This is a love story, of sorts. A tale of a besotted, middle-aged man – former BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones – and Sophie, a rescue dog from Romania, the pointy-eared object of his affection.
You decide whether you think this bittersweet tale has a happy ending or not – and if Rory is the most patient, loving or bloody-minded man you could ever meet.
It was just before Christmas in 2022 when Sophie arrived, delivered to Rory’s west London house in the early hours in a van. The courier took a picture, which he later sent to Rory: ‘It shows me grinning broadly, despite the early hour, but the creature in my arms looks sad and terrified,’ writes Rory in his new book, Sophie From Romania: A Year Of Hope And Love With A Rescue Dog.
‘She appears much smaller than we had imagined, her ears are floppy and she is curled up as if trying to hide from the world.’
The picture of new arrival Sophie ‘shows me grinning broadly, despite the early hour, but the creature in my arms looks sad and terrified’, writes Rory in his new book
The sweet-faced Alsatian-cross that caught Rory and Diane’s eye was simply listed as ‘Seven’ on a rescue charity’s website
That was only to be expected, Rory thought at the time. Everything surely seemed strange to the poor dog, which had been living in a barn for a year. She was one of a litter of abandoned puppies taken in by a farmer, then rehomed through a rescue charity. But she was at the end of a long and frightening journey.
Rory and his wife Diane, a distinguished Cambridge economist, tried to settle Sophie down – in joyful anticipation, they had put her bed next to the Christmas tree – and Rory lay on the sofa while Diane went back to bed.
‘In the morning, I realised Sophie had been trying to find the tiniest hidey-hole possible, and was wedged under a bookcase,’ he recalls.
‘We took her into the garden, but once outside, she would not budge. I was disappointed, because I wanted a dog to walk with, but I still thought all would be well.’
Rory put Sophie’s picture on social media. A faithful band of followers interested in his thoughts on AI and technological innovations had also become familiar with his beloved collie-cross Cabbage, which had died a few months earlier. The news that he had a new dog was greeted with warm congratulations.
Later that morning, as he set off on a walk round the park alone, he told his followers: ‘New dog Sophie too tired and scared after her long journey to accompany me. We’re taking it slowly and hopefully in a while we’ll settle into a new morning routine.’
He had no idea it would be a year before he was able to take Sophie for a walk. For the time being, he was buoyed up by scores of encouraging messages; his followers knew not only that he had lost Cabbage, but that four years earlier, Rory had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease that causes tremors and problems with movement.
Walking with a dog was important to Rory because regular exercise was essential to keeping the condition in check
The story is particularly touching because as Sophie makes her tiny steps forward, Rory’s Parkinson’s is getting worse.
Walking with a dog was important to him because regular exercise was essential to keeping the condition in check.
With so many people willing him on, something magical began to happen. When he lured Sophie from her hiding place for a snack, he posted a picture on Instagram that got 700 likes – ten times more than he would usually expect – and a further 7,000 on Twitter. As Sophie remained insistent on wedging herself behind the sofa, scared of everything and everyone around her, he was curious to see what happened at night and put up a nature cam in the living room.
The black and white video clips of her wandering around the room were viewed 300,000 times.
Messages of support and advice started pouring in. A video of Sophie taking a little bit of sausage from his hand a few days after Christmas sent the internet into overdrive: a million people watched the footage on Twitter.
He’s still unsure as to why the story took off the way it did. Maybe Sophie touched people’s hearts when everything around them seemed bleak, with the cost-of-living crisis and war in Ukraine. Or maybe it was just the time of year: ‘The perfect Christmas story, Rory. Well done!’ was typical of the responses.
At a drinks party for a former BBC colleague, the classicist Mary Beard asked ‘How’s Sophie?’ as did George, the Big Issue seller Rory passed on the way into the building. Even today, pretty much anyone Rory meets will at some point say: ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but… how is Sophie getting along?’
And the answer to that is quite tricky. In his book, Rory, 66, has told the story of his first year with Sophie, and his patient efforts to coax her out of the living room, never mind the house.
Maybe Sophie touched people’s hearts when everything around them seemed bleak, with the cost-of-living crisis and war in Ukraine
It records the intervention of a dog trainer who got in touch on Twitter to offer his services, the many strategies based on his advice that Rory and Diane have tried to encourage Sophie to be more sociable, and the reward of occasionally being able to stroke her silky ears.
The story is particularly touching because as Sophie makes her tiny steps forward, Rory’s Parkinson’s is getting worse. The tremor in his right hand is impossible to disguise and he suffers dreadfully from insomnia, intensified by worrying about Sophie.
He can’t walk as much as he wants to. And though he finds the support on social media comforting, he admits now to ‘slightly sugar-coating’ the story he put online: ‘When I post a clip of her performing a play bow while wagging her tail to Diane in the kitchen, we receive several hundred replies. Many are emotional, and even tearful,’ he recalls.
Rory’s illness brings on bouts of depression, which make him extra sympathetic to his dog’s plight:
‘It occurs to me that Sophie is broken because of her excessive fearfulness – and in my own way, so am I because of my Parkinson’s.
‘But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope and the possibility for us to live our lives to the utmost.’ Work, at least, has provided some distraction. Rory is a regular on Movers And Shakers, a podcast he has created with a group of Parkinson’s sufferers, including the former BBC inquisitor-in-chief Jeremy Paxman.
They gather weekly in a London pub to discuss everything from how the disease affects relationships to – pertinently, in an upcoming episode – coping with pets.
Parkinson’s is becoming more common as our population gets older. Paxman recently delivered the ‘Parky Charter’ to 10 Downing Street, outlining five key recommendations from the Movers and Shakers for better care and funding for the disease on the NHS.
‘The frustrating thing is a wonder drug always seems to be five years away,’ says Rory.
Meanwhile, Sophie has been on medication of her own. In a last throw of the dice to try to calm her anxiety, she was put on the anti-depressant Prozac, which seemed to work.
Rory’s book, at least, ends on a high note: that precious first walk in the park. But, when I arrive at his home, a late Victorian redbrick in a quiet, tree-lined street, things look rather different. Incongruously, there is a stair gate, designed to prevent toddlers from falling down flights of stairs, fixed across the doorway.
Rory opens the door with a rueful smile. I can hear Sophie barking loudly from behind the living room door. She is still not comfortable with visitors, so we have to talk in a nearby cafe.
‘But if you’d like to see her…’ Rory says, gesturing that I should get behind the gate.
Once I’m safely on the front path, he opens the inner door and – still barking – Sophie the social media superstar emerges into the hall, quiets while she gives me a suspicious look, and then retreats. Things have actually gone backwards since that triumphal first walk, Rory admits over a cup of coffee. ‘For a couple of months things got better, we were able to drive her to the park, then to walk there – a walk I did every day with my old dog.
‘Then she started planting her paws to say ‘No, I’m not going to go any further.’ We tried dragging her, then physically lifting her across the road to the park. Then the trainer said that wasn’t a good idea, we should do what the dog wants, so she’s become more and more circumscribed.
‘I can get her round the block, slowly. We did take her on holiday to west Wales, which was a huge step, five hours in the car, but it was a very quiet holiday because we couldn’t leave her alone in a strange house.
‘She had a huge fear of the beach, so we couldn’t go on the beach, nor to the pub – too crowded. It’s a work in progress, just one that’s a lot longer than expected.’
‘The important thing is that Sophie loves us,’ says Rory. ‘For now, the sight of her curled up in her bed, surrounded by her toys, snoring gently, tells me all I need to know’
It’s also a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating a rescue dog. When Rory and Diane started looking, the only rescue dogs available in the UK seemed to be Staffies, or dogs that were not suitable to be near children (they couple have grandchildren aged four and two).
A chance meeting with a former colleague put them in touch with Friends Indeed, which works in Romania, a former Soviet bloc country teeming with stray dogs.
During a period of industrialisation in the 1980s, many people moved from the countryside to the cities, where apartments were too small to keep dogs, so thousands were abandoned on to the streets, where they formed packs and multiplied.
Romania has never really got on top of the problem, other than periodic culls, which have caused controversy among dog lovers. Rather than leave dogs that have been rounded up in ‘kill shelters’ awaiting their fate, a huge traffic in international adoption has sprung up.
More than 67,500 dogs were legally brought into the UK in 2020, nearly half of them from Romania.
The sweet-faced Alsatian-cross that caught Rory and Diane’s eye was simply listed as ‘Seven’ on a rescue charity’s website. The description read: ‘Seven loves everybody and is looking for her forever home.’ There was a video of Seven – now Sophie – jumping around. And that was it: deal done.
He now realises the ‘blind date’ nature of getting a rescue dog from abroad: ‘I don’t think I would ever again get a dog I had not met,’ he admits.
‘I do think the charity we dealt with were lovely people and are devoted to dogs, but anyone getting a rescue dog needs to go into it with their eyes open.
‘There are plenty of people who do and are prepared to put their lives on hold. But most people are not like that.
‘I do feel that if you are going to do this you need to be able to see the dog, meet the dog, which is obviously not possible if it’s just going to arrive at your house off a van from Romania.’ Rory now realises that although Sophie had never been cruelly treated, she had also never been socialised.
‘She spent a year in a barn. She’d met the old man and that was it, so meeting new people in a totally new environment was too much. Ironically, being a street dog might have been a better preparation for joining a family because she would have had more human encounters.’
His wider family has also been affected by Sophie’s behaviour. Rory’s grandchildren are ‘terrified’ of the dog. When they visit, Sophie must be shut in one room and the children in another. Still, her barking unnerves them.
Surely this is the point at which most people, however well-intentioned or devoted to their dog, would call it quits. But the only time a shadow falls over Rory’s genial face is when he mentions one of Sophie’s siblings, which has also been brought to the UK.
The dog is now happily settled with a young couple, but the first family who took her in could not cope and returned her to the charity. ‘It just goes to show some people are not serious,’ he says.
So he’s in it for the long haul. And Sophie does show signs of thawing out.
She sometimes allows Rory to stroke her. She sleeps in her bed. And during their very quiet holiday she lay on her back for her first tummy tickle.
So, little things give Rory hope. The rest is acceptance.
‘I have at last begun to realise that it is no use trying to browbeat her into becoming the kind of dog I want her to be,’ he reflects at the end of his book.
‘The important thing is that Sophie loves us. For now, the sight of her curled up in her bed, surrounded by her toys, snoring gently, tells me all I need to know. Sophie has come home.’
- Sophie From Romania: A Year Of Hope And Love With A Rescue Dog by Rory Cellan-Jones will be released on October 10 (£22, Vintage Publishing).
