(eerie music) (fire crackling) (water hissing) (soft music) (plane engine roaring) (dramatic music) (keyboard clicking) (dog barking) (dog whimpering) (sad music) - In Ukraine, it's not a stable country, even before war.

All the time, it was you start something and you should close it.

We start all the different businesses in Ukraine, then I had some flower shops, we make like cooker business, then coffee shops, then carpenters, and all the time, we'd have to close it because something happens in Ukraine, so (chuckles) it's not the first experience to leave everything and go.

- What was it like a week before the war?

What did your day look like?

- The week before the war was totally different from what we have now and what we were expecting.

(static crackling) - Whoops.

Did their electricity go off?

What a hard life, I mean, my God, can you imagine?

- Because winter time in Ukraine right now, it's difficult.

They didn't have energy, they all the time turn off lights in the house, so it's really difficult.

(soft music) - Right when we started the meeting, our electricity is gone.

I'm here, MFAT working all over to turn on our special devices to have the light.

- Ah.

Ah, let's start again.

(chuckles) - Because all these blackouts and the absence of heating when it's cold outside, inside, when you don't have a light, it influences our life.

And the war started on Thursday and I remember, on Saturday, we were driving in Kyiv and we were admiring, look how beautiful our city is.

I cannot believe anyone could try to ruin it.

We were thinking like, if something happens, we should be smart enough to leave.

There was a lot of rumors.

- I don't think that war will start.

- I'm optimist always.

(laughs) I never believe in bad things, and we were back here very soon because you, know, home is home.

Thursday morning, we wake up from the sounds of some missiles, rockets.

- Before it started, we had some bombing near us, five miles from us, it was two bombs.

- And the first air raid siren that we hear in our life.

(siren blaring) It's one thing when you hear it in the movies but when you wake up from that sound, like, what?

Is it really true?

- It was unexpected and then everything changed, yeah.

Yeah.

- It's awful.

A lot of lives destroyed, a lot of buildings destroyed.

- A missile rocket hit exactly our humanitarian van.

We were really depressed, that's true.

- There were a lot of explosion near that place.

I am trying to hide, you know, it's like you are trembling.

There are a lot of things going on and a lot of people struggling.

Some days, it's like very hard to start everything again, doing this work and it's very dangerous.

And the first time, like, you know, we had really depression.

(gentle music) - All my family are born in Russia.

In 1991, we moved to Ukraine, so it's not any problems before war.

Now families start to hate each other because war started and they don't think that it's problem of politics, they think it's personal, it's a very personal war for them.

So I think it's not personal, it's political.

- Our plans ruined because of the war.

- We had so much plans, it's impossible to make very long plans, I mean.

- Their lives changed and it's true because it was normal life in which you can have some plans, you can have some dreams and right now it's like sad.

(soft music) - We are not the only animals that suffer in war.

Every other animal and animal's habitat is blown up.

So you had dead animals and traumatized animals that were panicking and running down the streets and there's no habitat left for them.

This cruelty goes on and on and on, all the cats and dogs that are in the streets that don't have homes.

- You have a shelter, you don't know what to do for now, to just open a shelter so that dogs could escape and save their life or to keep them.

But what if you keep them and the bomb hit?

Now more dogs need help than are adopted.

- In the first days of the war, there was like hundreds of pets daily.

Beloved pets at home were abandoned by people.

We had calls from people who had to escape to some other countries, they were asking us to get into their house, to rescue their pets, et cetera.

There were thousands of animals which needed rescuing.

- And a lot of people, you know, they leave them but they leave them in some places where they cannot be even found, "Okay, I think you'll take care, bye-bye," you know like this.

- In those cities which were just liberated from Russian soldiers, there was no water, even for people, there is nothing there.

And people have nothing to give to their home pets, they need food, they need medicines.

- We were just going somewhere and inside of the forest, we see a dog, it was something like this, you know?

Some people they even tie to the trees and leave them.

There you see like chain and some bones were in the ground so it's really awful.

I'm sure they did it because they just stopped, tied here, and went, because if they didn't tie it, the dog will come after you, she will run after you, of course.

(soft music continues) - In the beginning of the war, there was a huge scandal that there was a city shelter near Kyiv, there was 400 dogs.

They stayed in that shelter two months, with no food, no water for two months.

Half of them were dead.

The rest, they was just bones with a skin on it.

In Ukraine, we also have these kind of people which are called dog hunters, who believe that they must kill all the homeless pets.

- Unfortunately, a lot of dogs were killed this way.

- They can act solely, they can act in groups.

- I don't know why they did it, but, just, I don't know for fun.

- There is a law to protect animals from them, but on practice, it doesn't work.

- It's very sad.

- Just like a kind act changes everything, an act of cruelty or violence changes everything as well.

(gentle music) (sad music) - USA started this program, United for Ukraine, we don't want to stay there.

First, I make documents for Alina and kids because I think that I can't move, for emergency, I make it for me too.

- Alec had some problem with health and that's why we have a document for it and we can move for whole family.

- We have 90 days to move for this program from Ukraine.

- Yeah, it was hard, not everybody had this chance, you know?

- And in June, we come here.

- But we can't take her with us because, for sure, we need specific documents.

That's why we make a decision to leave her with parents.

(sad music) And it was difficult for me, it was really difficult for children too.

- But for our kids especially, it was very hard.

- I tried to explain them why we can't bring her with us and it was difficult, yeah, I cried and children cried.

It was more difficult for us, for our children because they really missed her.

- They miss her.

- And for us, because, for us, it was like not whole family are together, so it's like that.

- I know that the boys missed her so much.

The little one kept asking if they were going to get her back.

- Our youngest, all the time asking, five, six times in a day.

- Every day, four or five times a day.

- "Where is Sky?

Where is Sky?"

So he very missed her.

- It's not 100% you will see her again.

We hope it will be like that, but we are not sure about it.

It's a little bit easier because we know that she stay with people who loved her too.

It became to make this choice little bit easier, but still it was difficult.

(soft music) - Our companion animals and our fellow animals are an intrinsic part of our lives, whether we know it or not.

And the way that we treat them or hold them in esteem is one of the most important parts of being human.

These animals are just like us, they have friends and family, likes and dislikes, they have a sense of humor.

If you've ever had a dog, you know dogs have a great sense of humor.

The way we treat them is a barometer of what kind of animals we are.

- We came here in June, and when we moved, it was the main question, do they have option for us to bring a dog here?

- Sky was staying with their parents in Ukraine.

- 20 or 30 countries are not allowed to bring dog to US, and Ukraine was one of them.

- They needed to move her to Poland so that she was out of the war zone so that she could be shipped to the United States.

- Dog goes to Europe and make document like European dog and after to America.

- There are companies who handle this type of animal transportation and they did use one of those.

- It's not like easy, it can be done, but very hard.

It's about $2,000 to bring a dog from Ukraine to the USA.

- She lived with Alec's parents in Pryluky, it's like 170 kilometers from Kyiv.

So we need to bring her from Pryluky to Kyiv first, and from Kyiv to Poland.

In Poland, she stay in boarding kennel for three days.

It was more stressful for me because I know that she was somewhere with someone and I know her character, how she'll react.

She was really aggressive, she bite two men, and after that, they moved her to Krakow.

- So she went to two places in Poland.

- And from Krakow, she fly in to Chicago.

- And then flew to the United States.

- This journey was really expensive, so the whole trip take $1,700.

- I saw a post on Nextdoor from Alina that they needed help getting their little dog from Chicago to Boulder.

And my heart went out to them, and I thought, what if it were my animal?

They had paid for everything up to that point, but it was very expensive.

- We need to pick up her from Chicago.

From Chicago to Boulder, it was $500.

- And they basically ran out of money.

And when I saw that I thought, you know, how can I not do this?

Well, our plan was that Alec would get to Chicago, he had it, and then there was a plane leaving for Boulder in two hours.

- And it was stressful because when Alec came to Chicago, we have only two hours between flights and we were sure that that time will be enough.

- I come to Chicago, her plane is coming.

I waited for her for a long time, and I waited two hours, she don't come here, and we don't know how the people move her here or just take money and go away.

I called him, but he didn't answer.

We don't know exactly, so that's why we are nervous.

- He waiting three and a half hours for her and her flight.

- But it took him three and a half hours, so he missed his flight to Boulder.

- It happened that Alec lose his flight.

- Now when Sky got to Chicago, all of a sudden, the transportation company wanted more money.

- They told us that we will need to pay some taxes for her, we'll need to pay $300.

- But the transportation said they needed more forms and more things to be able to get her to Boulder.

So he had to spend another night in Chicago and then flew out the next day - All the way from Chicago for here, she was on my hands, she don't want to go anywhere, she was afraid to leave.

- Getting home at one o'clock in the morning.

(chuckles) - And they came at 1:00 AM at night and she just saw me and she was like, "It's you, it's really you."

Yeah, and after that I give her a chance, go to the children, she go into their bed, and smell both of them like, it's my family, it was funny.

- Oh, she was very happy.

- Yeah, and I was happy.

For Olev, it was really important for his emotional health to be all together.

And when Sky came, even his psychologist told us that he became more concentrated, more emotional stabilization.

Both of them was very happy, we were very happy.

For her, it's like stressful because it's a lot of squirrel here and she like, oh, oh, oh, I can, I can, I can catch them, I can do that, I can do that.

She has little bit crazy character.

- Sometimes she wants to be with us more than before.

- She's really emotional.

- Little bit more nervous.

- And after her journey, she became more and more emotional than she was before.

- But still, she's good - For her, it doesn't matter where it will be, just she needs us.

Here right now, the family is whole so it became whole, like real family.

(bright music) - Well, a lot of people would say, "Why go through this for a dog?"

They spent so much time and money on one little tiny dog in Ukraine getting it here to them because they loved the dog, they missed her.

She was part of their family.

Their ability to move forward after what must have been a truly traumatic situation, war is terrible, it's almost one of the worst things that can happen to people.

And yet, here in the United States, they are just moving forward.

(soft music) - It's difficult to be here when my family's there, and I all the time feeling guilt because I have here a normal life with some plans, some good material stuff, and they are stay in Ukraine and they can't have some plans.

Understand that you must live in this moment and do what you want right now, because next moment cannot happen.

- It renewed my faith in just how wonderful humans can be.

Sometimes if you're doing animal work, you see some of the worst things that happen.

- If you just sit and realize what you're seeing in front of you, you'll not be able to leave after that when you know all these cruel things that happen.

- I understand that everything happens for a reason.

For every dog, there is an owner who will take care of her.

- There are organizations, like Yapomoga, who will stand for them anyway in any situation.

We have to help animals.

Yapomoga box is a vending machine.

Every plastic bottle that you put in this vending machine, it gives 20 grams of pet food for animals.

During this whole almost a year of war, we provided like 300 tons of food for the homeless pets.

If you cannot find a home for them, at least you can feed them.

What we need is awareness, there is much more homeless pets here on the streets.

With money, without money, we will just protect them in any possible way.

(bright music) - Good point of this war, if it can be called good point, that people say, "I don't speak Ukrainian," because before they said to us like, "We don't speak Russian."

They didn't know the difference between Russia and Ukraine.

- I hope everything will end it after this winter, but in what way it will end, we don't know.

We need to take this reality and do whatever we can.

- The bonding with our companion animals is beyond wonderful, they are a part of who we are, it's not just that they're a member of the family, but they live inside your heart.

It's that intangible bond with animals.

A kind act, any kind act, is like a pebble thrown into a pond.

It makes ripples on the surface, but also, when it drops to the bottom, it changes the pond.

One little act can change the world.

(bright music continues) (soft music)