The Story of Rocky Road Rescue — Part One
“She was just a puppy when she was dumped outside Bragadiru kill shelter because of terrible backyard breeding.”
Meet my two beautiful Romanian rescue dogs, Cassi and Delphi! If you’ve been here before, you’ll have seen my posts about them, where I talk about their adorableness and annoyingness. I’ve also written about the kinds of conditions Rommies come from, as they often have incredibly tough lives.
Luckily, amazing people dedicate their lives to rescuing these abandoned, ill-treated pups. The charity that saved them, Rocky Road Rescue, is one group of those fantastic people. Alex and Kathyrn co-founded the charity, and Caroline is the Managing Director (who arranged Cassi and Delphi’s adoptions!). These are the very people who saved my girls, and I was lucky enough to interview them.
We talked about so many things, and I learned so much about how they operate and the conditions they save the dogs from. I’m excited to bring it all to you in a several-part series, so buckle in and follow for more!
Here’s part two and part three!
We’re discussing abandoned animals and animal abuse, so please feel free to click away if these topics disturb you too much — I get it ❤
Let’s start with Rocky Road Rescue’s background.
Alex: My Mum (Kathyrn) and I have been in rescue for about five years. It was really random: I was on holiday in Cambodia, and someone I knew shared a post about Bragadiru, a public shelter in Bucharest. At the time, they advertised the dogs by taking their pictures and sharing them on Facebook.
So, this post came up on my Facebook feed, and a dog there looked like a Disney character: Benny. He had the biggest eyes, and he was really old, but nobody had commented or liked the post.
I decided I needed that dog. Benny needs to live with me.
Once I get a bee in my bonnet, I don’t stop. I went hell for leather trying to find how to get this dog out of the shelter in Romania and who I’d speak to. From writing on this Facebook post, someone put me in contact with a rescuer in Bucharest, and it went from there. Unfortunately, Benny didn’t make it to the UK as he had cancer. But from there, it opened my world up to what Romania was like, and that was the start.
I was very green, and I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what corruption was awaiting. Still, from that point, I started networking and making friends with other Romanian rescuers. I flew out and got a much better understanding of what it was like from their point of view. People started contacting me, asking me to rescue dogs.
Mum and I started a rescue called Shelter to Sofa.
We each put in £500 and brought one dog over at a time into foster from a rescuer. Then we would rehome that one dog, get the adoption fee for that one dog, and put it back into bringing over another dog. That’s how we did it for a year or so with the overlooked dogs.
After that, we merged with another big rescue, and we were with them for 18 months. We learned a lot of good and bad things during our time with them, but we found ourselves all consumed by this particular rescue. It was taking over too much, and we didn’t agree with all of its practices. So we went out on our own again.
We started Rocky Road Rescue two-and-a-half years ago.
We just started with one adorable dog that I wanted!
Me: Wow, it really shows the power of social media when one post can trigger all of that! We often think of social media as a bad thing, but it can definitely be a force for good.
That conveniently brings me to my next question:
Do you rehome solely through social media?
Alex: Yes! Without it, there would be no rescue. Most of our processes are through Facebook. All of the networking that Caroline and I have done in the past is Facebook-based since she came on as Managing Director.
We’ve now got Instagram with Vicki, who does a lot of networking with pet food and toy companies. People contact her through Instagram, but it’s still mainly on Facebook.
Me: I noticed the smaller engagement on Instagram compared to Facebook. Although I saw a few comments recently saying they’re interested, so it’s pretty exciting to see people have that interest there too!
You finally have charity status after Covid delays — tell me more!
Alex: It’s changed a lot for us; it’s made us a lot more confident as the rescue world can be bitchy, and it legitimises what we’re doing. Registered charity status gave us a feeling of protection, like we were now in the elite category, and we would get the respect we deserved.
All the times that people have said, “You’re a scam” or, “I don’t want to hand my money over because you’re not blah, blah, blah, why aren’t you a registered charity?” It’s a complicated process to become registered; it takes years. Now we don’t get those questions as much because we can say, “Here’s our registered charity status number — feel free to look us up.”
Whereas before, it was hard to explain to people that we were in the process of registering. There’s so much that you have to prove to the Charity Commission that it takes a long time.
We get Gift Aid now, which is fantastic.
We haven’t got it through yet, but my Mum and Sianna have been backdating donations to claim Gift Aid on them, which is amazing for us. It opens doors as we can register with the fundraising regulators now.
*Naturally, my dogs interrupted here by going absolutely crazy*
Alex took this moment to tell me where Cassi and Delphi had come from.
Alex: Cassi (Maggie) is from Piatra Neamt kill shelter, and Delphi (Nona) is from Barlad. I remember every dog I rescue; I know their names and where they came from.
Me: They really are the light of my life! Even if Delphi looks like a stegosaurus right now. They’re not happy with whoever just walked past!
Do you know how many animals you’ve rescued?
Alex: Since we’ve done Rocky Road, around 1,000 animals.
Caroline: We had about 480 something last year, didn’t we?
Alex: We also tried to rescue a horse, but the Roma wouldn’t sell it to us.
Me: 1,000 is amazing! It’s a shame about the horse, but at least you tried. It’s actually another question I was going to ask you:
Are other animals mistreated in Romania?
Alex: Yes. Caroline can answer this one better as her family is from Romania.
Caroline: Yeah, the horses are often used as transport in the villages outside the city. So, whatever they need, like food and materials, heavy or not, the horses transport it.
The horses look like shit.
They feed the horses the same as the dogs, typically a loaf of bread or whatever leftovers they have from dinner. Everyone has pigs and chickens but not as a pet; everything’s food.
Alex: We can appreciate that with the pigs, chickens, and goats. It’s a different life, and it’s not “Western”, but the horses have really, really sad lives, and they’re not taken care of.
Caroline: You can see horses in the city are taxis for tourists, and they look like shit. They’re not taken care of at all.
Alex: Caroline, myself, and my Mum are all equestrians. We all know and love horses. So we can see the battered knees, lameness, overgrown feet, and when they’re in pain. Things that someone who doesn’t know horses might not pick up on. We’re all trying not to look so much as we’re driving through the countryside.
It’s hard because there isn’t a market for rehoming horses here.
We actively try and support a couple of Romanian charities, like Save The Horses Romania (links at the end). They’re from just outside Bucharest, and they do some excellent work. Obviously, it’s difficult for them because they rely solely on donations; they can’t rehome any of the horses. So they don’t get that kind of flow of money in to support themselves.
Romanians don’t treat each other particularly well. If they can’t clothe or provide shoes for their children or care about where they are, they’re not going to care about what they do with animals. Of course, that isn’t all of Romania, as some of Romania is very cosmopolitan.
Caroline: The worst part is the Roma with animals in general, especially cats. When Roma kids see kittens, they just walk up there and slam them with a brick. They think it’s fun because that’s how they were raised.
Alex: We’ve had a few of those situations.
Backyard breeding is quite apparent in Romania, too.
You’ll occasionally see on our rescue page that we have Bichon types or dogs that you wouldn’t necessarily place as a mongrel. Usually, their backyard breeders have abandoned them when they’re too old or deformed, so that’s another issue to combat.
Me: I had no idea that was an issue there.
Alex: Yeah, there are lots of them. For instance, my dog Moppy is a Coton de Tulear mix, and I’ve had her for three or four years.
She was just a puppy when she was dumped outside the Bragadiru kill shelter.
Her back legs were a bit deformed, it’s hard to describe, but it’s like she’s got her legs down one trouser leg. Her hips are really narrow, so she’s not suitable for breeding.
I’ve got Ruby, who came out of the same kill shelter as Cassi as they couldn’t breed from her. Ruby’s a Poshie, so she’s a Sheltie cross Pomeranian. She’s got hip dysplasia and luxating patella in both back legs now. Most English vets would tell me to put her down, but I can manage it with restricted walking and pain medication. I’ve had her for a few years now. If they can’t breed from dogs, they end up on the street or in kill shelters.
We’ve got Lottie and Pixie, a mum and puppy, on our page at the moment. They’re definitely from a backyard breeder, aren’t they, Caroline?
You don’t get dogs like that on the street.
Caroline: 100%. You also see that where they were found, they were dumped in a cardboard box with a blanket and cans of food. So someone knew what they were doing when they left them there.
Alex: That’s a lot of our rescue. Some of them are street dogs, but to be honest with you, we don’t take the ferals because they’re wild dogs, so we take the abandoned ones. My Mum’s got a full-breed Chihuahua they’d just left on some steps in Constanta. We obviously take them to the vet and have them microchipped.
The vet will advertise and say, “Has anyone lost this dog?” But no one ever turns up.
I think I’ve had it happen once where the owner comes and gets them.
Caroline: That’s why we try to do the spay campaigns as well. Because then you can spay them and put them back. Even though they’re back on the street, you won’t have a litter every half a year from them.
Alex: Exactly. Some of them are feral, wild dogs that you couldn’t domesticate. People have tried. We’re trying to bring over abandoned dogs that are just not wanted anymore. We don’t bring over dogs with serious behavioural issues as we don’t want anyone getting hurt.
We’ve already got plenty of dogs in this country with behavioural issues — they’re sat in Battersea and Dogs Trust.
Stay tuned for the following parts, where we dive into reasons for adopting a Rommie, how the rescuers manage their mental health, pet peeves, and much more. Thank you for reading!
If you want to support Rocky Road Rescue, check out these links:
If you want to support Save The Horses Romania, check out these links:
If you enjoy my writing, please consider following me! And if you can spare the cash, a donation to Rocky Road Rescue would be lovely instead of me charging you lovely lot to read these fantastic articles 😉
