Actor Martin Clunes Helps Rescued Street Dog In Paphos Find A Loving Home

Thanks to well-known British actor Martin Clunes and a British expat couple, an unwanted stray dog roaming the streets of Paphos has a new, loving home in the UK.

Now named Lucky for obvious reasons, the stray dog was kept on a goat farm until she was evicted as she wasn’t wanted any more by her owner. Three nearby residents found her and began feeding her until she was hit by a truck and left for dead on the road with a broken leg and three broken ribs. The three residents took her to a local vet, turning to the local community for help with her veterinary costs before she was fostered by British expat Martyn Jones and his Russian wife Katja, regular fosterers for dogs from Paphos’s PAWS dog shelter. Katja nursed Lucky back to health and also raised funds to help her.

At the time, Martyn and his wife had been watching back-to-back episodes of ‘Doc Martin’, starring Martin Clunes, and went on to watch Clunes’s ‘One man and his Dog’ in which the actor discovers the relationship between humans and canines. The couple contacted Clunes to persuade him to adopt Lucky or help find someone who would. Although Clunes couldn’t take Lucky on, he really did know someone who could – TV and film script editor Caroline O’Reilly.

According to Martyn, lucky Lucky now has a loving mum and two homes, one in London and the other in Kent with Caroline’s father in law when she’s working away. Martin Clunes paid for Lucky’s flight to the UK, and Caroline donated 200 euros towards the little dog’s veterinary and pre-flight checkups. Martyn is now canvassing other celebrities in a bid to get help finding new, loving homes for other rescued street dogs in Cyprus. Sadly, he says, unwanted dogs are treated very badly on the island.