IN THE DOG HOUSE: THE STORY OF TWO DEDICATED ANIMAL-LOVERS AND THE 800 DOGS THEY’VE RESCUED

Helen and Gavin Cook, known from TVNZ’s The Dog House NZ, have launched a new book covering comprehensive dog ownership advice. However, as Mike White reports, their work on the front lines rescuing abused and unwanted dogs has never been more challenging.

“There are plenty of tears,” says Helen Cook.

Tears flow when they rescue dogs subjected to cruelty—beaten, burned, and on the brink of death.

Tears flow again when these dogs recover, discovering joy in wagging their tails.

More tears follow when they successfully place these dogs in loving homes with dedicated owners.

But there are also tears of frustration—knowing they can’t do more, help more, save more.

Helen and Gavin gained national attention last year through their roles as stars of TVNZ’s program The Dog House NZ, which largely featured their 10-hectare Warkworth Country Retreat Animal Sanctuary.

In the show, prospective owners were carefully matched with rescue dogs under the supervision of Helen and her team.

Throughout the series, nearly 40 dogs were successfully placed in new homes.

These dogs are part of the nearly 800 rescue dogs they’ve rehomed over the past four years.

Now they have released a book titled “Good Dogs,” serving as a comprehensive guide for prospective dog owners—a sort of roadmap for would-be Rovers.

“Anyone can come here, and I can offer them a cute puppy, and they’ll say, ‘Yes, I want it,'” explains Helen.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s the right dog for them. People often decide with their hearts, not their heads.”

“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.” Charles Schultz

The Cooks invest a tremendous amount of heart into everything they do, though it often leaves their hearts broken.

In early July, they managed to rescue 17 abandoned dogs. However, due to lack of space, they had to reject 74 others.

The following week, with their facilities still at full capacity, they were unable to accept any more dogs and had to turn away an additional 24.

For those dogs they can’t accommodate, the outlook is bleak. With shelters overwhelmed, some may only receive a week’s reprieve at the council pound before facing euthanasia, or their time might be cut even shorter.

“That’s the polite version,” Gavin remarks.

“The less polite version involves people saying, ‘It’s your fault I’ll have to kill them. Just go and drown them all, bash their heads in, or shoot them,'” he adds.

“I face a lot of blame,” Helen chimes in. “Someone even threatened to shoot me because I refused to take in their animal.”

She highlights that the pressures of rising living costs and people abandoning dogs they impulsively adopted during Covid, only to realize they didn’t fit into their regular lifestyle, are major contributing factors.

“It’s worsening. We’re increasingly asked to take in more dogs,” she laments. “The situation out there is quite desperate right now.”

A more fundamental issue, she explains, is that many people don’t spay or neuter their dogs due to financial constraints (with costs potentially reaching up to $1000), personal discomfort with the procedure, or misinformation suggesting it should wait until the dog is older or has already had a litter.

However, the Cooks have encountered dogs brought in that are already pregnant at just six months old. Considering that dogs can have up to two litters a year, each potentially containing as many as 14 puppies, Helen emphasizes, “It doesn’t take long for the situation to spiral out of control.”

“This continuous breeding needs to be halted,” she concludes.

The proliferation of “backyard breeders” who treated dog breeding as a profit-driven enterprise, selling puppies online at exorbitant prices, worsened the issue and reduced the number of adoptions for rescue dogs.

Gavin reflects on this every morning when he rises at 5:30 AM to begin preparing the dogs’ food.

Helen worries about this during sleepless nights spent caring for newborn puppies, feeding them every two hours.

Neither of them has a simple solution, except to urge people to spay and neuter their dogs.

“We live in a first-world country,” Helen asserts. “We should be able to manage this. There shouldn’t be dogs wandering the streets without food.”

“Be the person your dog thinks you are.” CJ Frick

Helen’s passion for dogs today contrasts sharply with her childhood fear of them while growing up in northeast England.

“To be honest, if you saw me as a child, I’d run into the road if I saw a dog coming. I was terrified of them.”

However, everything changed when her grandmother gave her a dog she had received as part of an unpaid debt. Judy, the schnauzer, captured Helen’s heart and transformed her perspective.

In 1993, Helen and Gavin arrived in New Zealand with their two children, five suitcases, and dreams of a better life.

“It was Gavin’s first time on a plane. The furthest I had ever traveled before was a week in Crete.”

Before long, they adopted their first dog in New Zealand, and their family grew to include more furry companions.

Then they started fostering dogs that needed homes, and 10 years ago bought kennels near Warkworth.

From there, things grew, as they saw the need for a sanctuary for abandoned dogs, especially pregnant mothers and puppies.

So in 2020, they became a registered charity, able to house up to 50 rescue dogs.

When you add in the boarders in their kennels, they sometimes have 100 dogs on their property.

And then there are their own four dogs: Jeffrey, a Saint Bernard, who weighs 95kg; Penny, a 60kg neapolitan mastiff; Agnes, a 55kg mastiff-cross; and Dot, a fluffball that tips the scales at 7kg when wet.

From that assorted 200kg of fur and flailing tails, Dot has emerged as the boss – apart from the Cooks’ two cats, Tinker and Oscar.

Then there are the sheep, pigs, goats, peacocks, ducks and chooks.

“Anything people throw out, usually we’ll help,” says Helen.

But it’s dogs that are truly special for the Cooks.

In Good Dogs, they have written about the unmatched love and joy a dog will bring to your life.

“I think it’s because a dog doesn’t bear a grudge,” Helen says.

“You can come home and they are just happy to see you, and they want to go on a nice walk, and that just lifts everything, your spirits.

“You might have had a horrible day at work, and you’ve got a happy, smiling, waggy dog, and you take it out, and you forget about the day.

“It resets you. It’s like, ‘The world’s not so bad’.”

“And their love’s unconditional,” says Gavin. “There’s no falseness to it.

“I saw a Facebook post that said, ‘Put someone in the boot of a car with a dog, drive around for an hour, open the boot, and see which one greets you with a lick and a wag of the tail.’

“There’s no strings attached, no ulterior game being played.

“It’s just, ‘I’m your dog, and I love you’.”

Often the dogs that come to them have had terrible experiences.

Like the puppy that had been thrown into a pig pen with the expectation it would be killed and eaten by the pigs.

It arrived with bruises on 95% of its body.

“But that dog now is unbelievable, loves everyone,” says Helen. “It’s not got a bad bone in its body.”

“But it has every right to be vicious, or very frightened,” says Gavin.

The dog has a wonderful new home, so the sobs they shed when seeing what it had endured are replaced by tears of happiness for the life it’s now got.

“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.” Kinky Friedman

There are inevitably tears shed when the dogs they’ve rescued and grown fond of find new homes.

Take the puppy Helen kept close to her heart, tucked down her bra for weeks.

“I could barely breathe when I handed that dog over,” Helen recalls.

“But I remind myself, if I don’t let these dogs go, I can’t make room to help another one. Then a call comes in, ‘Can you take these puppies?’ And now I can, because there’s space.

“And so, we begin anew.”

Throughout their years of rehoming dogs, very few have been returned, typically due to changes in people’s circumstances, misleading information about their living arrangements, or conflicts with the owner’s existing pets, like cats.

Helen emphasizes that prospective adopters need to understand the financial commitment involved in caring for a dog.

“It’s crucial for people to realize that it costs at least $1500 a year to properly care for a dog,” she explains. “And that doesn’t even cover unexpected vet expenses, which can quickly add up to thousands more.”

Gavin stresses that during tough times, abandoning a dog with the excuse that “it’s just a dog” is unacceptable.

“A dog becomes part of your family,” Gavin asserts. “Just as people wouldn’t abandon their children because feeding them becomes difficult, the same responsibility applies to animals.

“That’s the message people need to grasp,” he concludes.

“Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one is a life diminished.” Dean Koontz

There’s always a sad end to life with a dog, a devastating coda when they die.

When the Cooks have had to face this with their own dogs, they say they know when the time is right, when suffering has suffused the joy in their animal’s life.

So they take their dog to a favourite beach, let it eat McDonald’s, then stay with it to the peaceful end.

Afterwards, there’s frequently a feeling they’ll never have another dog, because nothing could ever replace the one that’s just gone.

But Helen says it’s foolish to feel guilt about getting another dog.

“Would your dog really want you to be lonely? I don’t think so.

“You don’t know when you’re going to be ready for another dog. There’s no rules, there’s no wrong, there’s no right.

“If you go out the next day and get a dog, that’s fine. If you have to wait 10 years, that’s also fine.”

“Just avoid getting a lively Jack Russell in your 80s or a boisterous Staffy if you’re frail,” she advises.

“I simply urge people to consider before adopting a dog. Reflect on your decision.

“Perhaps then, we wouldn’t see as many strays or abandoned dogs.”

The daily challenges they encounter and their sense of powerlessness in addressing the imbalance between rescued dogs and available homes weigh heavily on both Helen, 58, and Gavin, 59, at times.

It’s a constant financial strain to feed, spay/neuter, and shelter their rescues, relying heavily on volunteers and donations to stay afloat.

But increasing expenses have recently forced them to limit the number of dogs they can take in.

“There are days when I hand my phone to Gavin and retreat indoors. It’s overwhelming,” Helen admits.

“Some days, frankly, I struggle to get out of bed because I dread what needs to be done and said.

“I didn’t envision myself as a dog rescuer — I dream of a world where dogs don’t need rescuing.”

But then they find a home for a dog who’s known little love before being brought to them, and everything they do seems worthwhile.

There’s so much we can learn from dogs, the Cooks say, so many qualities we’d do well to adopt.

“Learn to forgive,” Helen says. “And don’t pre-judge.”

“They really don’t care if you’re male, female, black, white, green, orange, gay, straight,” says Gavin.

“They don’t give two hoots – as long as you love them.”

“The best thing ever is just going out and playing with them,” adds Helen.

“Just enjoy your time with them – because they’re only with you for a short time.”