are my best friends parents
who are taking me to romania with the dog best people ever and after 10 hours of driving we got to the
border hopefully we can cross now.
Romanian border and we are in romania so happy so so happy that we managed to cross
there was no no issues really with crossing which was absolutely amazing and we were going
to record our lovely reunion but we kind of forgot i think we're just too happy to see each
other for once in our lives were we? yeah he's been really soppy since
i got here i'm not gonna lie he's just laughing now because you know he
needs to keep up appearances whatever it says anyway um we are in romania now as i said thank you again to eva's parents
that took me here Pani Gosia and Pan Czesiek big thumbs up we gonna drive to the car parking spot
that louis spent last couple of nights at so he knows it's a good one and we're probably
gonna be staying there for next year or two maybe i don't know to sleep because we're both pretty
knackered aren't we? yeah yeah and this and this this little one this is the new pup misha
she's been amazing so far absolutely amazing louie loves her already don't you? yeah
she's a bit of a tank isn't she? look at the size of her I will have to do something under
the bed i think to fit her in because she's massive.
Yeah when we rest anyway see you in a
few days yeah yes say thank you bye thank you bye now before we finish i just
wanted to say that obviously we will be now continuing with our journey
through romania hopefully without any new additions because louis will probably not have
any more, even though it is five dogs per person and obviously i wanted to end. go on then
because you're being a little dummies, not having it is she the last thing i wanted to
say the most important thing really i just wanted to officially thank, thank every single one of you
for donating to help us get louis from greece to romania and to get me from poland to to
romania you know all your donations have been greatly appreciated and they obviously
all went for you know petrol expenses vet fees my traveling around poland when i got
messed about by the guy so thank you thank you so much hopefully one day when we're
back in england we can thank you all personally and meet for a real coffee or a real beer even
better and i think that is all i've got to say yeah louie is obviously going to butt in now hello
you missed me yeah just what i would say hello hello so yeah as she said we're just going to
carry on the journey through romania now we've been here for a couple of weeks and it's it's been
beautiful so far so i won't talk too much about it now i'll see you either next week or the week
after won't we yeah i'll leave you with the five dogs and i'm gonna leave like a little credit
thing thank you to everyone who donated because it's amazing isn't it.
Yeah really really
appreciate it but i'll leave you the dogs grumpy, bella prison breaker, little
devil, our angel and wonky face angel not a wonky face she's really good. if
anyone has any ideas what breed that thing is please let me know because she's already
like the same size as the rest and she's about four months old. four and a half
anyway see you next week or the week after yeah just spend like the last 10 minutes laughing
at all the different positions peppa keeps getting i told you.
i figured she was found
with a cat and i swear to god she picked up some poses from them like who does this.