Erin Skillen had already witnessed the plight of endangered animals in foreign countries before she was profoundly moved by her encounter with a little black puppy on death’s door while vacationing in Cuba.
“It came down to looking into the eyes of a dog dying on the beach,” said Skillen, recalling her encounter in 2009 with the Cuban canine believed to have been hit by a car. It inspired her new documentary, Vets Without Borders.
The passionate animal lover stayed with the malnourished pooch and tried to feed him a granola bar while her travel mates went snorkeling — prompting locals to shower her with gratitude.
“I’d seen dogs around the world in dire circumstances, but I hadn’t been somewhere there wasn’t even a vet,” recalled Skillen.
She had encountered hordes of vulnerable stray dogs in Pompeii and the Cook Islands while filming Gone Wild, her 2008 documentary about once-domesticated animals roaming free worldwide.
After wrapping that Animal Planet special with co-director Hilary Pryor, the Victoria filmmaker thought she was done making documentaries that raised awareness about imperilled animals around the world.
Realizing owners of injured pets in such remote places felt “a complete lack of ability to do anything about it,” Skillen shared her concerns with Pryor, and Vets Without Borders, her new work-in-progress, was born.
To complete post-production and distribute the hour-long May Street Productions documentary, Skillen’s last before launching a socially conscious video-game company, funds are being raised through a crowdfunding campaign. The filmmakers hope to raise $30,000 by midnight Sunday.
Skillen, 35, has already gathered most of the footage for her passion project featuring two teams of volunteer veterinarians and vet techs who spend their vacation time working at free mobile clinics in communities in Mexico and Guatemala, where there’s little or no veterinary care.
It focuses on the Mexi-Can Vet project, launched in 2010 by Dr. Malcolm Macartney, owner of Mackenzie Veterinary Services in Saanich, and Ottawa-based Veterinarians Without Borders.
Footage includes shots of volunteers nurturing a puppy in Mexico that had eaten poisoned fish. The dog’s owners gave her away because they couldn’t afford vet care.
While Mexi-Can’s priority is to provide spaying/neutering services and improve animal welfare, volunteers also bring some rescue dogs back to Canada for adoption.
Skillen is well aware some might question how worthwhile it is for Canadian veterinarians to be saving dogs in foreign countries.
“I feel a dog is a dog and they deserve the same compassion elsewhere in the world,” she said, emphasizing volunteers aren’t just improving the lives of dogs.
“We’re also helping people by avoiding the spread of rabies, or from accidentally ingesting poison used to control the dog population.”
She said she’s fortunate her husband Jeff Skillen, a web developer, is so supportive.
“Jeff and I were supposed to go on a vacation to Greece and I said: ‘Hey, honey, instead of going to Greece and lying on the beach, do you want to go to Guatemala?’ ”
She shot footage at a veterinary clinic in a Guatemalan mountain community, where the positive impact of such volunteer efforts “changed our lives,” she said.
What they experienced was both heartbreaking and uplifting, as when volunteers saved a dog that had been deliberately fed poisoned french fries.
In another highlight, volunteers gave a new lease on life to an emaciated Rottweiler found limping along a village road in Guatemala, hours away from the nearest vet.
And in Jaltemba Bay, Mexico, Skillen, accompanied by cameraman Mike Wavrecan, rode in the back of a pickup truck while she was four months pregnant to document Mexi-Can spaying and neutering 200 street dogs in La Penita, near Puerto Vallarta.
She was also struck by a very young Mexican volunteer’s passion while watching a surgical procedure. Dog-loving children who volunteer at these clinics share health-care tips with their families.
“I pictured this little girl growing up to be a vet,” Skillen said. “To see the smiles on the faces of the local kids when they’d be given a new leash and collar for their dog was amazing.”
The documentary’s chief purpose, she says, is to encourage owners to spay and neuter their pets.
“There are so many problems in the world we can’t fix,” says Skillen.
“This is something that is fixing a problem. Year after year, fewer dogs are roaming the streets.”
A portion of contributions to the crowdfunding campaign, accessible via vetswithoutborders.com, will subsidize volunteer efforts at future clinics.
