Bonded over shared love for rare dog breed, a Newport Beach woman aids Ukrainian
A shared love for Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers led in recent years to an acquaintance between a Newport Beach resident named Elaine and Tatyana, a Ukrainian woman who owns and operates a kennel in her homeland devoted to the rare breed of dogs.
Elaine, who asked to keep her last name private out of security concerns, became worried about Tatyana’s welfare after Russian forces began invading Ukraine in late February.
“She has championship dogs and has built a beautiful business in Kharkiv, selling all over Europe and then this happened,” the Newport Beach woman said of the upheaval. “Tatyana is in her early 40s, living in zero degrees in a hut [instead of her] beautiful home. She was a woman with international success and in one week to the next …” she said, her voice drifting off.
“It’s so unbelievable, hard to get one’s head around,” she added.
Tatyana, who also asked that she be identified only by her first name, fled her Kharkiv home as her city came under siege. She, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend have been hiding in an underground shelter heated by a rustic firewood stove. She agreed to be interviewed for this story via Facebook messages and shared photos she’s taken of their bunker.
“Now a few people helped us materially,” she said this week. “The assistance was necessary for the road and some arrangements here. I had to buy some household appliances, including an electric stove for cooking.”
Although she has her own “tollers” — Vella, Winnie and Masha — with her in the hideaway, as well as her two cats, a beagle and a pit bull who belongs to someone else, she says she longs for her normal life and would like to be back at work.
“I really want to have a puppy at home, they smell like milk so much … so wonderful to see how they grow … begin to run … how they leave for people who later love them,” Tatyana writes from her cheerless refuge. “I have the first kennel of tollers in Ukraine, I brought the first toller girl here.”
She said she’s focusing on keeping her pets healthy. “They feed well and do not lose their condition,” she said. “For me this very important — the state of my animals. I cannot give myself something, instead give them.”
Tatyana explained it’s terrifying when the barrage of fighting is right overhead, and it’s hard to comprehend exactly what’s taking place.
“Today my daughter’s boyfriend slammed the door loudly — I thought that my heart would stop. This state is terrible. My cat sneezed [and] I was scared,” Tatyana said. “My head hurts now … my head hurts now from the silence.”
With two tollers of her own, Elaine has been connected to a 300-member worldwide group of other owners of the breed.
Through the connections she’s made there, she became involved in putting together donations to help Tatyana and her family.
“I wired money today and hopefully she will get by Friday, I’m hoping, if Ukraine banks are operational,” Elaine said. “I told Tatyana to check the bank and she said, ‘I need to calm down before I go out.’”
“I told her ‘go when you can and that will be fine,’” said Elaine. “‘You’re very brave and strong.’”
Tatyana wrote to Elaine: “Thanks for all of your love and support, very important to us right now.” She went on to say she is grateful for their friendship. She mused that she is also thankful to have the company her daughter and the boyfriend, whom she considers like her own child, along with the dogs and cats in the bunker with them.
”Now I want to go home,” Tatyana told her friend. “I’m very depressed right now.”
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