Kelli Stack, a forward on the US women’s hockey team, went to Russia last February in hopes of bringing home an Olympic medal. She scored silver, but she also brought home something even better: a puppy.
After seeing Sochi officials rounding up the many stray dogs roaming the city streets — and hearing the stories about the canines being exterminated with poison — Stack, 26, was determined to rescue a pup.
“It brought me to tears seeing men put the dogs in the trucks,” recalls Stack. “I told myself, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can.’ ”
In the summer leading up to the 2014 Winter Games, the Russian government announced plans to kill 2,000 dogs from the city’s significant stray population to clear the streets in preparation for the games. An international outcry followed, and officials put their plans on hold, but only temporarily.
“We sent a letter to the Russian government that we were in a position to help them [find a humane way to deal with the stray dogs],” says Kelly O’Meara, director of the Companion Animals and Engagement division of Humane Society International. “We heard nothing back.”
According to that group, some 4,000 street dogs in the Sochi area were killed by officials in the fall.
But there are some happy endings. Stack and other animal-loving athletes, including the New York Rangers’ Derek Stepan, went to great lengths — hiding dogs in hotel rooms, dealing with Russian red tape, coordinating medical treatment and even roping in a Hollywood celeb for help — to bring strays to the United States, where they now live comfortably as spoiled-rotten pets.
Here are their stories:
Gus Kenworthy & Jake & Mishka
Kenworthy, an Olympic skier, has always loved dogs. But he didn’t plan to bring a pet home from Sochi until his friend, photographer Robin Macdonald, texted him a picture of four puppies and their mother. The animals were taking shelter under a security tent near the Rosa Khutor Alpine Center, where Kenworthy’s event, freestyle skiing, took place.
“They were literally the cutest puppies I’ve ever seen,” recalls 22-year-old Kenworthy, whose dog passed away a few years ago.
Kenworthy and Macdonald took to feeding the family every day and tweeting pics of the puppies. “It was a really welcome distraction,” says Kenworthy, who won a silver medal at the games. “I was actually bored out of my mind [during downtime].”
After a week of feeding the animals “hot dogs, because there wasn’t really dog food,” says Kenworthy, he and Macdonald decided to take the dogs home. But tranquilizer-toting officials stopped them from collecting the canines, claiming that they were “very famous” and belonged in a government facility.
“They had them basically locked up,” says Kenworthy.
Macdonald went to the facility, where conditions were “horrific,” the photographer says, and he demanded they get the puppies back. “I said, ‘No, these are our dogs.’ ”
Macdonald’s persistence paid off, but he says he doesn’t know exactly why the government ceded the animals.
“There was a bunch of red tape,” says Kenworthy. He was scheduled to leave the country before the dogs, and was thankful that Macdonald was able to stay an extra month and escort the pups to New York City in March.
With the help of Humane Society International, Macdonald was able to get the dogs shots, a plane ticket to America and medical attention. Sadly, one of the puppies died before they could leave the country. Named Rosa, after the city where they found her, she had “started developing really aggressive seizures,” says Kenworthy. “That was tough.”
Kenworthy brought two of the puppies home to Denver for himself and called them Jake, after a friend, and Mishka, the name of the mascot bear at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. His mother, appropriately, adopted the dogs’ mom. (The third pup went to the Humane Society.) Kenworthy is awaiting a blood test to find out their breed. And Jake and Mishka are enjoying a new life, swimming and romping about.
“They love it here in Denver,” says Kenworthy.
Lindsey Jacobellis & Sochi
Olympic snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, 28, didn’t find her pup — her pup found her. The brown mutt was always hanging around outside her hotel room in the resort of Rosa Khutor.
One day, she recalls, the dog “jumped onto my snowboard bag and I was suddenly wheeling him to the door!”
Jacobellis had seen the puppy before, begging for food with a Chihuahua mix. But the dogs were constantly being shooed away, and even kicked, by hotel security.
After a couple of weeks, Jacobellis decided she had to adopt the mutt and name him Sochi. She also took in his Chihuahua friend, and says that caring for the pups took the edge off while she was in competition.
“I kept them in the bathroom of my hotel room,” the athlete says. “I was very stressed with the Olympics, and coming home to puppies was a nice distraction.”
She says she couldn’t have rescued the strays without the help of the hotel staff, who brought the canines to a local vet for her.
“They had to be cleaned, they had to get their flea and tick medicine, they had to start getting antibiotic shots and dewormers,” says Jacobellis. “I paid them a little extra money to do that,” she says of the workers who broke the rules.
Now the little Chihuahua is named Nazzy and lives with Jacobellis’ friends in Park City, Utah.
The athlete brought her own pup to her parents’ home in Roxbury, Conn., where the pup will stay when Jacobellis moves to Encinitas, Calif. After Sochi had to part ways with Nazzy, Jacobellis can’t bear to separate him from his new friend: Jacobellis’ parents’ dog, a 9-year-old long-haired German shepherd named Bayer.
“He’s getting along really, really well with [him],” says Jacobellis. “Bayer is a great older brother.”
Kelli Stack & Shayba
When Stack first saw the German shepherd mix that would steal her heart, the 5-month-old was at a Sochi shelter “sitting in a corner, and she looked so sad. I said, ‘I’ll take her.’ ”
Getting Shayba — named for the rink in Sochi where Stack’s team competed — to her new home in Westfield, Mass., was difficult. First she needed shots. Then the dog had to be quarantined in Moscow for a month, because Stack wanted to fly her home on Lufthansa, known for its high-quality pet transportation, and German regulations required it. It was a “huge obstacle,” the athlete says.
Stack had to return to the US and leave Shayba under the care of a veterinarian while in quarantine. Stack says she couldn’t have done it without the vet’s help. “I worked with a lady out of Moscow who transports pets,” Stack says. “I knew there was no way I was going to be able to fly with her when I left.”
In March, Shayba finally flew to Boston. The growing puppy now lives with Stack, her boyfriend and their 2-year-old yellow lab, Bruce.
Shayba was shy at first, and Stack has had to overcome a language barrier.
“She only knew Russian,” says Stack. The dog is slowly learning English, but training has been a process. “We taught her how to give paw; it took probably a week,” she says. “I would constantly say ‘shake’ or ‘paw,’ and she would just sit there.”
Now Shayba is proving to be a wonderful companion and a great running buddy for Stack and her boyfriend.
“She’s so sweet and cuddly,” enthuses Stack.
Amanda Bird & Sochi
“As soon as you left the [Sochi] airport, there were stray dogs everywhere,” says Amanda Bird. “They were so friendly, it just broke your heart.”
A former competitive bobsledder, Bird is now the director of marketing and communications for the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. She was in Russia with the sports’ US men’s and women’s teams, which won six medals.
“I went to the PovoDog shelter, and it was overwhelming. I was sobbing,” she recalls. “As soon as I walked up to [the dog she would name Sochi], he just immediately flopped onto his back. I was like, this is obviously my dog.” But it wouldn’t be an easy road getting him home to Clarksville, Tenn., where Bird lives with her husband as well as a cat and an Australian shepherd.
“Sochi ended up being a really sick puppy. He was diagnosed with distemper and parvo. An E! News producer took him back on his flight to LA, because I wasn’t able to bring Sochi back on my charter flight.” Actress Katherine Heigl, who rescues animals through her Jason Debus Heigl Foundation, met the pup at the airport and got him to a vet.
“She reached out to us and poured over $20,000 into saving his life. He was in the hospital about two months and [in] quarantine for another month,” Bird explains. Now, “he’s 100 percent healthy. He’s a strong little dude.”
David and Kelly Backes & Jake
“We learned about the dogs and the potential extermination of them two years before” the games, says David Backes, a member of the US men’s hockey team who competed in the Sochi Olympics and who has long worked to help animals through his organization Athletes for Animals.
Backes and his wife, Kelly, worked to bring back two dogs from Sochi, but they were unable to keep the pups because they already had too many pets.
After a monthlong quarantine in St. Louis, one of the dogs, Sochi Junior, went to the parents of Team USA hockey player Kevin Shattenkirk, while another, Jake, went to the New York Rangers’ Derek Stepan.
Want to adopt a Sochi dog?
Visit the Humane Society International website for information about adopting and importing needy animals or to donate to their efforts to improve the lives of street dogs around the world.