What It’s Like Working With Shelter Dogs in Ukraine
This week we sat down with a member of our community named Gordon Price. Gordon is an American from Portland, Oregon. For the last ten years he’s lived in Europe, and most recently he has been working with shelter dogs in Ukraine. In our interview, Gordon told us about why he felt drawn to Ukraine, what it’s been like living there and helping dogs during the war, and how you can get involved to help.
Gordon (bottom left and surrounded by the dogs that he's helped in Ukraine) tells TOC, "I have been in Ukraine for about 20 months, but in the next month or two, once I get transport for me and two dogs sorted, I will be going back to Netherlands. I hope to find a way to keep supporting the shelters here, potentially facilitating adoptions to Netherlands, since I can come back and actually meet the dogs and maybe do a better job pairing dogs and people. And in a perfect world I would open my own shelter, focused on “problem” dogs that just suffer in a traditional shelter environment."
You were an architect and software developer? Why did you decide to transition to studying dog training? When and why did you decide to move to Ukraine?
At the beginning of the war I found myself very frustrated. Here was a country fighting for its very existence, and I wanted to DO something to help. I had been in the Army in the late 80’s, but my job was maintaining aircraft radios, not something useful in Ukraine like medic or EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal). Eventually I decided I would just come for a few weeks, and sort out what I would do upon arrival, so I made plans to come in the autumn of ‘22. I was unbelievably naive, and I told myself worst case I could wash dishes in a kitchen making food for other volunteers.
But I had also been a “dog person” all my life, growing up with dogs and always dog and house sitting for friends so they could vacation without kenneling their Rottweilers. Anyway, I had been following a YouTube channel called Love Furry Friends for some time. Olena had been documenting her rescue work in an around Odesa for some years before the war, but since the war, the channel had been more… intense. In any case, on the train from Poland, I managed to get in touch with Olena’s team, who got in touch with Oxana [another rescuer], who got in touch with the shelter she works with. Once I arrived in Kyiv, for the next 12 days I walked dogs twice a day for the shelter.
When I returned to Rotterdam I found myself realizing that I basically hated my job and had been done for some years. Two weeks of looking forward to “work” with the dogs every day had just made it impossible to deny that now. And then as the year ended, three “firm” customers ghosted me and New Years brought the realization that a business I no longer wanted to do was also basically failed.
At first I had no idea what I could do, but I decided I could just return to Ukraine and be “useful” at the shelter and sort the bigger picture out later. It took a few weeks to realize I could actually take an online dog training and behavior course, and use the time in Ukraine as intensive practical work experience.. In any case, by spring of 2023 I was driving in a donated ambulance convoy organized by Zeilen van Vrijheid with a bunch of clothes and dog gear in back.
What has the experience been like living there during the war?
The war itself is always in the back of your mind, but mostly at a distance, at least here in Kyiv. Many if not most of the Ukrainians I know have friends or family who are fighting or still living much closer to the war. Indeed, some of the Keepers I have worked with are not from Kyiv at all. Some have escaped places like Mariupol to Kharkiv, only to have to flee again. But most of the time it’s not something I think about, until I hear a Shahed or a cruise missile fly by, or worse yet, detonate almost overhead from AA fire. But then you have a scared dog to deal with and you push those concerns away to do what needs to be done. Ukrainians provide that inspiration every day, simply getting on doing what needs to be done, usually with a wicked sense of humor to make it a bit easier.
You work with shelter dogs in Ukraine. What’s it like for dogs living there during the ongoing conflict?
The conditions in the shelters can be pretty grim from a western standpoint. Chicken wire and plywood enclosures, outdoor enclosures, etc. And with the war, overcrowding is a massive problem. Way too many times I have seen dogs put together in a kennel without a proper evaluation, sometimes with bad results. But there just isn’t room, and I wouldn’t want to have to try to decide which dog gets sent away. The fact that there basically is no such thing as a kill shelter amazes me, but at the same time it does make the overcrowding issue even more acute. I do think the war has impacted the dogs themselves, in that I have seen a lot of injuries, dogs missing limbs for example. And just generally traumatized dogs. On the one hand it is often hard to see, but frequently the dogs show an amazing resilience that makes it easier to, again, do what needs to be done, and try to make their lives as full as possible.
At least at the shelters I worked at, most dogs got walked twice a day, in a park type setting. And the keepers and volunteers for the most part have their hearts very much in the right place. Many are professionals, Kinologs (basically a combination of trainer & behaviorist with education in breeding as well) with a background in force free and positive reinforcement based training. One of the shelters even did training for volunteers before they could walk dogs educating them about the importance of sniffing and how to walk a dog on a harness.
Tell us about a dog that you’ve met there that’s made a big impression on you.
There have been so many dogs that I call my Professor Dogs because they taught me something important, perhaps even something I couldn’t have learned from another dog. But I think a good example to mention here is Cindy. She came in one of the first trucks from Kherson, after the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed. I suspect she had been close to the dam since she arrived covered head to toe in light oil, perhaps turbine oil from the power station destroyed with the dam. She was also covered in hundreds of huge ticks. I had never thought about it before but in a flood the ticks are knocked off the foliage and a floating animal becomes their only refuge. It took hours to remove all the ticks, and again for multiple baths to wash as much of the oil off her as possible. Weeks later she still smelled of petroleum. It also looked to me like she had been nursing not very long prior, so I suspect she may have lost her litter in the floods. And finally, she had zero understanding of walking on a collar and leash, or indeed of paying any attention to the wants of people in general. And yet she wasn’t afraid of people, just shy, and traumatized. I think it’s very likely she was a “village dog,” not owned or controlled by anyone, but cared for by many, while still living free to make her own decisions in life. A common scenario in Ukraine, and if true, landing locked in a small cage in a shelter after surviving all that was a brutal experience.
She taught me to understand the value of a long leash, to let a timid dog find their own comfortable distance, and to notice the changes in that distance over time as a proxy for changing levels of trust, long before petting or even taking treats was an option.
If someone in our community wants to support people and dogs in Ukraine, how do you recommend they can help?
Nova Ukraine is a good charity here, as well as Greater Good, an international charity that has been in Ukraine since before the war. Both support shelters and other animal oriented causes, as well as many other efforts. And Shelter Khvostati, the largest shelter in Ukraine, comes highly recommended by some Kinologs I trust.
