Edmonds man to return to Ukraine to help animals

EDMONDS, Wash. - This week, one Edmonds man will return to Ukraine for the fourth time, on a mission to bring relief to our four-legged friends.

"Ukrainians love their animals like Americans do," said Dan Fine, president of the Ukraine War Animals Relief Fund, or UWARF.

Fine, a retired tech executive, is compelled by the numbers.

"8 million refugees took off according to the United Nations, and of that, 4 million have pets," he said. "You’re talking at least 4 million pets that had to get out of Ukraine and about a quarter of those got left behind."

According to UWARF, whose main goal is to sterilize and vaccinate as many strays as possible, their populations will explode if left unchecked.

Unsustainable stray dog and cat populations can pose a major risk to local ecosystems and human health.

On previous trips, Fine has witnessed one of the worst outcomes: rabies.

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"And the number one target for rabies, unfortunately, is children. 55 percent of rabies bites are children," he said. "Rabies is 100 percent fatal, and it’s a horrible death."

According to the World Health Organization, rabies has the highest mortality rate of any disease on earth, and 99 percent of all human cases come from a dog bite.

"Because they’re small to the ground and they get bit on the face or neck," he said.

So, Fine brings a box full of vaccines to Ukraine, working with local volunteers in several villages, often not far from the frontlines.

"We’ve done 5,500 animals so far. This mission we want to do a little over 2,000," Fine said. "It’s our most aggressive mission."

"We go into the villages where there are more dogs and cats than there are people," he said. "You drive down the road and you just see pods of dogs living together every 5 minutes, and no people."

Fine leaves for his fifth mission in early August and plans to return to Seattle in September.

His campaign's GoFundMe can be found here.