I don’t want to write this post. I’d prefer to write about something fun. But it keeps running through my head, so perhaps I need to get it off my chest.

The dog situation. I’ve written before about how the stray animal problem in Cyprus is the only thing I struggle with out here. ‘Struggle with’ is a euphemism. It causes me so much anxiety that it can literally take over my life. I can’t concentrate on anything else, I get irritable, I feel trapped. Why trapped? Because I know that I am completely unable to turn a blind eye if I see an animal who will die if I don’t help it. Die by being hit by a car, die slowly of its painful injuries, die because it’s too young to have been taken from its mother, or die because no one wants it and the shelters are full so it has to be put to sleep. I’ve been told I should grow a thicker skin. I can’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I ignored an animal who was going to die. End of.

So, as I see it, the main cause of all the stray dogs over here is because people don’t neuter them. Pet dogs and stray dogs roam free and, if unneutered, nature happens. It isn’t rocket science. Puppies are then dumped, sometimes on the motorway, often near British communities because of our animal-loving reputation.

I live near a popular hunting ground and during hunting season you will often see abandoned hunting dogs. I’ve seen them dead on the motorway. I’ve seen them half-starved after being dumped in the mountains and making the long journey to the coast. I’ve seen them in my garden.

I’m aware the dog situation is more complex than that, but those are the two reasons for the dogs I’ve found dumped.

The first dumped dog I found was in my front garden. I thought she was my neighbour’s dog and started to walk her back to my neighbour’s house when I was told that she wasn’t. My neighbour’s dog is also a rescued hunting dog, found half-dead by a bridge in Erimi.

 
And this is where it gets very stressful for me. I can’t take dogs in, not even for 5 minutes. Matt is incredibly allergic to them and it is dangerous for him because they can trigger asthma attacks. With the first dog, Holly, I handed her to the police to be sent to the shelter. I didn’t know any better at the time. I didn’t know that if the shelter was full she’d be put to sleep. I didn’t know that even if the shelter had space, she’d still be put to sleep because she had Erhlichia, a condition that is cured with just a 4-week course of antibiotics. I didn’t know that, despite finding a home for her, she would still be put to sleep because the place holding her didn’t have Third Party Liability Insurance and were worried about being sued if she ever caused an accident in her lifetime. Yes, really.

With the help of some brilliant people, we got her out and into the safety of her new home. We found out two weeks later that she was pregnant. A month after nearly being destroyed because of a legal technicality, she gave birth to seven healthy puppies. Holly’s incredible new owner raised the puppies in her home and found forever homes for all of them. I was never so relieved to return to the UK for a much-needed break after getting Holly away from a place that was so keen to put her to sleep.

Then there was Prince, earlier this year. He showed up in our neighbourhood and attached himself to a young family who couldn’t take him in because of their own three dogs. He would only let children touch him and would cower around adults, particularly men – a sad sign of what his life had been like before. He would sit next to cars, as if waiting for his owners to come back. That’s the thing with dumped dogs – they often wait for their owners, they don’t understand that they’ve been dumped. It’s heartbreaking.

The police were called (not by me) and I knew Prince would be put to sleep – the shelter was full. But the police were busy that friday and so Prince was granted a reprieve for the weekend. There is nothing more exquisitely stressful than when the clock is ticking on an animal’s life. I sent out desperate Facebook posts and Helen Monkhouse, who runs a poodle rescue charity, rescued Prince, despite him not being a poodle. A few months later, he flew to the UK to join his new family, confident around all humans, not just children. He’d learned that adults could be kind too.

The summer holidays in July marked the start of over three months of unending animal rescues. A gangly, long-eared hunting dog showed up in our neighbourhood. I tried to turn a blind eye, but he appeared on my driveway and stood there just looking at me. And that was it. With the support of the lovely new dog warden, some neighbours and I spent the rest of the holidays trying to tame him enough to get a collar on him and take him to his new home across the road.

 
His new owners called him Sherlock and we got him tame enough to take food from our hands. He’d sleep on the veranda of his new home, his owner sleeping the other side of the fly-screen, trying to get him comfortable with humans.

But Sherlock couldn’t be fully tamed. His owners secured their garden but he kept getting out. One morning, after a hunting pack came near to the house, he got out and didn’t come back. We thought he’d rejoined his pack, that he’d been lost, not dumped as we’d originally thought. But two days later, a neighbour found him badly injured on the bondu. He had a skull-fracture, possibly from being hit by a car. What really gets to me is that the only time his owner was able to touch him was to comfort him at the vets as he was being put to sleep.

 
At the same time this was going on, we also had the foster kittens for three traumatic months. During the relatively stress-free interim between finding the kittens a home and waiting for them to get big enough to go to their new home, I found Maya. I first saw Maya on the side of the road on our way to Goobie’s swimming lesson. My gut told me something was up. I went back to check on her on the way home, hoping she was a villager’s dog and had moved on. She was still there, now flat out on the ground around a bollard. I thought she was dead, but as I approached, her tail wagged feebly and she tried to lift her head to look at me. It was clear there was something seriously wrong with her. Passing villagers said she needed to be shot.

A neighbour and I got her to the vet. She had an abscess the size of a grapefruit beneath her tail. She was in a lot of pain, but didn’t get aggressive once. Round her neck was a collar with ‘Maya’ engraved on it. She’d clearly been a family pet once, thrown out like rubbish when she became ill. She was with the vet for two weeks while her abscess was treated, she got better and was keen to leave the vet pen.

But just when we thought things were looking up, the vet discovered that the cause of her abscess was three tumours. He recommended chemotherapy; he said he just couldn’t put her down, that the chemo would give her the chance of a happy life.

 
I posted on Facebook to find her a foster home. This time my post didn’t get any attention, not a single like or comment. It appears I’ve posted too many animal rescue requests and they either no longer make an impact or that my animal-loving friends are upset by them and have unfollowed me. I totally understand that, I don’t feel the slightest resentment – because without a shadow of a doubt, I would have unfollowed me if I was them. I hate seeing upsetting posts that I can’t do anything about.

Thankfully, though, Sherlock’s incredibly kind-hearted owner stepped in to give Maya a home. She will be setting up a Just Giving page to raise money for Maya’s expensive chemo. And Maya is so happy now. I saw her on a walk going past my house last week and I almost didn’t recognise her. The sick dog who could barely move now walks with her head high, a spring in her step. I think she knows that she is loved. And for however much longer she’s got, she will be loved for the rest of her life.

 
Just when Maya found a home, Talia the foster kitten’s home fell through because her new owner was allergic to her. We took Talia back and searched for another home for her. We found the lovely Juliette, who I knew would treat Talia like a princess in her new home in Nicosia. I said goodbye to Talia for a second time. After everything she’d been through since I first got her at 5 weeks-old, it was much, much harder to say goodbye this time.

 
Just as we found a new home for Talia, there was a knock on the door. On the doorstep was a neighbour with two puppies in her arms. She’d found them in a box at the end of our street and said there could be more. I went with her to check and found two more under a bush next to the box. There was something about this dumping that made me think it was done by a Brit – the location on a popular dog-walking route and the fact that the person had left food and water. This didn’t feel like a standard couldn’t-give-a-shit dumping – there was guilt attached to this one.

 
What the hell were we going to do with these puppies? My neighbour wasn’t allowed to take them and I couldn’t have them in the house, not even for a night, because of Matt’s allergy. It was dark and the puppies could die if they were left outside in the box. So my neighbour and I walked round our neighbourhood, knocking on doors. It was excruciatingly embarrassing. We left a trail of crying children, disappointed that they couldn’t have a puppy. It was awful. All my British manners and sense of propriety were screaming at me, but what else could we do? The puppies would have died. But thank god, we found a couple of generous neighbours who were able to take them. And I really admire them for doing it. Puppies are more work than kittens – but I think they also find homes quicker than kittens too.

 
And those puppies finished me off. Saying goodbye to Talia, the non-stop stress of animal rescues/finding homes since July – and knowing that tomorrow there could be another one that I won’t be able to ignore. I feel totally burnt out with the whole thing. I’ve always thought that I’m fairly good a handling stress – I was at work anyway. But that’s work stress, where no one dies a potentially slow, painful death.

The animal situation out here creates a whole different kind of stress that I haven’t experienced before. And I don’t have the right temperament for dealing with it. I’m a naturally anxious person, I over-empathise, over-analyse, I don’t like asking for help, I hate annoying people, but I love animals. So knocking on doors, sending out beseeching Facebook posts, arguing with a police vet about Third Party Liability Insurance – all while the clock is ticking on an animal’s life – is incredibly, incredibly stressful. Knowing that I will do anything to save an animal, regardless of who I piss off, makes it even worse. Do I get any satisfaction from rescuing an animal? Not really. I’m just relieved when it’s over.

I’ve been writing this over breakfast in a hotel restaurant. I came here for a few days for a breather and to properly shake off a stomach bug. Why have I spent my last morning here writing this? I would rather have been reading the new Harry Potter in the sun on my balcony. I think I needed to get the last three months off my chest before going back home, hopefully feeling better and calmer.

But I can’t call it closure. Because it will happen again.