Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Hello and welcome, Stef.
I'm super excited to have you here with me today.
Thank you very much.
Can't wait.
Looking forward to it myself.
And I always find it funny because you're, well, I'm giving away, I always
ask people where they are, but like you're sitting in Berlin and it's really
funny because like, oh, you're like an hour's drive from where I grew up.
I always find that, find that fascinating.
So let people know where, where you're from, you know, I've given
away where you're based and let us know what's your business with dogs.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me.
Second of all, isn't it a wonderful description of the world where I'm
now an hour from where you were born.
I'm Scottish living near Berlin and you were born in Leipzig, I believe.
Yeah.
Now living in Spain.
Uh, so that's just a wonderful sign of what the world's all about.
And here we are chatting together.
Uh, so, uh, And what was your question?
What's your business with dogs?
What are we talking about?
Dogs.
Right.
Dogs.
Yes.
So we had this idea, first of all I was in the British Army for 29 years and
had a full and exciting and busy career.
I retired at 45 and my wife and I had this plan that we were going to go to Bulgaria.
We were going to live there.
We're both skiers and we like the outdoors.
Uh, so we were going to live in an apartment there and, you know, go in the
mountains in the summer and the winter.
It was then that we realized that the, the huge street dog
problem that they had there.
Uh, and we, we are dog lovers and we, we took our dogs with us when we went there.
And we, we were faced with this dilemma.
We can't, we can't have our dogs living in luxury, surrounded by all this
struggle and suffering in the streets.
We can't ignore it.
And we, you know, we don't want to leave.
So we still got an apartment over there.
So we, we thought we've got to be able to do something about this.
But we, the way we got into it, actually, before we made all these decisions,
we Uh, I was over there for a few months and there was a building site
next to where our apartments were.
The guard dogs there had puppies.
Every day I went past, no English, no Bulgarian, just waving to the
guys there and saw the puppies there.
And then I, I said to Nicole one day, my wife, who was back in Germany
at the time, wouldn't it be great if we took one of these puppies and
would it, would it be okay for us to possibly have one of these puppies?
And I got a Bulgarian friend to ask the workmen, is it possible,
and they went, sure, no problem.
And I was like, oh, that's so kind, naively.
And I'd noticed that there'd been ten puppies, but now there was only six by
the time we took the puppy that we did.
And I said, so, so did other tourists take the other dogs?
And they said, no, they just get killed on the road.
And I thought, oh my goodness.
I cannot phone Nicole and say, I took one of the puppies.
Oh, and the other five are just going to die on the road.
So I took all six puppies.
Uh, and I, and I thought I'll take them and get them to the vet, get them
checked out, get them all their, their vaccinations and warmed and everything.
And then I'll take them to the dog shelter in Bulgaria.
And that's my next life lesson is.
There are no humane alternatives.
Don't assume anything, right?
So now I'm in my ski apartment with my two adult dogs and six puppies, with
zero experience of bringing up puppies.
So that was a baptism by fire, which we got through for a few months.
Nicole came over for Christmas and then we both drove back together with puppies,
re homed them in Germany, and we were like, great, that's a good job done.
Don't want to do that again.
So we were out in April and, uh, I came back in to the apartment and
Nicole said, don't go in the bathroom.
And I'm like, well, why would I not want to go in the bathroom?
Don't go in the bathroom.
So I went in there, five puppies in a box.
And she said, you started it.
And I was like, oh God.
And I went, okay, listen, we know the routine.
You've got contacts with the vets.
We know how to do the paperwork, get them all vaccinated, all these kind of things.
Uh, and we got them back to Germany.
And we went, right, okay.
So, and then we were out there in July and we're sitting at, uh, dinner.
And so people come up and said, are you the people who rescue puppies?
And we were like, are we?
I don't think so.
And that, that's when we decided, look, we actually do know what to do.
So we got ourselves trained up.
We got ourselves registered.
And Authorized and everything like that, and that was 12 years and 1, 500 dogs ago.
So, uh, and, and me being hyper sensible, I said, well, okay, we can do it.
But we do it as a hobby.
We won't let it take over our lives.
And now, it's the best mistake I have ever made.
It's a common clichÃ©, but we don't rescue dogs, dogs rescue us.
It's our whole life, our whole passion.
Our daughter grew up with animals, and she even qualified this year as a vet.
So, we've even got our own vet in the family.
Our entire ethos and everything we do is focused around the animals and
we wouldn't change it for the world.
I love that.
I love that so much on so many levels.
And to actually even have your daughter inspired to, you know, to become a vet
so she could do that professionally.
I just love it.
Now, There's a couple of things that I'm curious about because, you know, I live
in Spain, so, you know, having dogs not treated the way, as a German, I think
they should be treated is fairly common.
It's one of the reasons I even started Soul Touched by Dogs because I, The
narrative needs to change, right?
So, but there's also, like, there's not that many, like, at least where I live
or have lived along the last 20 years, it's not so much of a street dog problem.
You don't see a lot of dogs running around the street.
But I've recently heard some people, some sort of dog trainers talk about
that street dogs who are growing up without a family, that they're actually
struggling when they come into families because they're just sort of used to
having that agency of their own life.
Do you have, like, what's your take on that?
So it, first of all, every dog is different, you know, and the,
the dogs that we tend to Uh, uh, or, or satellite charities.
So just, just let me explain the, the structure that we have.
So we're based in Germany and we have like a logistics hub, a baseline,
baseline here, but we support the small charities in Bulgaria.
We have.
a small group of people who are out there doing it.
So, and they tend to be finding younger dogs.
Uh, so, and younger dogs are much more rehomeable.
So they will keep the dogs for four months and they will be fed and vaccinated
and treated, chipped and passports.
And then we publish them on our Facebook page.
We have 6, 000 subscribers.
We have a, We have two Facebooks.
We have a public one and we have a private one for all of our owners
because we re home 1, 500 dogs.
And we, we still consider our dogs to be our dogs.
And if, if one of, if, if circumstances change with an owner, we have it in our
contract that the dog comes back to us.
You might see Sally in the back here.
She was away for four years.
Uh, and then her owner got so ill she couldn't take care of her.
So we took her back and we decided we would, we, she, she's
what we call a resident rescue.
So we, we have six dogs, uh, who we feel, we don't feel comfortable enough
with their, their past treatment and everything that they would be, we'd be
comfortable putting them into a, say, a non professional household with, Young
children, they're very reactive, they're Angsthunde, as we'd say in German, you
know, uh, so we, we, we've got them here.
So, but the main, uh, the main dogs that we transport from Bulgaria
to Germany are younger dogs.
So they've always grown up in a, within a few weeks, in a social environment.
So we don't have that.
That said, every dog is different.
Occasionally we, and we have one dog in our compound here who, Fred.
Fred is a street dog.
Three years old.
The most beautiful animal, uh, on the planet, but born for the street.
Not come, you know, you can give him a warm, cosy box, he's not interested.
He wants to be out and, and we're, we're blessed with having so much land.
We've got 10, 000 square meters here.
Uh, in Saxon Anhalt.
Uh, and my dogs are about to go a bit crazy because I can
see the posts turning up soon.
That's alright.
It's a dog podcast.
So, Fred is a classic example of the kind of dog you're talking about.
He's a lovely character, but he's used to having his own autonomy.
So we've got a huge compound.
And he's out all day, you know, patrolling the limits, sniffing, lying around,
and, and where we are located, we get, we get various different birds and
pheasants and deer coming by, so he's getting stimulation and, and we walk
him every day and, and all that, but he, he's never going to be a house dog.
Because he, he just pees where he wants to pee, you know?
And, and he doesn't, but, you know, there's, there's some dogs, and I always
make a promise, I know I'm going off on tangents right here right now, but there's
some dogs who are designed for sofas.
You know, they need cuddles, they need warmth, they need the easy life.
And our most recent dog was a dog called Alice, who was rescued by a friend of mine
who's a member of my coaching community.
He lives in the Pyrenees, and he drove all the way to Berlin.
to pick up Alice and the two of them are like soul mates.
He's such a kind, gentle soul, lives on his own in the
Pyrenees in a little village.
And Alice was, I always promised Alice in the mornings when we went
to the compound, you're going to spend the winter on a sofa in front
of a log fire, just getting cuddles.
You know, she's that dog.
And it's my favorite story in the world, because, We now get regular updates of
Alice and Jason on the sofa in front of the log fire in the mountains.
And he sent a video yesterday of her playing in the snow
and all that kind of thing.
So we take each dog as an individual and we re home that dog as is.
But Fred isn't going anywhere.
The most domesticated he would go to would be probably a farm.
You know, somewhere where he has his, you know, outdoor.
He's, he's got really thick fur, beautiful kind of English setter,
speckled, ginger and white.
Uh, and he's, he'll never be happy inside of four walls, you know?
So the short answer to your question is, we will take the dog and give
the dog the needs that that dog has.
I love that.
A sofa or free range.
Well, that's, I love that.
I love that.
And so, do you find Um, do you find it hard because like, so here there's
often this, you know, dogs that get rescued here quite often get sent over
to Germany, to, to England because it's just easier to find homes for them there.
Because here, I remember a friend of mine who, like a neighbor who had, well,
there was a litter, you know, and they really struggled, you know, to, to find.
Good homes.
There'd be plenty of people like, oh yeah, I'll have the dog, you know,
but then they just have them chained up in some courtyard somewhere.
So if you want to make sure they have a good home, it's not that easy, right?
So do you ever find if you bring dogs back in Germany, is that
hard or is it easy to follow?
Do you have a wait list for people to, to adopt the dogs?
Like what's the situation?
So what we have is a very active community of, like I say, 1500 dogs rescued.
We, we, it's written into the contract that that dog still, unless it stays
with you, it has to come back to us.
Uh, and we also, cause we do this for a passion.
We love our dogs.
They become our dogs.
So we have a community of owners.
Uh, and so we've got a kind of closed Facebook page of owners who are
also members of the public group.
And they understand the passion that Nicole and I have.
They know that we, we run it efficiently.
Uh, with business processes to make sure that everything is uh, accounted for and
all the processes are followed correctly.
So they enjoy being part of our community.
So when we post something into our Facebook group saying we've got new dogs,
then they work as an exponential network.
So they will, They will reach out to their family and friends, and we have what we
call, uh, repeat offenders, and failed fosterers, all those kind of people.
You know, the ones who say, oh, I can look after her for a few months, and
we're like, okay, can we have her back?
And they're like, no.
She's going to have to stay, you know, that kind of thing.
So we, we have our own community and 6, 000 people who are only,
who are already dog people who are only interested in recommending to
family and friends and people that they would trust as well, you know?
So it's a kind of mutually supportive environment where we, we very
rarely have actual issues with, and we do for controllers, we do a
home inspection, we do contracts.
We do meet the dogs if they've got other dogs and they've got children, see.
They have to come to us and we, we watch their interaction.
They think, they think they're choosing the dog, but we're actually doing a
kind of an assessment of actually, you know, I don't want one of our
dogs to be living with those people.
We trust you with our dogs, right?
Precisely, you know, so, so we have that whole atmosphere about how we do things.
And over the years, over 12 years, we've built, as I say, 6,
000, Uh, 6, 000 followers, and they're, they're very active.
You know, if you go onto the Facebook group, you can see we, we're running a
Christmas, uh, sponsorship program at the moment for the dogs in Bulgaria,
because we've got small satellite charities looking after them, and this
is like expats living there, and they're, they've got their house, and they've got
a yard, They've got some puppies there, and they live domestically in the house,
and the people that we work with, we've vetted them, we've been there, you know,
they're friends of ours, you know, we support them, so what we do is we offer
a certificate program where you can sponsor for 20 euros a month, you get a
certificate so that you, for Christmas, you could give that gift to someone.
You know, you know, we buy presents because we have to
and everyone's got everything.
So it's such a unique, beautiful thing to get a certificate to say,
you're going to support Little Lily.
Here's some pictures of her.
Uh, for the winter, and that's a massive boost for our people in
Bulgaria, because we can say to them, your, your winter fuel bills, your
winter food bills, any veterinary bills, they're covered for the winter.
Because a lot of them are working on passion, enthusiasm, they're,
they're retired people, you know, so they don't have a huge budget.
So, uh, that, that's something that can be seen on our Facebook as well.
You'll see the certificates.
So our, our community is incredibly active.
For I love that because it's always about trust, you know, I think that's
the on both sides, you know, so it's like, because I remember when I
had, you know, like I had my little, little hustle there that, that,
uh, and I had all these shelters.
And it was just like, yeah, here are pictures of misery and the PayPal link,
you know, so where there is just that.
So you managed to really build a community around it.
So where you know, there's, there's people you can trust,
they know they can trust you.
So it's transparent and open.
And I just, I just love that.
That's why we don't actually advertise because we, we, we don't
want to compete with the RSPCA ones.
And like it is, it's misery because we, we want people to do it for the love.
Not out of the pity, you know, so and as we say we've built an organic community
of dog lovers So we don't we don't pump out ads and everything like that.
The community is kind of self supported We're always more interested in other
people coming in but but they come into the community We don't just
want faceless donors putting money into an account It's about, hey, you
can see your, your money being used.
Just go in the group every, every day.
There's new posts going up of people sharing pictures of the
dogs walking and stuff like that.
So it's a, it's a beautiful space.
I love that.
So something that we touched on in the conversation we had before
this, that I'm curious about.
Because most of the time what I see here is that, you know, people who rescue dogs,
yeah, they're just kind of like passion and I don't know, like, you know, just
trying to sort of wing it, whereas yours is so well organized and you said it
before, like you run it like a business.
Is there, is there a tip or like, is there somewhere where, you know, What
would you say to somebody who goes, look, you know, I would really love to
start rescuing dogs, where do I start?
So, great point.
Absolutely right.
And the reason why, first of all, Nicole and I are both business coaches in
the first instance, but we'd also seen people whose lives have been destroyed
purely by leading from passion, because passion will, will destroy you in
the end if you don't have process.
and boundaries.
And that's what we learned.
And very, very early on, Nicole and I, as a kind of protective measure
for ourselves, for our own mental well being, we said, right, we are
going to help dogs in this area.
And those are the only dogs we're going to look at.
We don't look at web pages from Spain, from Serbia, from Albania.
We, we, we block ourselves off to that.
That's not that we don't care about them, but we cannot do anything about them.
So we keep all of our emotional energy and physical effort in the
zones where we are, and we will, we will help the dogs that we can help.
And, and the other thing is we, we have set up, uh, the, the financial model
is that every dog that comes through from being found in the street to,
in Bulgaria, being cared for, for up to four or five months, transported
on a, a, a professional trusted.
Transporter that we've been working with for years.
love the animals as much as we do and they get taken from the door of our people
and delivered to our compound personally and we track them on the journey.
They turn up with us and then they'll stay with us until
such times as they're rehomed.
But when they're rehomed we take a fee.
That fee covers the costs of the next dog coming through.
So we never find ourselves in a situation where We have like a hundred dogs
to care for and no money coming in.
We, we, we have a kind of throttle, you know, where we control the dogs go
through and then we can take more dogs in, you know, uh, don't get me wrong.
It's running hot at the front end and there's some heartbreaking stories
there, but we, we have to, we have to understand that over the next 10
years, We will rescue a lot more dogs than if we just went and picked up
every dog that we saw and just Gathered them and loved them and hugged them
and gave them the love they deserve.
Don't get me wrong, but as a process, you have to say, right, this is our
capability, this is our capacity, this is how we're gonna do it.
And, and we've, we've kind of found this sweet spot where the, the, the kind of.
process takes the dogs through as the other dogs are turning up now.
And that, that's the only way you can do it.
You run it as a business.
It's not for profit.
We take no money out.
In fact, Nicole and I put all of our income in, you know, I even paid all
my Daughter's education for her to become a vet because, A, because she
loves animals and she loves being a vet but, you know, a great investment
to have your own vet in the family.
Well that's the ultimate, yeah.
Nicole and I are just so passionate about animals that we, we willingly give
up our entire lives to it and it's not a sacrifice, you know, but we're also
using all of our income that we can get to build our centre here so that we
have greater capacity to do more dogs.
But we will not eat more dogs.
Until we have the capacity to do so.
That's the kind of business process that has to be the overriding factor, you know?
So that's, that's my, my advice.
I love that because it's, it's, because that's the thing is like, if you just
kind of overload yourself and then it all goes well, you know, if you
break down, you help no dogs, right?
So.
Precisely.
And we've seen wonderful people lose everything because
they just led with the heart.
And didn't use the brain, you know.
Yeah.
Love that so much.
So where can people find the Facebook group?
Where can people connect with you?
Where can people maybe sponsor a dog like that?
You know, what's the best place to send them?
Okay.
First, I have to tell you the story of why we're called Rila's Dream.
Oh, yes.
So if I take you right back to the beginning, the first puppy that I rescued,
it was the 3rd of November in Bulgaria, in the mountains, The Reeler Mountains
was the name of the mountains, and there was a bunch of puppies lying in the
frosted grass, no blanket or anything.
And then there was a little black and white one lying on her own.
So my first thoughts were, well, if I'm taking one, it's her.
She's the, the runt of the litter.
And so she was forlorn and freezing and shivering and everything.
I picked her up, put her in my jacket.
And I thought, right, that's that done and dusted.
She is my baby.
That's it.
We thought of a name for her.
And it was really the mountains that we were in.
When I had her in the apartment, uh, she would lay in the sun, sunbeams.
from coming through the window.
And when the sunbeam moved, she would get up and move and lie in the sunbeam.
And it was like, when she was lying in the grass that 3rd of November,
she was dreaming about being warm, having a full belly, having
love, all of that kind of thing.
And she got all that.
She's passed now, sadly.
She's gone over the Rainbow Bridge.
But, uh, I, when Nicole and I were like, what, what can we call our charity?
And I said, well, this all began with Rila dreaming about
having a home and a full belly.
So let's bring that dream to every other dog that we can do,
but let's name it after Rila.
So our charity is called Rila's Dream.
And you'll find us on, uh, Facebook, I can drop the link in here.
Uh, you'll see a full and active community and all our, all our
dog owners who are in there.
Uh, you asked about how could people sponsor us?
A lot of people want to send us blankets and food and everything, and we love the
generosity, but to send it to us here in Germany, it's actually, it does more
harm than good because then we've got to transport that to Bulgaria and it's It's
2, 000 kilometers to where we're, we're going almost, you know, 1, 500 at least.
Uh, so what we have is we have a Facebook, uh, PayPal account there, and the thing
that works best for us, although we, we will take anything that people can give
us, But what helps us is just a small monthly subscription, donation kind of
thing, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever it is.
Because that then allows us to plan, and we can then, we know that that's
coming in over a longer term, so we can, like for the winter sponsorship
program, we can forecast and say, right, we're going to send you all of this,
we're going to send you all of that.
And I understand that.
The trust difficulties because there are so many people out there who
are just using dogs and people's hearts, uh, to exploit them.
If you go on our Facebook group, you will see we are the real deal.
We are living and breathing dog rescue.
And you'll see all of our community and all of the testimonials.
So if someone's looking for a safe place to put a very small amount of money
every month and see it all go to the dogs, 100 percent of it goes to the dogs.
Then Realist Dream PayPal is the place to make that donation.
I love that.
Thank you so much.
This was really refreshing and heartwarming.
And so thank you so much for coming and I'm going to join
that Facebook group right now.
Wonderful.
Thank you very much.
I look forward to seeing you again.
You take care.
Take care.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.