Olympian Giaan Rooney on trauma of losing beloved rescue dog
Former Olympian Giaan Rooney tells of the trauma of losing the rescue dog that led to her meeting her husband.
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WITH his missing leg, floppy ears and furry whiskers, you’d never mistake Lester the rescue dog for cupid. But he was just that to Olympian and television personality Giaan Rooney, as well as the moon and stars. The little jack russell-fox terrier cross came into the swimming champ’s life two weeks after she hung up her togs for good, and he remained her lucky charm in life and love until he died two years ago.
Gold Coast-raised Rooney adopted Lester as a nine-week-old pup from the Lort Smith Animal Hospital in Melbourne in 2006. She was based in the Victorian capital for her swimming career and in 2005 she had signed on as celebrity ambassador for the not-for-profit organisation, which also has a pet adoption centre.
“I went to the AGM and head vet Warren Gatt was standing up holding a nine-week-old puppy who just had his front right leg amputated. The family had decided they didn’t want a three-legged dog, so he was up for adoption … it was love at first sight. He was my best bud for 12 years.”
Rooney, 37, whose family adopted five cats when she was growing up, credits her beloved Lester with helping her transition from elite sport to a successful career in the media and also leading her to husband Sam Levett, 36, who was a mustering helicopter pilot when they met. He now runs his own business, The Herd Online, which advertises livestock. The pair met in 2009, married in 2011 and now live at Broadbeach Waters on the Gold Coast with son Zander, 6, and daughter Alexa (Lexi), 3.
“It was one of those strange, sliding doors moments. I met this woman at the dog park in Melbourne, we just started talking and got on like a house on fire. We became friends and then she and her husband knew Sam and we properly met each other at a barbecue at their house,” she recalls.
“I have a lot of things to be very thankful for due to rescue animals in my life and I was absolutely heartbroken when I lost Lester. It took me a long time to get over him. They are incredible little things and anyone who’s had an animal knows how much joy they can bring.”
In fact it took Rooney close to two years to clear out Lester’s cupboard in the kitchen, where she’d stored his bowl, collar and other keepsakes.
But in the end, room had to be made for Roy – the family’s new dachshund-kelpie cross rescue pup, who arrived in early May.
“Thank goodness we are not at the start of coronavirus panic buying because I’ve never been through so much paper towel in my life. He’s an absolute menace, as all puppies are, but has already brought so much joy to our family.”
The popular MC and sports commentator, who was due to cover the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics for Channel 7 this month, set about looking for a new dog when her work and travel commitments dried up. “I threw myself into finding a rescue animal, as did the rest of the country. And that is the huge silver lining of COVID-19, the fact that more animals have been rescued than ever before.
“I desperately hope that all those animals are still OK and with happy families once everyone goes back to work and to normal.”
It wasn’t just Aussies craving canine (or feline) company in lockdown, with the pandemic triggering adoption sprees around the world. In the US, some shelters were even offering drive-up fostering and kerbside adoptions to pair people with pets.
RSPCA Queensland pivoted to virtual adoptions in mid-March, using Zoom to connect animals with potential owners. It also put the call out for more foster carers and received 3000 offers of help in just over four days.
Statewide since March 15, the Queensland charity has found homes for 2053 animals and 5774 since January 1. Those figures are slightly down on this time last year but RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty says it’s because there were simply more animals in shelters in 2019.
“To a certain extent, there has been a flurry of adoptions because people have continued to adopt right the way through [the pandemic] and there was more interest in foster caring. A lot of those people became failed foster carers, which means they ended up adopting those animals.
“But the good thing is that hopefully there won’t be a large amount of returns after this because people have thought it through more. I go to the dog park and speak to people who I haven’t met before and they say, ‘Oh this has added so much to our lives’. They have definitely brought a lot of comfort to people, there’s no doubt about that.”
Each time she returns to Los Angeles, Tracey Vieira makes a pilgrimage to her old house in historic neighbourhood of West Adams. She stands before the two-storey Victorian facade with a red front door and calls out, “Mama Cat! Mama Cat!” Like clockwork, out from the backyard trots a black tortoiseshell with golden yellow eyes and vampire-style fangs that Vieira rescued from the streets years before.
The old friends enjoy a cuddle before Mama Cat toddles off and Vieira moves on to say hello to the good friends and neighbours who adopted her other moggies – four rescue cats in total – when she moved back to her hometown of Brisbane in 2014.
The film executive spent 10 years in Hollywood, where she headed up Ausfilm’s Los Angeles office, before returning to Australia in 2014 to take up the reins of Screen Queensland. After almost six years as chief executive, she left late last year and is now chief content officer at Emmy and BAFTA-winning production company Hoodlum, maker of shows such as Harrow, Netflix’s Tidelands, and Five Bedrooms.
Hoodlum has offices in Brisbane and Los Angeles and, ordinarily, Vieira makes quarterly trips to LA but the COVID-19 travel restrictions mean it could be a while before she and Mama Cat are reunited.
They found each other when Vieira discovered kittens at a local park, then went in search of the mother. Mama Cat is one of six street cats Vieira adopted during her time in Los Angeles, along with rescue dogs Drover, a Shih tzu, and Amber “who looks a bit like a wheaten terrier mixed with a cocker spaniel”.
“Honestly, it’s a lot, it’s crazy to think about. Our cats in LA were all stray cats that found their way to us. And we had a rabbit,” she says with a laugh. “They all got along and were all free-roaming.”
Vieira, 47, says she never hesitated adopting so many pets because, having realised her dream to work in the world’s movie capital, she never imagined she would leave the US.
“I didn’t think there’d be a path back really, and then I married an American [actor Joey Vieira, 45] and my son [Denham, 9] was born there. It was really a trip back for work to Australia where I met some people and at the time Screen Queensland was looking for a CEO. It was that conversation that made me go, actually, this is where I feel I’m meant to be right now, and that changed everything.”
The dogs made the trip too, the rabbit remained with the home’s new owners (pet rabbits are illegal in Queensland) and the cats stayed put at the urging of neighbours.
“We had a very close-knit community and they were literally like, ‘The cats have to stay, they belong to the neighbourhood’. They technically have owners, because our old neighbours adopted them, but Mama Cat, she moved back to our old house. Being a street cat, she decided she was going back to the place where she felt safest, and the people who bought our house took her on as though she’d just come with the house.”
These days, at home in Wynnum on Brisbane’s bayside, Vieira’s menagerie runs to four dogs and a cat, with their care shared with Vieira’s parents Stan and Wilma Perkins, who live at Mount Cotton.
“It’s a funny thing when we have to go to the vet because we all meet there together,” says Vieira, who served four years on the board of RSPCA Queensland until February this year.
Drover and Amber, now 12 and 14 respectively, have been joined by Charlie, a Lhasa apso -Shih tzu cross adopted from the RSPCA in 2018, and Pickles, a Himalayan Persian cat adopted in 2015 that Vieira says is her spirit animal. Oh, and Burger the labradoodle, 3.
“He’s the only purebred I’ve had in my life – he’s not a rescue, he’s an emotional purchase. I probably would never buy a purebred again and not because I don’t love him. I really wanted one and couldn’t find one in rescue and decided that was a path I’d go down. He’s adorable and loving, but he moved in like he owns the joint whereas with the others you feel this sense of just being so happy to be in a safe environment.
“It’s such a weird thing, putting human emotions on my animals, but I almost feel like Burger’s expectation was, ‘This is the life I was going to live’, whereas with the others, you sense a thankfulness.”
He had her at meow. The minute Laura Tosar clapped eyes on Finn, a ginger and white rescue tabby, she knew he was the one. The Queensland Ballet company artist had been longing for a pet and had visited the RSPCA Brisbane Animal Care Campus at Wacol several times without luck. Staff were keeping an eye out for a “friendly cat” for her and in mid-March, the call came. The voice on the line urged Laura to hurry to Morayfield Petbarn – which works in conjunction with RSPCA – as they had just sent a gorgeous tabby there.
“He was so happy to see me, he was purring so loud,” Tosar gushes. “I didn’t even have a cage, I didn’t have cat food but that was OK, I was at Petbarn. I just got everything in one go – including the cat.”
The 22-year-old from Havana, Cuba, joined the ballet company four years ago and says Finn fills the void that can come with living alone, and so far from home. He’s been her constant companion in the time of coronavirus.
“He just sits there and watches me do my stretching, doing my ballet bar. Sometimes when I’m doing my yoga he comes and does that as well. He loves doing the child’s pose, lying forward, and just looks at me like, ‘Hi Mum! I’m also stretching!’ ”
Tosar proudly posts pictures of Finn to her Instagram feed and says she cannot believe she is now, officially, a cat person, given her family have traditionally been dog people. But a cat made sense, with the hours she works, and adopting made sense because she wanted to help save a life, make a contribution to the world and “give this little boy a new chance to have a loving companion”.
“He gives me personal fulfilment and makes me feel like I have ‘someone’. I’m scared of going back to work because I’ve been here 24 hours [a day] with him, but I’m sure he’ll be OK. He’ll probably be happy to have a bit of alone time, as cats do. He’s probably looking forward to it.”
Across town at Stafford Heights, in Brisbane’s inner north, another rescue pet – Molly the greyhound – has been basking in the love of doting owners who have also been around more than usual.
Chef Dean Brewer, 51, and his wife Vanessa Pollock, 46, who runs a hospitality training business, fostered Molly four years ago through Gumtree Greys, a national organisation that rescues and rehomes racing greyhounds. The couple already had Peggy, then a six-year-old Staffy, but Brewer was keen on a second dog. “Dean was constantly sending me pictures of dogs that needed to be adopted on Facebook pages … we decided to foster rather than adopt but as soon as Molly walked into our house we were like, ‘Yep, she’s not going anywhere, she’s staying here with us’,” Pollock says.
Molly was timid and jumpy at first, understandable given she’d been confined to a cement-bottomed pen for three years after her trainer stopped racing her. She had never seen stairs, didn’t know what to do with a ball, didn’t know how to walk on polished floors and she’d never seen the inside of a house. “Everything was new and she wasn’t a young dog,” Pollock says. “I think it took a good couple of years for her full personality to come out … Even with COVID-19, when I was working at home non-stop for a couple of weeks, Molly’s personality changed then. If it was possible, she became even more waggily of tail. Even more loving and affectionate. She’s just amazing – the most beautiful, affectionate, cuddly dog.”
Now 10, Molly enjoys morning walks, sleeps until 3pm and then goes outside to run at full speed – every inch the graceful greyhound – for a solid 15 minutes. She and Peggy, also 10, are best friends. “They have never fought over food, never fought over toys. Peggy knows exactly which toys are Molly’s. Molly has the bear and the green dinosaur that she greets everybody with, proudly, at the door.”
Pollock chats with other greyhound owners on Gumtree Greys’ private Facebook page and says there is a real affinity among them, something you don’t get when you buy from a pet shop. “When you meet someone with a greyhound, you know they’ve adopted, you know they’ve done a good thing, you know they understand where that greyhound has come from and I love that connection.
“I’d have 10 if I could. Just the other day I was walking Molly and some guy said, ‘Did she win any races?’ And I said, ‘She did before I rescued her’.”
Pet rescue operations take rehoming their animals very seriously in order to make a successful match. Adoption applicants must meet various criteria and even retired Australian swimming stars who are longtime rescue advocates can find themselves on the receiving end of a hard no. Giaan Rooney applied for five mature-aged dogs before she successfully adopted little Roy. She understands now it was because her youngest, Lexi, two at the time, might have presented an issue for an older dog.
Beatty also stresses while it’s great to give an animal a second chance, if it’s a family pet then the whole family must be involved in the decision so they understand their responsibilities.
“Particularly with kids, you know what kids are like,” he says. “And think about the time you have to spend with an animal. Some animals require less hands-on attention on an hourly basis that others. You can’t just get a dog and leave it in the backyard for 24/7.”
For Rooney, the crate training, toilet training and crying at night is all worth it. “We’re a month in now and couldn’t imagine life without him.” On May 3, she posted to Instagram about the two-year anniversary of Lester’s passing, and how she finally felt ready to welcome a new fur-child to the family: “Fingers crossed Lester sends us a little mate who is right for us soon,” she said.
Looks like he played cupid, one last time. ■