The incredibile story of how a former Leeds nurse and North Yorkshire police officer ended up running a street dog rescue in Bulgaria

“Anthony invited me to Bulgaria in holiday. He’d been living there on and off for 20 years. We’d been friends and when the friend I was meant to go on holiday to Egypt with broke her arm and couldn't fly I decided to go to Bulgaria even though I didn't really know where it was,” says Emma. "I ended up falling in love with Bulgaria, and a little bit with Anthony.” Emma was still working for North Yorkshire Police but was finding the job she loved increasingly stressful. But it was the death of another close friend from her nursing days that led to Emma making a life-changing decision – to marry Anthony and move to Bulgaria. "I was very lucky that North Yorkshire Police offered career breaks and so I decided to take a five year break. I just thought life’s for living, we don’t know how long we’ve got, what’s the worst that can happen, if it doesn’t work out I can just come back to work.” They spent four years looking for the right house in Bulgaria but couldn’t find anywhere until Anthony saw a new property in their price range on the internet.

"I couldn’t work out how we’d missed it. The agent said it had just come on the market and I said I wanted to reserve it but he said there was no need as the property market was pretty depressed. Luckily he was right but when I was able to go out and see it Emma was helping police the London 2012 Olympics and so I just bought it,” says Anthony.

“He did a pretty good job actually – our home is beautiful,” laughs Emma “But the first I saw of it was after we’d driven across Europe from Harrogate with all our worldly belongings. When we arrived it was pouring it down – we couldn’t get up the lane to the house as it was flooded. Then I saw a cherry tree and I thought everything’s going to ok – at least we will have cherries.” The couple moved to the Bulgarian village of Glushka, close to Dryanovo in north central Bulgaria in June 2013 with the idea of setting up a yoga retreat. "I was going to yoga and meditation – grow my own vegetables while Anthony continued to work offshore,” say Emma. Anthony continued to work as a commercial diver with the idea he would earn enough to set up the business. "I was working on a ship between Shetland and Norway for three months that would have given us enough to develop the site in Bulgaria - we were even going to build an infinity pool.” But a slump in the oil industry meant the company he was working for went bankrupt and he didn’t get paid. "That put an end to our yoga studio idea.” But even before then Emma was starting to get disillusioned with parts of her new life.

“Many dogs in Bulgaria have been abandoned because they are ill, pregnant or the owners simply do not want them anymore. I was getting so fed up with seeing dogs everywhere. You couldn’t go for a meal in our local restaurant without dogs fighting, mating – puppies and injured dogs. There is a psychiatric hospital about eight miles from us and there were so many stray dogs. I fed one a tin of sardines – it was so hungry it didn’t just eat the sardines it tried to eat the tin as well. It got so bad I even considered going back to the UK.”

At that time there were elections for the local mayor and when one of the candidates visited and asked Emma what she would change about Bulgaria she didn't hesitate. “I said the dog situation it awful I don’t want to see it.” As it happened the mayoral candidate had been on a Dogs Trust course in London and had insight into a humane way of controlling the dog population. "He asked what we could do and I said we needed to start a dog neutering programme straight away to get the population under control. And that’s how it started.”

But it soon became clear to Emma and Anthony that just running a dog neutering service just wasn’t enough. "What if you get an injured dog? You can't send it back onto the streets.” It all started with one puppy that was ill and had been mistreated. “We couldn’t send him back into the streets to die a long so painful death and so we kept him –suddenly we had 17 dogs and that’s where it all started really.” They converted some old out buildings into dog sheds. Anthony’s parents gave them enough money to buy an adjacent plot of land so they could extend further. And so Street Hearts was formed. Since then, with donations, fundraising and grants including from the Battersea Dogs home in London they have neutered more than 4,000 dogs. “If you neuter 70 per cent of the population the problem starts to drop which is what we are seeing. There is also a gradual change in attitude among the younger Bulgarians,” says Emma. They have also rehomed more than 1,500 dogs and puppies. “We never ever envisaged that Street Hearts, which is now an NGO, would become what it has,” says Anthony. “It was never the plan it has literally just evolved with determination, hard work and enthusiasm.” Many dogs have found homes in the UK, but others within Bulgaria, Finland, Austria, Germany and as afar afield as America and New Zealand. "Every four to six weeks we take a van of about 20 dogs through Europe to the UK people from other countries tend to come to us to adopt their dog and take it hoe with them," says Anthony. “But our job has been made so much harder since Brexit. Where we used to have to fill in 20 forms to get puppies and dogs into the UK we know have to fill in 180 – it nearly broke, us – we even have to pay 20 per cent VAT on the dogs now.” They also go into school to educate youngsters about animal welfare and employ staff and volunteers to help run the shelter and also the administration. Actress Kate Lamb not only volunteered at Street Hearts, adopted a dog, raised £12,000 for them but also has written the forward to a book published this month about the couple and their amazing work. Street Hearts: An Extraordinary Story of Saving Street Dogs tells the story of Emma and Anthony and the remarkable dogs they rescue.

"I had kept a diary of the dogs we’d taken off the streets, never with the aim of writing a book but just to remind me. People kept telling me I should write a book, but we just didn’t have the time or the skills.”

But then Anthony started talking on social media to author Lisa Cutts whose audio books they listened to and liked. “We got talking via social media and it turned out she’d met someone who had adopted one of our dogs. She love dogs and so I asked if she’d be interested in writing the story of Street Hearts. She came out and spent time with us and it just evolved.”

"The aim of the book it really to raise awareness, particularly of the need for dog neutering – this is not just a problem in Bulgaria. We have made a difference but more still needs to be done,” says Emma.

Street Hearts: An Extraordinary Story of Saving Street Dogs by Emma and Anthony Smith, with Lisa Cutts is published August 29 by HarperNorth, £18.99 Emma and Anthony will be signing copies at Waterstones, Leeds on Wednesday and Simply Books Bramhall on Thursday.