Tilly’s visit to the Netherlands opens the doors of perception
A frontline despatch for dog enthusiasts visitng the EU
I’ve crossed Afghanistan twice, narrowly avoided a domestic terrorist bomb blast in Spain, climbed the foothills of Mount Annapurna in sneakers, and had an audience with the Dalai Lama’s personal tutor in northern India, but nothing has proved more challenging than arranging a visit to the Netherlands for Christmas in 2022.
The difficulties have piled up since I last visited Schiedam three years ago where my wonderful daughter Flo lives her family — partner Thijs, and daughter Lilly. There were two previous attempts — the festive visit in December 2021 had to be postponed due to another lockdown after a new variant of Covid emerged. And last spring I was all set to go but my passport needed renewing, which took six weeks longer than it was supposed to. Since then there’s been the war in Ukraine, the escalating climate emergency, the economic-meltdown crisis, and there’s also all manner of ancillary — and very tedious — UK-EU paperwork when it comes to dogs.
Taking Tilly proved costlier and more time-consuming than all the other arrangements put together. Tilly is a border collie who has been in my care since her original owner, Hayley, got sick in 2020 and sadly — tragically — died in the spring of 2022.
To enter the EU a dog now needs a travel certificate, and you have to get another certificate (for tape worm) in the EU to be allowed back into the UK again. The certificate cost me £220, and it’s a per-journey fee by the way (this system replaces the previous pet passport). The easiest way to travel, I decided, was to take the car over on the ferry: that way, Tilly would be in a familiar setting — the car — and then, on the ferry, she would be in a kennel and I could visit her.
Once on board the ferry, I stayed up on deck until the ship left England, then booked her in for her kennel. Turned out there’s a small dog walking area near the kennel, which has a bit of astroturf for the dogs’ loo, and you can walk the dog around a small bit of deck overlooking the sea.
This was where I spent most of the crossing with Tilly sitting on a blanket on the bench, watching the sea or doing a meet’n’greet with one of the dozen or so dogs who were brought out for a bit of fresh air by their owners. There were breeds from giant Siberian Huskies to little terriers being taken over to the mainland by their owners, who were headed to Finland, Lithuania, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, you name it. Dogs make such encounters fun because talking about their dog is something that dog carers love to do, as I’ve found out in the last couple of years.
Once in the Netherlands, I drove the car with eldest daughter Emily and Tilly to Schiedam and we parked up and settled in for Christmas. Border collies, however, have a high work ethic, so pretty soon I set out to explore the neighbourhood.
It was a bit of a surprise that there were no sticks in the vicinity — in fact, it took three days for Tilly to find a stick. It seems the Dutch have a very organised society which clears away all the old bracken and wood; that was quite a surprise. This civic pride translates into other areas too — there’s lots of electric charging points and they’re all much in demand.
This isn’t happening in the UK because although there are electric charge points scattered around in car parks and other locations, they’re hardly ever used because electric cars are unaffordable to most folks: the electric car market isn’t working properly in the UK and it is in the Netherlands. Also, you see people cleaning the windows of public buildings, and that’s something you never see in the UK.
Quite a lot of the streets in Schiedam are pedestrianised so I let Tilly off the lead a lot to start with. I’d never had a dog to care for before but I knew Tilly because Hayley was a neighbour and a chum, so I trust her, she’s a very innocent spirit and seeks only fun and good times. Dogs always respond positively to trust: it’s only among humans that trust is seen as a possible weakness, and deemed worthy of exploitation. But that’s enough about Brexit. In Cambridge, there’s rarely a problem with Tilly being off the lead, but in Schiedam people were often aghast and sometimes seemed angry about the situation. That was weird and rather startling, but eventually I found out the cause of it.
During a visit to Thijs’ dad’s, Chris, I had a chat with Chris’ partner, Erna, who has a huge Swiss mountain dog, and Erna told me that the owners of dogs off the lead are fined 70 or 80 euros in the neighbourhood where she lives, which kind of explained perhaps why people on the street were asking why Tilly was off the lead — that’s an £80 dog walk right there. You gotta be made of money to let your dog run free in the Netherlands!
The fact is that dogs are treated differently in different countries. In the Netherlands, the expectation seems to be that the council will sort stuff out, and that happens very reliably indeed. We could certainly do with a bit more investment in open spaces in the UK. There’s even public art on show.
We don’t know how to do public art properly in the UK. The recent row in Cambridge about a ‘golden wave’ on the banks of the River Cam summed it up: art is despised as middle class in the UK, but in the Netherlands it’s seen as almost a human right, something everyone needs to stay sane, so it’s all over the place.
There are downsides, of course: every system has its flaws. The council in Schiedam only cleans public spaces once a week, so once a week a machine will do a clean-up of all the dog poo. What that means is that people don’t bother to clean up their dog poo so much. ‘Let the machine do that.’ So it might sit there for several days: I walked in more dog mess in nine days than I ever have in England since Tilly came on board.
So it’s different. Im general I don’t see it as better or worse — the streets are clean, everything runs on time, prices are sensible, food is plentiful. But the bottom line is that folks in the Netherlands are rational — it’s rational to have a chain that starts with humans, with dogs treated consdierately but not preferentially. In the UK the pecking order is people, dogs, then migrants. Migrants are treated far far worse than dogs by the British. In the UK, dogs are the object of sentimental feelings, immigrants are deprived of even the most basic courtesies….
Tilly, however, was mighty glad to get home to the land of sticks. She couldn’t even find a single plastic bottle to scrunch and chase (her go-to if no sticks). She had to navigate round a lot of poo, and she didn’t appreciate being on a lead much. But apart from the dog disciplinarians, people — and especially kids, who know a free-spirited love-hound when they see one — were very welcoming.
And Tilly left her mark. She always does. She will take her time, but she is always moving forward in her mission to conquer the world with love. Take Archie, the family cat in Schiedam. To start with Archie was completely freaked out to find this huge beast parked up in his home. Thijs said he’d never seen his tail fluffed up bigger when Tilly made any sort of move towards him. But Tilly’s love is a submissive love, she will totally prostrate herself to be Archie’s friend, she was completely desperate for him to like her, and never ever would do anything to make the situation awkward for Archie: she trusted that, given time, Archie would be her friend, and so it proved. After a week, their little exchanges when Archie came in from one of his frequent excursions were the sweetest and most affectionate greetings you could hope to see.
A couple of pointers for other travellers who take their dogs. I paid £220 for Tilly’s travel certificate, but on the ferry there were people who had paid £150 for theirs. They lived up north, you see. There will always be people who make money opportunistically, but I’ll shop around next time for sure.
Also, you can trust the vets in Schiedam. The one I went to gave an expert analysis of Tilly’s well-being, and ported in all her data to accompany the required tape worm certificate for the journey home. During this process, I learned something new: Tilly is listed as being was born on May 1st, which is the same day as my Mum, another being of love who now sits with the angels watching over us, waiting for humanity to get its act together and outlaw cruelty and suffering. May 1st is May Day — a day of celebration for the start of summer, for renewed life, for the joy of creation….
So that’s what I found out when I went to Schiedam. Happy new year!
