Nowzad Dogs.

As rescued dog Nowzad ran towards me, I said: Did you think I would leave you to die in Afghanistan? No chance

By Pen Farthing

Is that a bullet hole?' I asked Dave, one of my corporals. 'Looks like a bullet hole to me, sergeant,' he replied as we stared at the dirt-splattered windscreen of the battered white minivan.

This was the vehicle arranged by our friend, the Afghan National Police commander, to transport five dogs and 14 puppies to a rescue centre 700 miles away in northern Afghanistan.

The dogs had been destined to die from starvation or in dog fights and we had been looking after them in our isolated outpost in Now Zad in Helmand.

One man and his dogs: Pen with Tali and Nowzad in Britain

We had been waiting for weeks and the vehicle had finally turned up at the 11th hour, on the day my Royal Marines unit was due to leave the town for another posting.

The van was dented and its dashboard was decorated with plastic flowers. The driver was a poorly dressed, middle-aged local.

I asked Harry, our interpreter, to tell him that we would bring the dogs' travel crates.

They engaged in a heated debate. Harry told me: 'The driver will not take the crates. If he is stopped, the Taliban will know it is for Westerners. He will only take the dogs as we would carry them. They must be tied  up.' There was no time to argue.

'John, find some heavy-duty string. Dave, can you get that tin box by the living compound?' I asked. 'We can use it to put Tali's pups in.'

I knew the journey would take several days. The plan was that the driver would get the dogs to Lashkar Gar and then the police would assist in transporting the dogs to a meeting point nearer Kandahar where people from the rescue centre would pick them up.

I had no idea how the Afghans at the changeover points would handle the dogs. And what about Nowzad, the earless fighting dog I'd rescued from his Afghan tormentors? He didn't like anybody else apart from me and even I had to be careful.

More...

• The pups of war, by the British soldier who saved them from horrors of the Afghan front

We tied up Tali first. 'Sorry, Tali, but it is for the best,' I said as I lifted and rolled her on to her back so we could bind her front and rear legs together. I placed her on the front seat in the back of the van. She propped herself up and stared at me with a puzzled look.

We used a metal suitcase with the lid ripped off for Tali's six pups. Jena's eight pups were placed in an old wooden birdcage. We tied up Jena and two more dogs, RPG and AK, and put them in the back of the van.

It hurt to see the confusion in their eyes as I closed the rear door.

I went to fetch Nowzad. He bounded over to see me, his tail stump in a constant state of motion.

'All right buddy, time to go.' I made him sit as I tied his front legs together and then his rear legs.

He hobbled over to the van. The driver began shouting and pointing at him, sheer terror in his eyes. Harry translated: 'He says, "Fighting dog no good."'

'Tell him it's OK. I will tie the dog's mouth shut.'

I hated myself for doing it but I slipped a strip of tape around Nowzad's muzzle, leaving it loose enough to allow him to drink. I placed him alone on the van's middle seats. I made a loose-fitting collar from string and secured it to the rail inside the minivan. At least he would not be able to go for the driver.

Jena's pups, all of which became ill and died at the rescue centre

The dogs were staring out of the windows like something from a Walt Disney kids' cartoon about animals on a bus ride. It was bizarre.

'Tell him to look after them,' I told Harry. 'Do not leave the doors open if he stops or they'll escape. '

A cloud of diesel fumes exploded from the exhaust and the van lurched away. I turned to the two lads who, for the past three months, had given their time and energy to help me.

'Am I dreaming or did that just happen?' I said, offering my hand first to Dave and then John.

'Talk about cutting it fine,' Dave replied, grinning with relief.

Klaus, our resident Dutch reconstruction expert, was staying for another two weeks.

'If this trip works, can you put Dushka and Patches in the taxi for the next run?' I asked him. He agreed.

Dushka and Patches used to accompany us on patrol. They were the friendliest of the pack of strays that gathered outside the compound gate but I hadn't added them to our makeshift dog pound. We'd had more than enough to contend with.

Seven days later I was in the hospital at Camp Bastion, the main British concentration in Afghanistan, awaiting a flight back to Britain. My tour of Afghanistan had been cut short by six weeks after I had broken my ankle during an operation clearing deserted villages around the Kajaki Dam.

I rang my wife Lisa and she read me the email she had received from the rescue centre. 'It says, "Hi, we have two brown dogs and a white dog with 13 puppies."'

'That's definitely all it says?' I asked again. It was.

The white dog was Tali but Nowzad, RPG, Jena and AK were all a shade of brown. That meant only two of them had made it.

I feared one of the ones that hadn't would be Nowzad. If any of the three drivers had been forced to ditch a dog, I knew it would have been him. And we had sent 14 puppies. What had happened to the one that hadn't made it? I hated to think.

The following day I stared at the computer screen in the so-called 'Bastion Internet cafe', cunningly disguised as a Portakabin.

There were three emailed pictures of dogs in front of me. The message informed me: 'One of the female dogs is white with five puppies and the second female dog is dark brown with eight puppies and the male is with no ears and no tail.'

So Tali, Jena and Nowzad had made it to the rescue. RPG and AK hadn't. I tried to imagine what must have happened.

The puppies would have been in their containers, so Tali and Jena would have instinctively followed.

Nowzad had been attached to his string lead and wouldn't have had a chance to break away.

But if the driver had left the vehicle door open even for a second, RPG and AK would have bolted. The nightmare image of them abandoned, with legs still bound, on the side of the road filled my head.

Nowzad didn't look happy in his photo. He was chained to a wall.

I'd freed him to what I thought would be a better life. But was it really any better? And what sort of future had I given him?

'At least he's alive,' I thought. I knew, though, that the same couldn't be said for one of the dogs I had left behind in Now Zad.

The day before I had called Klaus at the compound to find out how they were doing. He had bad news.

One of the Army engineers new to the compound had gone to the rear gate in the evening to take the rubbish out to the burns pit. Of course, as soon as he had opened the gate Dushka had bounded over, probably thinking it was me. After all, hadn't I encouraged him to come over to me?

The young lad had panicked at the sight of a large fighting dog running towards him and had shot him. The gentle giant fell to the ground and died by the rear gate. Klaus had raced across but when he got there it was all over. He hadn't seen Patches since.

Out of pure frustration I had shouted at Klaus, asking for the lad's name. I wanted to kill him. Luckily for both our sakes, Klaus had refused.

A phrase that we Marines use popped into my head. 'At the end of the day it gets dark,' I said to myself.

There was nothing you could do about that. There was nothing I could do about what had happened.

A month after I had returned to Britain, an email arrived from the rescue centre telling us that 11 of the puppies had died from parvovirus. All of Jena's litter had died. Only two of Tali's puppies were still alive. I was devastated.

But then we had some good news. The American aid worker who had set up the rescue centre had seen our pictures of Jena and had fallen for her. And with that Jena was living a pampered pet's life in America.

It set me thinking. I was worried about Nowzad. I showed Lisa the email. Nowzad needed someone with patience to train him, I told her. I doubted there was anyone around who fitted that bill. Apart from me and Lisa, that was.

She gave me her 'whatever' smile. Then I convinced her that if we were going to take in one dog, we might as well take two.

The words 'You owe me, Farthing' will live with me for ever.

Over the following weeks, we sorted out the paperwork and the money needed to pay for two animal cargo flights to the UK for Nowzad and Tali. I had another brainwave. 'Why not launch a charity?' I suggested to Lisa.

'It's not like we have enough to do already,' she replied sarcastically.

And so we spent hours filling in the applications to form the charity we called Nowzad Dogs.

When donations started arriving we planned to use some of the money for one of Tali's two surviving puppies. We'd named him Helmand and we already had a home in the UK lined up for him.

Four months after I'd arrived back from Afghanistan, Nowzad and Tali arrived in Britain and we visited them at the quarantine centre.

Nowzad was curled up in the far end of the small enclosure. He wasn't barking like the rest of the dogs but when he heard my voice his stumpy tail wagged itself silly.

We hadn't seen each other for nearly five months but that didn't matter. He knew who I was. He buried his head under my armpit as I rubbed his head.

'What did you think? I'd leave you in Afghanistan? No chance.' The moment I appeared at the viewing grille Tali went berserk, running around and around in circles. She finally came to rest at Lisa's feet. They hit it off just like that.

We collected them from the quarantine six months later on Christmas Eve.

When the Afghan dogs met the dogs we already had, Fizz Dog and Beamer Boy, it was almost a non-event.

Both sets of dogs sniffed each other then lost interest. On Christmas Day, we took all four to the beach so that Nowzad and Tali could have their first outing.

After a 30-minute walk Nowzad finally stopped pulling on his lead and sat quietly by my side. This was the furthest he had walked in nearly 13 months, since he'd first crept into the compound and my life.

I stroked Nowzad along the back of his head. He turned his head towards me, his big brown eyes still looking sad, but now showing no hint of worry.

Later that day I checked my emails. The message from a soldier out in Helmand was simple: 'I am serving in Afghanistan and have befriended a young stray dog that lives in the military base where I am stationed. Can you help me rescue it? I can't just leave it here to starve.'

I smiled as I read it. I had another dog to save.

I really admire what the troops and charity are doing in such difficult situations, it helps restore your faith in human nature.

More about Nowzad animal rescue. 

Nowzad animal rescue on facebook.

Nowzad animal rescue on Twitter.

Two great books that highlight setting up the charity and rescuing the dogs  whilst still serving as a Royal Marine in the British Army, and caring for and trying to rehabilitate the dogs the organisation also rescues stray cats.

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One dog at a time book review.

ps. The Pet Bloggers Mall is opening in July loads of shops under one roof and you don't even need petrol money to get there., this Mall will be fantastic with a great team of volunteers working hard behind the scenes to get everything ready on time.

You can read all about what's going on at the Mall here http://petbloggermall.com/

Also there is a Blogville Community calendar to highlight what is happening in Blogville here http://bccalendar.blogspot.com/

One Dog at a Time ( Book Review )

I've been meaning to do these book reviews for a while now but never got round to it, so i thought i will make the effort now before i end up with to many to do, plus i think Sheba's enjoying having a break away from blogging.

This is another of my favourites and another true story this time featuring dogs.  It's about British Army sergeant Pen Farthing serving in the Royal Marines on his tour of Helmand in Afghanistan. A lifelong dog lover not only does he find himself fighting against the Taliban but also the stray dogs of Afghanistan.

His task wasn't made easy by the fact no pets are allowed on army grounds and the Afghanistan's love of dog fighting. So he had to try and hide the dogs and work around his army duties and caring for the dogs and also keeping the dogs safe from the Afghan soldiers who wanted the dogs for dog fighting and also shared the compound with the British Army. So he enlists the help of his wife in England to help in getting in touch with rescue centres in Afghanistan to try and arrange transport to get the dogs out of the Army compound and to safety. It's a lovely heart warming story but will also bring a tear to your eye. Be warned when you start reading it you won't be able to put it down it's addictive.

Sgt. Farthing with a new friend.

British Army sergeant Pen Farthing, now retired, first deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. He had no idea what awaited him, beyond fighting the Taliban. He found the living conditions in Afghanistan shocking: “There was no electricity and sanitation was non-existent.”

Apart from the heat, Farthing decided on first impression that the worst aspect of Afghanistan was the dust. This was notorious even in 1897, when the dust on Dr. Watson’s clothing caused Sherlock Holmes to observe, as his first words in Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

Farthing soon perceived the stray dogs of Now Zad, the town where he was stationed. They were “hard to miss,” he writes, “especially during the dark hours as they roamed the town and perimeter of the compound. There were dozens of them, all types of breed of dog. All had one thing in common: they all looked bedraggled and unfed.”

Soon afterward Farthing saw Afghan soldiers among a crowd cheering on dogs as they tore each other apart. The Taliban suppressed all forms of animal fighting, which was forbidden by Mohammed. Since the end of Taliban rule, however, animal fighting may be more popular in Afghanistan than ever. Cockfighting and songbird fighting are again common; transporting birds for fighting has contributed to the spread of the H5N1 avian flu.

Traditional non-lethal Central Asian dogfighting, in which herding dogs rush at each other until one dog knocks the other one down, has largely been supplanted by western-style fights to the death between “bully kuttas,” the regional pit bull variant. Bred in Pakistan for more than 200 years for use in dogfighting and bear-baiting, bully kuttas are at least partially descended from fighting dogs imported by British troops.

Canine adoptees in the military compound.

But Farthing knew nothing of that. “I wasn’t going to stand by and watch the dogs fight. No matter what someone else’s culture allowed,” he recalls. Though pushed, shoved, and threatened, Farthing broke up the fight, and saw the dogs run away. Eventually the British compound became home to 14 dogs. The first arrival was named Nowzad. Tali was named after the Taliban. Jena gave birth to puppies. Farthing and other soldiers build a special area for the dogs, including a fighting dog they bought from a local Afghan. For the first time the dogs ate regularly, slept on discarded bedding, and were treated with kindness.

Unable to leave the dogs behind when his tour of duty ended, Farthing enlisted his wife Lisa to help rescue them. Lisa eventually located a shelter in northern Afghanistan, more than 700 miles from their base. With time, effort, and lots of luck they found a local to drive the dogs to a mid-point where volunteers from the shelter picked them up for transport to their shelter. Two of the dogs later flew to England with Farthing.

Farthing since his retirement has devoted his life to the street dogs of Afghanistan, heading a charity called Nowzad dogs.
–Debra J. White

There is also a follow up to One Dog at a Time called No Place like Home. I haven't read it yet I'm saving it for my holidays in September if it's anything like the first one I'm realy looking forward to it. And will do a review when i get home after Sheba's told you all about her adventure.