in Afghanistan, so we were only ever going to rescue from there, really. I’d been so moved by the stories I’d heard of the animals out there, and the way some of them were mistreated. But when we saw Billy we weren’t even looking to adopt a dog – we thought we’d have a couple of dog-free years so we could enjoy a few more weekends away in Europe! It was all over when I saw Billy on the Nowzad website and loved him instantly, and before I could even mention it to my husband he came home from work and told me about a dog he had seen on the Nowzad website that he liked – who turned out to be Billy. Billy was an older dog – almost twelve – when we saw him, and after reading about his background and how he came to be in the shelter we just desperately felt we wanted to give him a good retirement home. It’s very expensive to get a dog over from Afghanistan, and as Billy was older we thought that not many people would want to adopt him and he’d be left in the shelter to see out the rest of his life.
Sometimes when I look at Billy I find it incredible to think what he’s been through. Billy is quite the war veteran. He bravely served in Iraq in 2006/2007 and was transferred to Afghanistan in 2009, where he worked as an explosive detection dog. He was sent to Kunduz province in 2015 and was working there when the Taliban took power. Unfortunately, when this happened Billy’s handlers fled, leaving him in the hands of the Taliban. We don’t know what happened to him during this time; all we know is that when the government forces retook Kunduz City and Billy was returned, he was extremely fearful of men and was unable to work any more. Billy, who probably saved many lives in his time, was given up on and left to live in his crate until Nowzad rescued him and put him up for adoption.
As anyone who’s adopted a dog from overseas knows, it’s a long, complicated and expensive process. Once we’d decided to adopt him, Billy finally arrived in the UK on 1 December 2016 after spending his three months’ quarantine in Afghanistan. He landed at London Heathrow Terminal 5 at 7.20 a.m., and five hours later he came through from the Animal Reception Centre. When we got him home he ran around the house at 100 miles per hour sniffing absolutely every square inch of it – because he’s an ex-explosion sniffer dog he’s constantly checking for bombs. But now he’s realised that we don’t have any in our house he’s calmed down a lot.
Considering his background, Billy is remarkably well-behaved. The only time he really goes crazy is when my husband leaves the house, as they’ve formed a really strong bond. He was extremely well-trained from his time in service, but I also think that being an older dog he is just that bit calmer, and happy to have a family. He is very food-focused (his particular favourite is naan bread) and he doesn’t have much in the way of table manners, but in fairness to Billy he hasn’t really needed them.
For an old dog he’s incredibly energetic and gives the younger dogs at the park a run for their money. Explosion sniffer dogs are often rewarded with tennis balls, and Billy goes absolutely mad for them. It’s all about the ball. But he’s also incredibly loving and often just wants to snuggle up beside me on the settee.
You’d think an older dog would have outgrown their puppy silliness, but Billy makes us laugh on a daily basis. Only last week we took him on his first ever holiday to the Norfolk coast. We decided to let him roam the property we had rented at night so he could sleep wherever he wanted, and everything seemed fine. But when we were lying in bed on the first night we heard a loud noise and wondered what he was up to. When I went to see where he was and what he had done, I discovered that he’d jumped into the bath and was standing there with his nose pressed against the shower screen, wondering how on earth he was going to escape this situation!
Having Billy has taught us that a rescue dog really can make the perfect companion, and that there are so many wonderful dogs that deserve a loving home. And it’s not just about the dog – it’s great for people too. We’ve always said that ‘a house is not a home without a dog’, and with Billy here, we have a home again. All Billy wants now is to be loved from the moment he gets up in the morning until last thing at night. And he is.’
DOGS’ NAMES: Ted and Zigge Stardust (aka the B Boys)
AGES: Ted is 6 and Zigge is 2
OWNER: Caisa
FROM: Ireland. Ted is from a rescue centre called Dog Rescue Coolronan, and Zigge is from Maureen Scanlon in Sligo. They were adopted through FriendsForever, a Swedish charity.
LIVES: near Stockholm, Sweden
‘To look at my two boys, Ted and Zigge, now, you’d never guess what a rough background they’re from. I’ve always had dogs, as both a child and an adult, and my dog before the B Boys was a rescue too – I’ve never wanted to buy a dog when there are so many unwanted dogs in the world. I live in a small town in Sweden in a flat with my son, which might not seem the ideal place for two dogs, but I live near lots of great places for dogs to run about, so I started looking into fostering.
I know it seems strange, but there are a lot of dogs from Ireland that need fostering, and there is a Swedish charity, FriendsForever, that coordinates this. The first dog I got a call about was Ted – Dog Rescue Coolronan in Ireland had got a message about a Border Collie chained up 24/7 on a farm and went there to get the owner to surrender the dog to them. When they rescued Ted, they realised that he was blind and were worried they wouldn’t be able to find a home for him, so they asked me if I wanted to foster him. I’d never had – or even met – a blind dog before and I started to look for information online, but didn’t find much. But I decided to go for it anyway.
Ted arrived in 2013, weak, confused and thin. He’d been kept outside his whole life and was baffled by being in a house. He’d never even walked up stairs. As a blind dog, Ted had to ‘map’ our home when he first arrived, walking around and memorising the layout (the first day he arrived he peed in the living room while still figuring out where everything was, but he very soon learned). Due to his upbringing he wasn’t really used to human interaction, especially cuddling and touching, but we just let him adjust in his own time. Since he couldn’t see us, every time he woke up I’d say, ‘I’m here, Ted’, because I was worried he wouldn’t remember where he was. But somehow it was never a problem – Ted just handled everything I put in front of him. He’s that kind of dog; incredibly cool and calm. And two days in I realised I didn’t want to foster him. I wanted to adopt him.
Two years later I got a message about a similar dog living in awful conditions, rescued by Maureen Scanlon: another blind Border Collie, tied up outside a farm. He was apparently terrified and hadn’t even been given proper food. I immediately said yes, and pretty soon he arrived in Sweden. We called him Zigge Stardust: Zigge because he couldn’t walk straight and Stardust because he has a cataract in his right eye. Zigge was a very different dog to Ted. He was so scared, hiding in the back of the crate, and was just very overwhelmed by the whole thing. It took a long time to gain his trust. He couldn’t seem to get the hang of the stairs at all, so I carried him for the first weeks, and he was so used to being outside that he couldn’t calm down indoors in the beginning and just walked round and round, stressed out. To begin with I had to have him on a leash indoors to get him to calm down. But he really enjoyed belly rubs and being close to me, and gradually we started to get somewhere.
I have had to put a lot of time into training Zigge to teach him to do things like climb the stairs and deal with sounds outside and into lowering his stress levels. Obviously with a rescue dog there is more chance of them having behavioural issues if they come from a difficult background, but I do think these can be fixed with time and patience. Zigge was scared of many sounds (and I don’t think it’s because he is blind, just because
