22. War Tails

(music playing)

HOST (Voiceover): Hello and welcome back to the Animal Friendly podcast.

In this episode I’m talking to Dan Fine about the Ukraine War Animals Relief Fund and their documentary, War Tails.

WAR TAILS clip (Dan talking): I’ve always loved dogs. I myself identify as a dog. My pronouns are ‘good boy’.

HOST (Voiceover): The war in Ukraine has left at least one million dogs and cats living on the streets and this documentary tells the story of the teams who are attempting to sterilise and vaccinate every one of them.

This involves setting up mobile vet clinics and then catching the animals, bringing them to the clinic to be neutered or spayed - as well as vaccinated - and then returning them to the same area where they were caught. 

These missions are hugely important in order to curtail the animal population but also to prevent a much larger problem emerging.  

These ‘left behind’ pets are interacting with foxes and other wildlife and catching rabies from them. They then infect other animals and also humans. 

Sterilisation and vaccination of these animals is much more than a mission of kindness and compassion, it’s crucial to prevent a serious outbreak of a vicious and deadly virus.

In this episode you’ll learn all about it, and here’s Dan, to explain how the situation evolved.

DAN: So this is the setup of the whole issue. And I call it the perfect storm. The Russians invade for whatever stupid reason they're invading - meanness - somewhere between 8 and 12 million, it depends what numbers you use, the UN or whoever - Ukrainians had to leave their homes. And they either went to a different country or they went to a different part of Ukraine, or to the relatives, but they got out of their villages. 8 to 12 million.

Now here's where it's weird. We haven't heard about this problem before because all our other wars - Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, now Gaza - have something in common. They're mostly Muslim countries. And in Iran you can't even have a dog. It's illegal to walk your dog. So pets are at the bottom of the list. But in Ukraine, they're number 16 in pets in the world, but number 46 in human population. They love their pets. They're amaz...you meet these Ukrainians and they'll have 9 dogs. I mean, it's like crazy. They love their pets. Alright, so that's problem number one. We have a lot...a big pet population.

So eight to twelve million people have to leave their homes. Okay, now, how do they leave? Well, they can't fly out? Because there's no airplanes flying in Ukraine right now. They get shot out of the sky. No commercial aircraft. And a lot of these people are poor, in these villages, especially in the South and the East, you know, in Dnesk and all those places. They don't have cars. Like, their average salary is 300 dollars a month. Or, the roads are bombed, or the bridges are bombed, or there are landmines. So they can't drive.

So the two ways they get out is either by bus or by train. And at the beginning of the war, neither allowed pets. Because all of a sudden, overnight, you're trying to get millions of people out and they're standing like this [demonstrates squashed tight]. I've been on that train. You can go first class on the way in, there's no problem getting a ticket. Getting out of a Ukraine, it's like this, standing in front of the bathroom for 9 hours, right? So you can't take your pet. So we found a lot of pets at the train stations, at the bus stations. Or they would throw them over the fence at the shelter. Now that's the next problem. The shelters are overflowing. And for example, the Sirius shelter has got 4 thousand dogs. It's the third biggest shelter in the world. I think in Taiwan or somewhere has the largest. They can't handle any more. And on top of that, they can't handle them because they got occupied by the Russians. Russians came in, took over like, I think they were occupied for about a month. All the men have to go to war, to fight. They get conscripted. The rest of the people leave the village, they have seven people working at their shelter. Down here at the SPCA, my...I mean, they have like seventy people. Right? For like, a hundred dogs. And like, you can't handle it. So the shelters are too packed. On top of that, they're also very religious in Ukraine, it's like Greek Orthodox or Roman Orthodox or Russian Orthodox or whatever it is, it's a large percentage and there's no euthanasia. So the all the animal shelters are no-kill. No-kill. So they are swelling and full. So that's another problem.

This perfect storm. So you've got eight to twelve million people that left. Almost half have animals so call it like 4 million animals. Let's say a quarter of them were left behind. That's a million animals that are now homeless pets. Dogs and cats that were sleeping at the foot of your bed are now on the street. Okay. So we've got that, the shelters are too full, here's the third problem. Before the war, as an Eastern European country, they're not huge on sterilisation. And so they did have clinics, free clinics but the number, the official number was about 36%. And if you think about where you are, you're probably 70-80%, we're probably 70-80, which keeps the population as [demonstrates a graph staying level]...but at 36% it's still doing this [demonstrates a graph going up] but they were supervised at least. Now, with the, now we go to these villages, the animals...there are more animals than people, they're unsupervised, they're on the street. And they closed the clinics, they're now just starting to re-open them - the sterilisation clinics - so the numbers dropped to single digits for sterilisation. So now the animals are multiplying and you know the math. It's like Covid math. Two dogs mate, they have a litter of six. They have a litter of six. Six years, you've got 67 thousand dogs. Cats are far worse. So if you think about compounding numbers. If you know interest, if you know that kind of stuff, we're talking an avalanche of unsterilised animals.

And then becomes the next problem, which is disease. So they're not getting vaccinated and they're carrying disease and they're fighting for food. And that's not a good thing. And then the other problem with this is - the bigger problem I think, that's gonna cause the rest of Europe to act - is that Russia does nothing about rabies, and they're on the border. And Ukraine had a rabies problem. Not a 'way outta control' problem but a problem. And now rabies is doubling. Because these homeless animals are going into the woods to forage for food, these puppies and kittens are looking...they're not being fed. They go into the woods, that's where the wolves and the foxes are. The wolves and the foxes; they've outlawed hunting because the last thing you wanna do is go into the woods with a gun where there are soldiers and thousands of landmines. So hunting's now outlawed. Wolves and foxes are growing at the same rate as the dogs and the cats, infecting these puppies and kittens coming in for food, who come back to the villages and they bite people. And they're also now crossing borders. So they're going into Lithuania, Romania, Poland, wherever they want because they don't show up at the border guard and go, here's my passport.

HOST (Voiceover): In the documentary they feature Dr Charles E Rupprecht, who is the former director of the National Rabies Program at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and an expert technical advisor on rabies for the World Health Organisation.

Here’s a short clip from that interview explaining how Europe originally got rabies under control and what is now at stake.

DR CHARLES E. RUPPRECHT clip: If you think about the situation before the war, when people had their dogs and cats vaccinated and under veterinary care and when, for either what we would call bushmeat, recreational hunting was going on, in Europe the red fox is one of the major reservoirs that has perpetuated rabies. In fact there was a very, very large outbreak that started post-World War 2. So it was another war that actually precipitated the relevance of rabies in wildlife, particularly in foxes into Western Europe over the past several decades. And it was only because of oral vaccination that Western Europe was able to control and actually eliminate rabies in red foxes where the combination of normal mortality factors as well as hunting pressure now combined with intervention directly by oral vaccination was able to prevent, control and actually eliminate rabies in red foxes from the West and started pushing that front all the way to the East. Which means up until the time that the Ukraine war broke out, the European Union was looking at Eastern Europe as the last front to try to make, or move towards, the EU being rabies-free. With the onset of the war, the breakdown of veterinary health, the breakdown of prophylaxis in public health without any interventions to try and manage wildlife populations, what that means is that this has the threat of undoing all of those decades worth of work and obviously imposing a great public health burden affecting people, wildlife and domestic animals in what we would consider a One Health catastrophe now.

HOST (Voiceover): The wonderful thing about this story is that Dan and the team have developed a solution - which is this mass sterilisation and vaccination programme - and they’ve tested it on the ground. They have already completed 5 missions showing how it can all be done. The people with the necessary skills are already there and they’re looking for work.

DAN: So our goal is; let's use those out-of-work Ukrainian veterinarians. Because the economy is crap right now and they need money, they need work. Pay them to go to these little villages and we work with the mayors to set up clinics and just vaccinate, sterilise and...as fast as we can and do a half million animals and get to the tipping point. Because if we don't, we're going to have so many animals and at some point, when, you know, Scotland and Ireland and France and Germany and the US and everyone wants to go back and rebuild Ukraine; all the hospitals and the bridges and the churches and the schools that are blown up, they won't be able to do that with rabid dogs and cats running around. So they'll do a massive culling and all the goodwill that has been built for Ukraine will go out the door when they start killing puppies and kittens.

So that's our goal. It's like, let's get the European Union or someone in there to say, we want...you think about the European Union. They have strict animal welfare rules and regulations so you can move animals in and out of EU countries. They want Ukraine to be part of the Union. Ukraine wants to be part of the European Union. But they can't do it unless they get rid of the rabies and adopt these animal welfare rules. So let's get them to kickstart this now, put a small investment in, and then use someone like Eurogroup for Animals or Humane Society International or whoever it is to administer these mobile clinics. And we've worked with Microsoft to build technology to help manage it. Like all the field service applications to track the database and the animals, and what vet does it and track their GPS location. And we've even built some facial recognition in AI, so  Ukrainian can pop up a picture of their dog, and then it'll match their nose and their face and their markings and let them know if we've seen them. And so we think we've got a solution but we've got to get the word out, and that's the key.

HOST: That's really good, because I did look on the WarTails.org website and I was looking down at your list of volunteers and reading all the little biographies and stuff. And I did read about one guy developing the facial recognition and it's so exciting to...

DAN: Yeah.

HOST: I thought that was just a speculative idea but you guys are...

DAN: No, that was after...I was sitting having a beer with this British guy from Dogs in the Homes, Gary Baxter, and he was drinking his beer, you know, his pint, and he said hey, how about if we did facial recognition and I went; what a great idea! And then I looked it up and it's actually not even a new thing. Like, PetCo and some other companies have done this. So I'm like, ya, so we talked to Microsoft and using, the Ager platform and AI; the nose is like the fingerprint on a dog or cat and then you use the markings and you can figure out what their breed is or their weight or their size...colour and then...like, when we catch a dog or a cat we always take a picture and we get the GPS location and that goes into the database. So we've built that, we've already built that all out. And it's...it might need a little tweaking but it's good to go. So we just want to get this going, if we can get someone behind us.

HOST (Voiceover): So then we come to the making of the documentary; War Tails. I’ve been lucky enough to see it – in order to make this episode – but it’s not available to view publicly yet because of the various difficulties of getting it onto a large media platform or a broadcast network.

HOST: That was going to be my question, you know, when is it going to be available for people to see, and again, I didn’t realise it was so difficult. I presumed you just called somebody and they were like, hey, put it on, yeah, great.

DAN: Okay, so it's an interesting question. Right now, it's playing, we've applied for - well, let's start at the, the kind of the route. So what you want to do with a documentary, and I learned all this stuff because my only film-making experience was like doing dad movies of like, my girls, doing Cinderella or whatever, when they were little. And now, one of these journalists that had been covering us recommended that we do a documentay, so we had to learn, like, how do you do a documentary? And how are we going to get this footage, and...so we learned a lot. But you make your documentary, and then you try to get it posted somewhere like on a Netflix or CBS or BBC or wherever - in Europe - and that's a very difficult thing because there's ah...first thing is that you have to get introduced to these people and they only kind of work through...you can't just send your film in. So the way they tend to do it is they look at the film festivals. So we've applied at a bunch of film festivals, like the Edinbrough and the Berlin and certainly New York Docs and...and we're in one right now and I think we're doing okay, we're in the Seattle Film Festival. And what was really cool about that is that they put their films online and then people rate them. And you can only rate them if you've watched 90% of the film. Otherwise your rating doesn't count. So I like that. So you can't just game the system. And they told us that we were one of the top three and then they took us an put us in the theatre. So we're actually being playing in a theatre now. So I think we're doing well and at the end of the month they'll have their big Gala (Gahla, Gayla) and they'll do their awards. So if you win awards at the film festivals then these distributers are looking for you.

HOST (Voiceover):  So that was in June and War Tails won the “Audience Favourite Award” and “Filmmaker, Feature Film Award”. Of all the films at the festival, it was the most viewed.

DAN: And then they'll find you...if you win enough awards in Toronto or whatever you're gonna be. Cannes, or...we're not at Cannes or any of those places because it's over with. But we've applied for film festivals so people can see it when the film festivals are playing. And then we're trying to like, contact and reach out to these, the BBC's and CBS's and see, will they play our film. The challenge we're running into is that, you know, all the money that I raised or we raised to do this, we wanted to use on mission work to do the animals. Right? Because we want to sterilise, vaccinate and we gotta go as fast as possible. Which meant we had to do the documentary pretty much on the cheap. And we had to really work hard to do that, and we also didn't have a story. We didn't write the documentary and then go film it. We just filmed when we were over there and then came back. And it was also very interesting, we met a young woman here in Vancouver, British Columbia...she left Khiv during the bombings with her dog, Roger, named after Roger Federer, little pug, 19 hours on the train through Romania to Prague to Paris eventually. And then was convinced to move to Canada. She went to film school here, but she had a background in film, and then she wrote and produced, or wrote and directed our film. So she had to watch all the video and then develop the story. Which is a harder path I think.

HOST: Much harder thing to do.

DAN: Ya, so she did a great job and we worked with the film school and the editor here - very small team - and then I find out, like, when you go to Netflix, they want a budget of at least a million dollars. Like, the Maripaul movie, they had, I don't know how many, but like 30 people working on that. We had three. So our message is important. I think it is. And I'm hoping that will break through. And then the other, I keep rambling but I'll tell you the other important thing. So when I worked in business we'd always tell clients you got time, you got quality and you got money. But you can't have all three. Like, I don't want the best commercial in the world for the shortest time for the least amount of money. You can't have it. You gotta like either pay for it or sacrifice the quality or sacrifice the time. So in our case we didn't have the money. So we had to kind of just do this on our own. And you're also kind of in a war zone so there's a lot of iPhone footage and stuff like that. And you're not allowed to fly a drone, in a country. You'll get arrested, or even shot. Because the drones are Russian spies. And you know, they use their own drones so, no drones are allowed. So drone footage is out, and you're kind of like, you know, bouncing along in a van. And you can't set up a lot of shots. Like, oh, let's catch that missile again. [laughing, exactly]. Anyways, we didn't really have time...so we didn't have a lot of budget and then the quality was kind of what it is. And then time is such a constraint for us. For two reasons. Because I've had people say, let's go back and redo more, and shoot more and let's go get some more money and do this even better.

HOST (Voiceover): This is a good time to introduce another issue into the mix – and this is revealed in the documentary – which is that Dan has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. So he’s undergoing treatment while trying to get this film shown. Even with such limitations on his time and energy, he’s still trying to get awareness of this ever-growing problem out to the public.

DAN: So now that I have my diagnosis and I know that I'm, like, my time is limited, so time is very important to me. And I'm sorry, that's right, I didn't follow that thought through. We were talking about time, quality and money, so time...let's go back and finish that and go back...so time is really important to solve the problem in Ukraine. We have to address this problem now. We can't go back and shoot and then a year later, show this film. We have to...or it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. More cats and dogs are being born every second. So now is the time. The second part is for me, that my time is limited. And I now have a two-week old grandson, who is Ezra, and is the only grandson I have and probably the only one I will have while I'm on this planet. So, I want to spend time with him. That's my new mission. So I've got to get this documentary out and my time is limited. So that's where I choose to, I'm gonna choose to spend my time. So I...time is very very important. And I think that we're...I'm just going to work as hard as I can to get the documentary seen and then spend the rest of the time with my grandchild and hopefully that this thing will kick off and then other people can take that forward.

HOST (Voiceover): As mentioned, the documentary won awards and also proved extremely popular with the audiences, and it’s not surprising. As well as detailing the process of organising and transporting the veterinary teams, there is plenty of action following those who have to catch the stray animals - using blow darts to tranquilise them - and everything is taking place in the most extreme circumstances. There are numerous volunteers and staff involved – this is a huge team effort – and everyone in the film will stay with you long after you’ve watched it.

HOST: There's another thing that comes across in the film is just the people, the friendships. It's really moving because of that. By the end of it, I just felt such an affinity with all the people, I just loved everyone in the movie because they're working so hard and they're such great people and, you know, managing to have a bit of a laugh and a joke between, in the most atrocious circumstances.

DAN: Even if we don't speak the same languages. Like, Pasha, the dog catcher. He doesn't speak a lick of English, I don't speak any Ukrainian or Russian, but we love each other. [laughing]. We just have so much fun and he's laughing all the time. He's always trying to, like, hit on the women. He's a funny guy. And then we also have a lot of...we just have a lot of fun. You know, everyone's working hard but then you get into these extraordinary circumstances and everyone's got to figure it out. And they do work together.

You know, you do this so you know that some groups really work well together and other groups kind of like, you know, like this…

HOST (Voiceover): Here, Dan is making the sign of fists clashing against each other.

DAN: And that was my new experience when I started because I've worked with non-profits and volunteered but never ran one. And then when I got over there and I was like, why would someone do this…

HOST (Voiceover): That’s the fists fighting with each other again.

DAN: You know? We should, like, do this…

HOST (Voicover): Fingers interlocking.

DAN: …and help each other. And I found a lot of people that do, like the NatureWatch and ReactAid and DogsNHomes and all those guys, they really help out a lot with each other. Even in the middle of the night, like, this guy Nick, from K9, he's out there in his shorts in freezing Kharkiv and helping me unload vans. People like that.

HOST (Voiceover): It’s impossible to talk about this film without talking about Khrystyna Dragomoretska, a young woman that Dan teamed up with, who plays a pivotal role in the success of each mission. Here he is talking about her in the film: 

WAR TAILS clip: She is definitely a woman of action. She’s like G.I. Jane with a great sense of humour but also very, very serious about getting the job done, and nothing stands in her way. I’ve never met anyone that can just stay so focused on a mission, it’s incredible. So during the work that we were doing, she was driving a van, delivering food to shelters and people that needed it, as well as rescuing animals and then bringing them back to the warehouse and getting them shipped out to Poland for help. She’s an exceptional person. Some people think she’s crazy, because she gives her strength, her heart, her whole being to animals. And that’s when we decided to become partners, or partner up on some missions.

Khrystyna: (speaking Ukrainian) and then HOST (Voiceover) translation: Hello, my name is Khrystyna, I’m from Podilsk, a city in the Odessa region. I graduated from the Odessa Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

HOST: Oh, I did really want to say about Khrystyna, like wow, she's just amazing. Isn't she? And the friendship between you guys is just lovely.

DAN: Well, you know, you spend nineteen hours in a van together, you know, delivering a whatever. And part of it is, you know, she's less than half my age so she can keep going and driving and I'm like, wow, I gotta get some rest, or something. I'm going to close my eyes. But when we're driving, I'm very curious. Like, when I travel I want to know a lot about the country or a lot about the history. And I like to know a lot about people so I'm always just curious, asking questions. Like, where are we? And what happened here? And I like to...you know, I'll go look up in Wikipedia to find out more about that town or village and where it came from. I really am into that. When I hike, I always want to find out, well, why does this path exist? Was this a Native American hunting thing? Or was this a gold mine? So I ask a lot of questions and you've already experienced that I can talk non-stop [that's okay] but it was funny because she'd be like, you know, she was eating her breakfast and she was like, can you just be quiet, I want to enjoy my breakfast. And I said, sure, and I was really quiet, but then she starts talking, and so...

HOST: She's like, finally, I can get a word in edgewise.

DAN: She's very funny.

HOST: She's lovely.  It's very easy to watch, in that way, you know, it flows along, really. And then there's that great montage of all the animals that she's rehomed and the music…

DAN: She and I were hanging out in London for the premiere...well, not the premiere, but the screening that we did for donors and partners. And someone asked her, you know like, well, you know, why don't you do this for humans? Why are you doing this for animals? And she's like, I don't like people [laughing]. I like dogs.

HOST: Drives me crazy when animal workers are asked that, you know? Like there's a lot of people doing stuff for people, so let there be other people doing stuff for animals. So, good for her!

DAN: Well, the one soldier kind of hits it on the head. It's like, we have spent 9,000 years, or however many years, domesticating these animals, we owe it to them. We can't just throw them out on the street and say, you know, good luck! You know, we spent all this time making you dependent on us and now, you're on your own. You know, that's not right. And so someone has to actually take care of that. And I'm glad there are people like her that do that and people like you...it's important.

HOST (Voiceover): Khrystyna had wanted to join one of the military units but the team managed to persuade her that her talents were better employed helping the animals and containing this rabies threat. Dan went on to talk about these realities of war.

DAN: And Kyrylo, the one guy that did the...Alexander Shupyk's son, he's just been called to the military and I was talking to him this morning and I'm really worried because he is a super-lovely human. Super-lovely human being. One of the nicest people I've ever met and I'm hoping he's going to get into the drone program, into the UAV, which would be a little bit safer. But you know, this is a brutal war, and we don't realise how bad it is. Because the media's not covering it. You know, they're covering Gaza right now. And they, even before Gaza, they didn't cover this. It is World War 2 over there. The Russians are moving through, just like they did, same playbook, destroying everything. And destroying people. They're not targeting military or...they're just wiping out everything. And I've seen that with my own eyes, and the world needs to stand up to these bullies, and stop it, because they're not going to stop here. We're kidding ourselves.

HOST: When you talked about the double-tap, that was heartbreaking.

WAR TAILS clip (DAN speaking): And that’s when I learned about the Russian double-tap. The Russians fire their missiles. Then they wait for the doctors, the medics, the fire-crew, the police to show up to help. Then they fire again.

DAN: I didn't either. And then Boden was like, ya, just wait. He's a Romanian police officer and what a lovely guy too. And I found out that he volunteered at the sanctuary because he was scared of dogs. And he wanted to like, he wanted to like, hang around dogs to become more familiar and be comfortable with them. And so I'd go walking with him, walk the dogs and learn a lot from him. And you know, here's this big guy, Romanian police officer, and I'd show him okay, well, if you want to feed a dog, like, this is how you do it. [laughing]. [That’s so cute]. People are so human, no matter what they do. No matter what their careers or professions, yeah.

HOST: But like, how clever of him to say, well, maybe I should go and hang out with dogs and learn rather than, I'll just avoid them altogether.  

DAN: Ya, he liked them. He just was scared, you know.

HOST: So I did want to ask about the veterinary teams. In the movie, it seemed like the same team kind of went out...they're sent out as a unit. Everyone goes, you set up a temporary clinic, is that kind of how it works?

DAN: Ya, there's not like a national approach because you can't really, the government in Ukraine is just so busy with the war. And typical of like of Eastern European, the mayors have a lot of power so you go sign a memorandum of understanding with the local mayor. And they'll give you a building, you know, you've seen some of the buildings they give us, and then they'll give you a place to stay and it could be with the troops and then you have to park far away because, you know, you don't want the Russians to see all the cars surrounding the building. Or they'll just give you a place to, you know, you stay with volunteers and sleep on their couches, whatever. And then we tended to use a lot of the same people because a) we knew them and they were super hardworking, but also it's harder to send males to the front. And a lot of the veterinarians are males, so, because they'll get conscripted into the military. Because you're going through the checkpoints and when you get to a checkpoint they're like, you know, look at your ID, and if they're Ukrainian, you know, they might grab them. To send them. So, we send females. Female vets. And that's why you see a lot of the same. But we've worked with Dr. Alexander Shupyk and he's...I don't think he's Dean but he like is in charge of one of the veterinarian Universities north of Khiv. He also manages the military horse and dog program. So he manages their health and their training and he's also, I think, the president of, like, the Ukrainian Veterinarian Society or whatever. And then his son, who is also in vet school but also a cinematographer - did a lot of the video work for us. And so, anyways, they can get us hundreds of vets that are looking for this and we can set up the training program for them. Like, this is our process, you have to do this, this and this. To make sure we get all the paperwork and all the, everything's done, you know, to standard. And there's another competing veterinarian society that also that you can work with. Like Small Animal Veterinarian Society in Ukraine. And we've been talking to them. So these people are available to come work, and we can get all the supplies there. It's not hard to get the vaccines and to get cages and to get the things we want. And then a lot of the hunters who used to hunt also can do the catching.  

HOST: That's a tricky job.

DAN: So we use those folks.  Right, and we use the...I mean, mostly the blow darts. But there are pistols and guns that also tranquilise. But they're expensive. So right now we're on blow darts.  And can I tell you a quick story about Dr Shupyk and the military program. So he loaned us - the way I met him was - we went up to his university, his veterinary university and he loaned us one of the operating rooms to do our sterilisations. So we were working there and he wanted to show me the rest of the hospital and the veterinarian university. And then he showed me this video and it was these soldiers with German Shepherds and they were out looking for land mines. And they're trained for that. But unfortunately, I think either one blew up or a missile came and the soldier and his German Shepherd both got hit and they both suffered from blindness. So the soldier went to the hospital and Dr Shupyk was, like… typically with a lot of the animals, they will, oh well, we'll just get another German Shepherd and train him up… but he was like, this animal's been serving Ukraine and we really should do something. And it turns out that they're pretty advanced in stem cell technology in Ukraine. Like, they've moved forward on that and have been really focused. So what they did was, he took stem cells and did like 3 other operations on this German Shepherd and gave it 90% of its sight back. And then he trained it to be a seeing eye dog and presented it to the soldier who was coming out of the hospital - his partner - and it was such a touching video. And so then, that's how I really got to know Dr Shupyk, so then he called me up and I was already moving on to the next village and doing some work, and he called me up and said, can you do me a favour, can you come back and record this in English? And I was like, okay. And so then I showed back up and he had a guy, a sound guy, and we rewrote the script for English and recorded it.

HOST: That's amazing, isn’t it? I'm just thinking of that soldier, wow.

DAN: Ya, true story. True story. And it was fascinating. And that kind of...well, that's when he introduced me to his son who did the video. And his son had been the cinematographer on the video...

HOST: This is the guy that's been recently called up?

DAN: Ya, Kyrylo.  

HOST: It's really hard to believe that the movie was patched together from your footage because it does look...like, when you watch it, it looks like a movie that was fully scripted and planned and put together, and it's like an emotional journey that takes you along. Like, the filmmaker, wow.

DAN: Yeah, I was really, you know when I watched the movie...I've seen it so many times but, only in front of two audiences. And I usually sit in the front row and it's so quiet in the theatre and I'm thinking, you know, do they not like it? Or is it just not hitting? Or is there something wrong, and I don't know. And then at the end, you know you stand up and you look around and you see the faces and you see that it actually did make an impact. And I feel like, wow, okay, we did our job. And it was hard. I remember the first cut of it, I told the team, this woman and man Bryce and Olha, who did the film. Extremely talented, wonderful...really emotionally connected to the project, you know? And working day and night on it. So they made up for the budget and the quality with their work. They just worked their hearts out on this thing. Never seen anyone so really, they were so dedicated. But the first time I saw the film I went, I'll never show this to anyone.

HOST: Really? Why?

DAN: We have missed the mark. It didn't communicate. And here's the problem, I think, a lot of the other videos I've seen, or documentaries about this issue. It's more about the animal rescue. Which is, oh, we're going to go break down the door and save the dog or the cat. And that is important. Also the people in the shelters. They're important. Feeding the dogs and caring for them, trying to adopt them. That's all important stuff. But for me, it's getting to the root of the problem here. And fixing it at the root. Which is stopping the animals from...more animals suffering and more animals being born. If we can do that, that saves us so much more pain. You couldn't get enough dog food to feed all these dogs when - or cats - when this thing explodes. You couldn't build enough shelters. So let's try to just fix it at the root. And isn't that the problem with society? That we screw that up so much. With Covid. With climate change. There are solutions but they're either too lazy or too ignorant or too, you know, whatever, to not do it. And this is actually a simple problem with a simple solution and we're talking anywhere between, like, let's call it 17 million dollars to fix this. That's probably the EU's bar budget, you know, in one of their conventions. And I was talking to an architect that builds shelters for animals in California and she said she's building a new shelter in California, for animals, a small amount of animals. 29 million dollars. For one shelter. For 17 million we can solve this massive issue. And save lives. Children are a number one target of rabies. Fifty-five percent. They're short to the ground. Face and the neck. Charles talks about that. He's the one that educated me about that.

HOST (Voiceover): Let’s hear from Dr Rupprecht again, on that topic.

DR CHARLES M. RUPPRECHT clip: When you see your first case of human rabies you really can't forget it. Because 1) particularly they tend to be young, so it's going to be a child, and 2) the individual waxes and wanes. They actually start to understand what they're going through. It starts very non-specifically. Fever, aches and pains, it's almost flu-like. Very non-specific. And shortly thereafter, one of the paradigms of rabies in humans, what we call hydrophobia. You get the paralysis of the throat muscles. So you not only get dehydrated from fever and this acute, progressive encephalitis but the sight or sound of water, or even the wafting of air, or air coming from a fan or air-conditioning will provoke these spasms, these uncontrollable spasms. And so when you look at some of the archival footage of individuals who know that they're thirsty or know that they're hungry and just trying to drink will provoke these spasms and the water will be thrown, they'll start to regurgitate, they'll start to throw up, they'll salivate to great amounts. That old idea of seeing the froth, that's because of the large amounts of saliva that are being produced - infectious - as well as the inability to swallow. That's one of the reasons, in an animal or human, traditionally, you may have seen that suggestion of froth. Incubation period in rabies, the time between when a person is exposed and when they show some of these horrific clinical signs. On average it's about 4-6 weeks. These are nerve-loving viruses and so partly depends on the part of the body, the severity, the dose of that bite or that infection. And so a longer period, say, if you were bitten on the foot. Much shorter if you were bitten on the head. Worse case situations, think about a small child and a large dog. Situations like this, the child could be dead in a week.

INTERVIEWER: What you're describing kind of speaks to what I've always heard is that it's a pretty horrific death. It's...

RUPPRECHT: Whether you're talking about a puppy or a child, they're fairly horrific and the end stage of life in particular, when that patient is gasping for air, really stays with one.

HOST (Voiceover): I told Dan that, as well as watching the War Tails film, I’d also watched the full interview with Dr Rupprecht, and we talked about the fact that Khrystyna, who was vaccinated, had caught the rabies virus.

HOST: I watched that video as well. I went to your YouTube and watched a couple of other videos as well. Because once you see the film you're dying to find out more and learn more. And, you know… and then I looked up and the last time we had rabies in Ireland was 1902. So we're like, what's the big deal about rabies? You know? Now I know.

DAN: And it's big in other parts of the world. And when you see what happens. Like when Khrystyna got bit. She told me in the... she and I talk almost every day. And she was going into clinic and she was really like, her fever was up and she wasn't feeling well. And I'm not used to her not feeling well. Or at least never admitting that she's not feeling well. Like I remember driving with her one time and she was in pain and I'm like, are you okay. And she said, I have pain. And I went okay, where's your pain. And she went, abdomen. And I went, you want to go see a doctor? No, doctor for broken arm. [laughing]. She's so tough. And to listen to her go through the rabies shots. Now she had been pre-vaccinated of course so she was just getting the four-five. But the fever and the pain and the injection, it was not… she was not in a good place.

HOST: And that's with being pre-vaccinated. So if you haven't been vaccinated, at all?

DAN: You're dead. Well, think about it, down there, all the hospitals are destroyed. And these are villages that don't carry the haemoglobins and stuff. Like, you'd have to get to Kharkiv or to Khiv and you could be talking a nine-hour trip.

HOST: And even then it's not… like, you did explain this in the film. It's just not...even with the best treatment in the world, there's not a lot of hope. So that was chilling.

DAN: It's so painful. Ya, you watch that, it's so painful. And I had no idea either until... you know, when I started going over there, you start just learning. And talking to people and then it's like, what? Huh? What? Oh my god. You know, like, really? And then...you think about it. The country is fighting for its life and they're the underdog. And so they don't have time to like go analyse all these other issues that's happening. They're like, we'll deal with that later. We've gotta like, save our country. And that's a really tough situation.

HOST: So you did five missions there, how long... actually how long did a mission take, you know, the animal missions? A couple of weeks?

DAN: Usually about a month, and I only went on four. I sent someone else on the fifth. But I did four and I wish I'd gone on that fifth, to be honest. But ya, it was, and you get over there and you just work, work, work, work, work, work.

HOST: Were you scared? Or just intimidated?

DAN: No.

HOST: Really? Not afraid for your life, anything like that?

DAN: I mean, a couple of times, like, you hear the missiles and the bullets and you're like, should I be here? [laughing]

HOST: [laughing] Is this smart?

DAN: Or you see a landmine, you know. Those kind of things, you just like, ya, I better be careful. But no, I wasn't really scared or...it was just more like, something I gotta do and like, let's get this done. And you're just in a place is that messed up right now. We just stayed... everyone stayed focused on what we gotta get done. That's our mission is like, we're saving those animals but we're also preventing. Trying to prevent a future crisis, but if we don't do more it's gonna get out of control. And that's the key. Part of my problem now is this thing is almost like a full time job, you know, taking care of...going in and doing all these tests and scans and bla, bla, bla. And then I'm stuck. I can't travel. Because I have to be here every week, every other week. So it's always a short, like 3 days is the most I can go away. And then being in airports is a bad place to be, because of all the infections, and then that's what'll get ya. With... so anyways, what I'm trying to do is, trying to keep up with all these groups. And I've brought on, kind of, two volunteers that are helping kind of take over that part of it, while I really focus on trying to get this documentary played. It's hard, that is hard work. It's hard to get a distribution...you know, to get it on the BBC or a Netflix or a CBS, it's very...because the quality has to be such high-level and you gotta know people and you gotta, you know, and there's all this contractual stuff and there's...you gotta have it in different languages and subtitles and other...there's a ton of work to be...I had no idea. No idea, how much it takes. But the distribution is really weird because like, if we sign with someone then they'll restrict us to do this other... and all the film festivals have these strict restrictions, like, you can't show your movie in our country until we've had our festival. Because what they're trying to do is sell tickets to their film festival. So they want you to go to the film festival. So you can't show it. So we have to sign these contracts that say, okay, I'm not going to show it until the festival's over. And anyway... it's way more research and complicated than I thought... than I wanted to get involved with... but I've learned it now and just going to have to live with it.

HOST: I know, you kind of think, well, I'll just put it out there and everybody can watch it...no, it's not that easy. Wow.

DAN: Well, I've talked to a lot of folks that are experienced in this and like, you know, yeah, you could throw it up on YouTube but then you need a million dollar marketing budget to get people to see it. And no-one's going to come to your YouTube. And so you...that's one way but you've got to have a big marketing budget. Or you go to like a BBC or a Nature or a National Geo or whoever who will...who has got eyeballs. Or CNN, and then the problem is do you have enough quality for their standards. We're going to fight this out over the next couple of months and see where...

HOST: You’ll figure it out. Oh yeah, you were saying you saw the first screening and you were like, guys, we missed the mark. And what happened then...did everyone pile on top of you and say grrr...

DAN: Oh yeah, it wasn't a screening, it was just like they sent it to me like, the first cut. And I was like, ya, and they were like, wow, that's a cold shower, you know? I said, well, we've missed the message. And then we went back to the Dean of the film school and we talked about it and we said, you know, let's kind of restructure things and this is the message that we need to get across which is there is hope and we can do something about this. That's the key. There is hope. We can a) we can help these animals that are currently in trouble. 2) we can avoid this crisis in the future. And 3) it's not that hard. We just need someone like the EU or someone big that can help up do this. And let's just get it done. And that's the message. And once they got that, they redid the movie to make it that way. And I feel like we've hit it and then in the first screening that we did in Seattle and then the second one in London, I felt like that really came through. And people got it.

HOST: It does. And it's really helpful when you watch a film that has a solution because a lot of the time, you watch a film and you're left thinking, well God, what are we gonna do? What can I do? And you're just hopeless. Whereas this is like, hey, there's a solution. Everybody look!

DAN: Right, you've just got to click on a button and tell someone you care. That's all it is. And we're not asking for money. You know, we want the EU to give us money but they got the money. And we're not asking people to do that. We just want people to care enough to click on that button and tell the EU, this is a priority for them. We care about this.

HOST: And did you go to the screening in London? Did you make your flight?

DAN: Yes, I made it. They actually cancelled my flight. I made a second one. Got there and home within 72 hours. Landed around 2 o'clock, maybe 2.30 and baby Ezra was born at 3.13. And I drove down to the hospital, it was so cool.

HOST (Voiceover): I was so grateful to Dan for talking to me but it shows how important this is to him, that he’s working in between chemotherapy sessions and sometimes during…

DAN: You know I actually do a lot of my email during chemo because you sit in the chair. So the first couple of hours you're okay, until your eyes spin. So I start catching up on all my email when I'm sitting there. Unless you get in a conversation with someone, because then you have, you know, you've got 3 people in your room. And sometimes you get into these great conversations with people and uh... but, you know, this is really nothing. This is just another journey, right? It's just another road to go down and, I'm not upset about it. [Good]. It's not what I would choose but it definitely...you know, I've had 65 fricking amazing years and, like I said in the movie with Khrystyna, I had a great experience with her, and we're still working on this stuff. It’s almost like, uhm, it's better because...like, when I'm doing missions I can only do a thousand, twelve hundred animals at once and that's a lot of hard work, and it's a lot of, like, raising money and stuff to do that. But if we can get this documentary out, and we can get the EU to help us, then we can do a lot more. And so it's almost like this is meant to be. Like, this is the path.

HOST: I mean, I feel lucky that you contacted me, because it really is...it's definitely a movie I'd recommend to anybody. And it's not...I mean, I don't know how you did it but as awful as the situation is, it's not hard to watch...

DAN: Ya, we didn't want to make it a war movie. And it was easy because some people, you know, I talked to a lot of people and they wanted to go that route. And it's like, it's not about...it is about war but it's really about the animals and about this, kind of, pickle that we're in. And there are other people taking care of the war issues and there are a lot of movies about the war and addressing that issue and addressing the rescues. That's not what we're about, we're about this pickle that we gotta figure out. Do you use that word, like you're in a pickle.

HOST: Ya, I get it, I do. It's a small word for the big mess but ya, I get it. We're kind of in a pickle here.

DAN: I think they say like, in baseball, if the runner is in between two bases and they're throwing the ball back and forth and he's got to get to a base, he's stuck in a pickle.

HOST: Okay.

DAN: Oh, my next call is calling me, sorry.

HOST: Okay, I will let you go. Alright.

DAN: Alright, if we have any follow up, let me know and happy to talk to you this week, ya. Cheers.

HOST: Thank you very much.

HOST (Voiceover): I have no doubt that they will get it onto a big media platform and I look forward to you all watching it, someday. The music you’ve been hearing is from the soundtrack to War Tails, written by Piotr Nowotnik. The full soundtrack is available to buy online and all proceeds go to Khrystyna’s animal shelter, Under the Sun. 

You’ll find all the links are in the show-notes and you can find all the information at wartails.org, that WAR, T A I L S. org

My huge thanks to Dan and to everyone involved, especially all the amazing and brilliant charities who are helping animals and people in Ukraine. 

And thank you for listening.

That’s it for now, see you next time.

(music playing and fades out).