Meet the kind-hearted woman who saves stray cats and dogs from war-torn countries across the world

With a puppy in Iraq this year

When Louise Hastie was posted to Iraq for her first tour with the Territorial Army, she thought she was prepared. They’d trained her to use a gun and shoot at targets, they’d warned her to say goodbye to her family and write letters to the people she loved in case she didn’t come home.

But nothing could have prepared Louise for the horror of war. It was January 2004,
and in her logistics role Louise had never felt fear quite like it. Bullets whizzed past the army base at all times of the day, leaving her shaking, and the ground shuddered when bombs were detonated.

"Those first few days were terrifying,’ says Louise. "But one thing that really struck me, that I hadn’t even thought about when I’d received my sign-up sheets, were the animals – the innocent victims caught in the crossfire."

Even without the battles, the lifespan of a stray dog or cat born in a desert country like Iraq was short. It can hit 40˚C in the summer and -20˚C in the winter. The ground freezes, and there’s no chance of finding food unless they scavenge trash. With war ravaging their turf, their lives were made even more unbearable. Louise witnessed awful human suffering, but while there were charities delivering aid to the people of Afghanistan, the dogs and cats were often left to fend for themselves.

As Louise and her troops travelled between different bases, she witnessed dozens of pitiful animals on the roadside. Some were dead, and some had been hit by armoured vehicles, so were pulling themselves around with broken bones and mangled limbs. Sadly, rabies was also rife.

"Having grown up with pets, I’d always been an animal lover. When I was 15, I’d witnessed a pet shop owner put two live mice into a snake’s cage. I marched over, bought the mice and reported him to the council," Louise says. "So seeing the pain these creatures lived in was heartbreaking. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing."

The locals saw stray cats and dogs as a nuisance and poisoned them, but the poison they used paralysed the respiratory system, leaving them to die a slow, cruel death.

"It sounds bad and it was, but despite all of that, there was something magical about Iraq. The people were lovely, the landscape beautiful. So when my six-month tour was over, I decided to apply for a job in a private security company so I could stay. I lived on a US military base, but as a civilian," Louise explains.

"Everyone said I was mad and I’d never make a difference. I wanted to close my eyes to their pain, physically and metaphorically, but I couldn’t, especially when one of our cleaners brought me a half-dead kitten. My boss told me I had to get rid of it, but I couldn’t. Instead, I nursed the poor creature back to health, and called him Simba Al-tiqriti."

Louise went to great lengths to keep Simba secret until she moved to a new camp in November 2005, when her boss pulled her to one side and said she had to let the cat go. Louise knew he was right. But she couldn’t bear the idea of throwing Simba out on the streets and knew he’d never survive if she did. So she hatched an elaborate plan: one of the cleaners would take various taxi journeys to smuggle
him over the border to Kuwait, to have him treated and eventually flown to Louise’s parents in the West Midlands.

It was breaking all kinds of international laws and placing Louise and the cleaner at incredible risk, but she couldn’t see any other option and was willing to do whatever it took to keep Simba safe. Although loads of things went wrong, a friend eventually got hold of Simba and he made it safely to the UK.

"After that, word got out that some crazy woman was prepared to risk everything for animals and people started emailing, asking me to help. How could I refuse?" Louise says.

So she came up with more and more wild schemes to save cats and dogs from certain death. The American armed forces used to let me send medication and food packages to the frontline in their tanks – then they’d send back photos of happy, healthy animals our packages helped. I organised for three cats from Iraq, Doodle, Phoenix and Pudding, and two dogs, Zeus and Gabriel, to come back to the UK and live with my parents until I could join them," Louise says.

In December 2009, she moved to another security company, this time in Afghanistan. When Louise’s mum read about a local Afghan dog shelter, Louise got in touch and offered to help. Soon, she was working 20 hours a day, between her job and volunteering there.

Louise couldn’t keep going like that forever, so in May 2010 she quit her job to focus on the shelter. They couldn’t afford to pay her at first, so Louise lived on her savings for six months.

"It was hard work, but incredibly rewarding," Louise says. ‘I was getting to help cats and dogs all day, every day, and we were slowly making a big difference."

Eventually, a suitable plot of land was found and Louise and the team built a big new shelter. It was fairly basic, and because Louise wasn’t trained as a vet
all she could do was vaccinate, de-worm and de-flea the animals, as well as feed them and offer them companionship and cuddles like they’d never known before.

"When an international animal charity heard about us, they got in touch and gradually they trained a local man as a vet to treat the dogs and cats properly. Slowly, we became big enough to employ a cleaner and another vet, and house around 100 dogs," Louise explains.

In October 2015, Louise decided to return to the UK because she was so exhausted. During her tenure, the Afghan sanctuary saved hundreds of animals and helped improve the way locals treated both strays and pets.

Back in the UK

"Although I was leaving Afghanistan, I wasn’t going alone. I took with me five more dogs – Robo, Joe, Bell, Holly and Foxy – and four cats – Pookie, Baron, Zabba and Shariq. It was a hell of a mission getting them home and cost £16,000, which I fundraised thanks to the incredible generosity of friends and strangers here in the UK, but I’d promised them all I’d keep them safe and I was never going to break that promise," Louise says.

"We all now live together with my Iraq pack too. I’d never wanted children – I’d seen war, it’s not much of a world to bring little ones into – so these animals are the closest things to me."

Back in the UK, Louise is still helping animals by working full-time as a yard manager for a dog rescue centre in the West Midlands. She’s also a trustee for War Paws, a charity based in Iraq, which raises money to neuter the stray population, feed them and tend to their wounds.

"We are in talks with the Iraqi government about the importance of population control and rabies medication, but it’s a long process," Louise says. "We won’t give up."

Louise also organises the exit arrangements for any dogs who are being adopted by families in the UK and US. It’s a complicated, expensive procedure, but there are lots of people like Louise out there who just have to rescue these pups.

"I may not be changing the world, but I’m glad to be giving these wonderful animals a safe, happy and healthy life," Louise says. "I’ve seen dogs that have been beaten up, starved and shot at, yet are so gentle and loving – they long for happy homes, and it’s my mission to help find them a place to belong and be loved."

Helping hounds

Some of the stray dogs Louise and the War Paws charity have saved over the years.

Controlling Fleas and Ticks in the Yard

How to Treat Your Lawn for Fleas and Ticks

If your pets have fleas and/or ticks, you have no doubt gone to great lengths to treat them and to control the fleas and ticks. You have probably vacuumed the house and car from top to bottom, and washed everything in sight in your efforts to get rid of these pesky blood sucking parasites. But there is yet another step you will need to take to make sure all your efforts are worthwhile.

Many people forget that their pets also spend time outside in the yard. If your dog or cat spends a lot of time outdoors, this will be where the majority of the flea population is also living. Even if you have treated your pet for the fleas, the problem may persist because the fleas still have a proximal advantage to your home. And remember, fleas can live on your blood, too, not just your pet’s. So, along with the inside of the house, you will need to give the yard some attention in order to bring an infestation under control.

Mowing and Pruning

Look around your yard. Identifying the areas where fleas and ticks are likely to live is fairly easy. Fleas love to congregate in places where they are protected from bright sunlight and that have slightly higher humidity. This includes your dog’s house, sleeping and feeding areas, and underneath lawn structures. Ticks, on the other hand, do best in tall grasses and branches, where they can climb up to grab onto a passing animal or human.

A cheap and easy way to reduce flea and tick populations in your yard is to keep the grass, trees and shrubs trimmed and orderly. Clean up all of the piles of debris and leaves that may be littering the ground. Sweep off patios and under decks and lawn furniture. Remove or secure any garbage bins that may attract rodents or small animals that could be carrying fleas and ticks.

Chemicals

Unless you have a major infestation, keeping the yard clean and debris-free should help break the flea and tick life cycle. You may not need to use chemical treatments in your yard, but if it becomes necessary, make sure to read the labels carefully before choosing which one to use.

This last precaution is very important, since some chemicals can be harmful to pets, fish, and humans, so be sure you know the correct way to use them before you use them, and follow all application directions closely. If you are using the chemical outdoors, look for a chemical that is specifically labeled for outdoor use, otherwise you might be wasting your money on a product that will break down in sunlight and humidity/rain.

Flea treatment should only be necessary in the shady, humid areas of the yard, where fleas like to congregate. Open areas that get plenty of bright sunlight won’t need to be sprayed. Focus on areas under bushes, trees, decks, dog pens, and such. This will help control the immature stages of fleas that make up the majority of the population.

Natural Solutions

As an alternative to chemicals, you may consider using beneficial nematodes in the yard. These are microscopic worms found naturally in the dirt. Application of nematodes is done with a sprayer or spreader. These types of worms are not parasitic to mammals and do not affect humans, pets or plants. 

What they do is actively seek insects, such as fleas, inserting themselves into the immature insect’s body. The nematodes then send out a toxin that kills the fleas within a short period of time. The nematodes are able to reproduce in the yard where they have been released, and their effects will last for several months. 

Other options may be to spread an abrading agent, such as diatomaceous earth, on the lawn. This product is made from the ground-up bodies of microscopic fossils; it works by drying out the bodies of adult fleas, thereby killing them. Look for a natural grade of diatomaceous earth in your garden or pet store. This dust works best when conditions are not very wet, so if you live in a very humid, rainy part of the country, where this product can be washed off or broken down by moisture, this may not be the best solution for your outdoor spaces. 

No matter which method you choose to use in your home or yard to eliminate fleas and ticks, be sure to get advice from your veterinarian before use. Chemicals — and even naturally derived products — can be dangerous to animals when not used in the intended manner, or when an animal’s health is already at risk. 

Do Dogs and Cats Have Long-Term Memories?

We often hear the expression that “pets live in the moment,” but anyone who owns a dog or cat will tell you that they’ve experienced incidents that challenge that statement. Have you ever put your dog in his crate, opened the door several hours later, and watched him make a beeline to where he was last chewing his rawhide? What about those stories of cats getting lost and finding their way back home years later? Or the dogs who bury their bones in the backyard being able to dig them up months down the road? These types of incidents suggest that pets are capable of forming memories, and not just short-term ones.

Like Humans, Dogs and Cats Can Store an Array of Memories

“Dogs and cats have different types of memories, just like we do. They have spatial memory, remembering where things are located, short-term memories, and long-term memories,” says Dr. Brian Hare, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Los Angeles-based veterinarian Dr. Jeff Werber adds that pets are capable of storing many different types of memories—“from the little things like knowing where their food or litter box is, to recognizing people and places they haven’t seen in years.”

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Memories

According to Hare, short-term memory, or “working memory,” is a kind of memory that allows people to keep information—like a phone number—in mind for a few minutes and mentally manipulate it. “This may sound simple, but working memory is crucial for any kind of problem solving,” he explains. “Working memory has been found to correlate with skills in learning, math, reading, and language. Researchers have even found some evidence that in children, working memory is more predictive of academic success than IQ.”

Long-term memories, on the other hand, are stored in your brain and can be retrieved at will, like childhood memories, or what you did last week or last year. “Long-term memories do not fade in order. You might remember something that happened to you years ago better than you remember what you did yesterday,” he explains.

To distill it down, Dr. Bruce Kornreich, associate director at the Cornell Feline Health Center in Ithaca, New York, says that “short-term memory is anywhere between 5 and 30 seconds and long-term memory can remain almost indefinitely.”

Long-Term Memories in Pets

“There are many examples of cats and dogs having long-term memory in both studies and in real-life events,” says Dr. Jenna Sansolo, associate veterinarian at Ardsley Veterinary Associates in Ardsley, New York. “For instance, when pet owners go on vacations and come home to dogs that show the same excitement a human child would show after not seeing their family for the same amount of time, or the countless videos of dogs whose owners come home from military deployments that are all over the internet.” Sansolo also points out that pets who have been abused or in less than ideal living situations can also show proof of long-term memory. “I have seen many patients who are scared of tall men, hats, certain noises, etc., which they can relate to a negative memory or event that has happened in the distant past,” she explains.

Laurie Santos, director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory and the Canine Cognition Center at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, notes that when we think of long-term memories in pets, we are often referring to “episodic memories—remembering particular episodes from long ago.” She adds that while the topic hasn’t been extensively studied, she and her colleagues have seen evidence that pets have some episodic memory abilities. “For example, dogs can remember where and what kinds of food were hidden over longer time horizons, suggesting they're tracking some information about how and where food was hidden,” she explains. “There's also evidence that dogs behave differently when owners leave for long versus short periods of time, suggesting that pets might remember something about how long ago their companion left.”

What Triggers the Formation of Memories in Pets?

While pets can form memories about a variety of instances, experts suspect that extremely positive and/or negative experiences are what stick with them the most. “Important events, such as those related to food and survival, and events that have an emotional impact are more likely to be stored in the long-term memory,” says Claudia Fugazza, department of ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

“These memories have the power to affect your pet’s behavior for a lifetime,” Weber says. Dr. Veronica Cruz Balser, a veterinarian at the Metropolitan Veterinary Center in Chicago, agrees, adding that it sometimes takes only one impactful moment to cause a memory to stick with a pet for a long period of time. “My dog, Tony, was near a campfire once when someone decided to add excessive amounts of lighter fluid. The fireball that came towards us was very frightening for him, as he was not expecting it. He no longer will get near campfires,” she says.

How Far Back Can Dogs and Cats Recall?

According to Cruz Balser, that’s tricky. The subject hasn’t been extensively studied, however, many experts have their own theories. The general consensus is that this is largely based on what level of impact the incident that initially formed the memory had on the dog or cat. “It depends on the type of event and emotions/reward/consequence of the event,” Cruz Balser says. Fugazza agrees. “Memory decay depends on many variables, such as the type of memory used for storing the information, its importance, and its emotional valence [the strength of a positive or negative emotion]. Important information and memories with emotional content tend to be remembered for longer times.”

Do Dogs or Cats Have Better Memories?

Studies show that dogs outperform cats when it comes to their short-term memory abilities. This leads experts, like Kornreich, to believe that the same would hold true when it comes to long-term memories. “You would extrapolate from the fact that dogs do better on short-term memory studies than cats do—that they perhaps have better long-term memories,” he explains. “We have to be careful about coming to that conclusion without it being tested. But it makes perfect sense to me to say, ‘Well, if a cat forgets where something is in 30 seconds and a dog remembers where it is for a minute, then you would think that the dog not only has better short-term memory but perhaps it has better long-term memory.’ But that is presuming that the mechanisms behind short-term and long-term memory are the same and they may not be.”

Monique Udell, assistant professor of animal and rangeland sciences at Oregon State University, points out that new research is looking specifically at fading memories in pets. “While cats and dogs do have long term-memory, the precision and accuracy of these memories can decline over time, just as it does for humans,” she explains. “We still have a lot to learn about the types of information that animals retain for long periods of time, but recent research into age-related memory decline and dementia in dogs may shed light on some of these questions, for both healthy dogs and those suffering from memory loss.”

Kornreich points out an interesting fact: Certain studies suggest that cats don’t seem to have as much of an issue with memory decline as dogs do. “In humans, special learning tasks can be inhibited with aging. That appears not to significantly occur in cats,” he explains. “Cats don’t seem to have the same decline in terms of special learning tasks. That doesn’t say that there may not be components of their cognitive function that don’t deteriorate from time to time, but in terms of special learning tasks, at least based upon this study, they don’t decline in that regard.”

Your Role in Your Pet’s Memories

While pets learn continuously throughout their lifetime, they form the most important impressions in their early days. “Puppies and kittens both have periods early in their lives where they learn rapidly about many things in their world. The memories that are formed during this period influence how they behave for the rest of their lives,” says Dr. Kersti Seksel, a registered veterinary specialist of behavioral medicine at Sydney Animal Behaviour Service in Australia. So it’s extra important to expose them to the socialization and proper training and conditioning that they need during this time.

Pet parents can help their dog or cat turn a potential negative long-term memory into a positive one, Cruz Balser adds. “Our behavior influences our pet’s behavior and memories more than people realize,” she says. “The one that impacts me daily as a vet is client’s behavior at the vet clinic and how they respond to their pet’s stress. If they're scared and you are anxious, then the memory of the building, the smell, and the people in that building will forever be scary.”

For this reason, Cruz Balser encourages people to swing by the vet clinic periodically for “happy visits” where pets get a treat and some love or just come in and then leave. “That way, the pet can have experiences in the vet clinic that aren't scary or bad and it doesn't become engrained in them that the clinic is bad,” she says.

8 After-School Activities For Kids and Dogs

Is Your Dog Bored?

Whether the kids have gone back to school, the adults are away all day at work, or the daily routine of walks and play-time have just lost their appeal, finding new ways to occupy your dog is essential. Dogs need both physical and mental stimulation to help keep them healthy and happy. And it’s no secret that bored dogs tend to get themselves into trouble.

“My philosophy is a tired dog is a good dog,” says Caren Malgesini, a vet assistant at PAWS, an animal rescue organization in Lynnwood, Wash., and the owner of Caren’s Canine Counseling dog training business in Everett, Wash.

But entertaining your dog doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of money on doggie day care, a dog walker, or pricey toys. With a little creativity and insight into your dog’s personality, you can find, or even make, the right toys to make playtime more fun for both of you, or to keep your dog entertained and busy on his or her own.

Malgesini says it’s also important to take your dog’s breed or breed mix and age into consideration as well. Breeds like the Doberman Pinscher, Golden Retriever, and Australian Cattle Dog, all bred to be working dogs, need more exercise and mental stimulation than more easy-going breeds like the Basset Hound or Bull Dog, which prefer less challenging playtimes, she notes.

PAWS recommends two types of entertaining dog toys:

• Interactive toys that require your participation, like balls and Frisbees to fetch, and rope toys for playing tug-of-war
• Distraction toys that keep your dog busy when you don’t have time or aren’t around to play, such as toys that hide food treats, chew toys, and puzzle toys filled with treats