One person who is, unsurprisingly, really wild about her pets is TV presenter Michaela Strachan.
The 58-year-old – who lives in South Africa with her partner Nick Chevallier, a wildlife director and cameraman, and their 18-year-old son Oliver – treasures her rescue dog, Rio, eight, who she says is “the love of my life”. “I better not say that, actually. Nick is the love of my life, but we all adore Rio,” she says, laughing, before launching into a spiel about what makes dogs the perfect pets.
"I think the unconditional love dogs give is just the best thing in the world. My favourite car sticker says, ‘I wish I was the person my dog thinks I am.’ I love that because they really must think that you’re just the best thing in the world. They’re always excited to see you. I’ll be away for three weeks. I come home and Rio’s so excited to see me. If Nick met me at the airport and wiggled his bum as much as Rio does, he would get a hell of a welcome from me!”
On top of the unconditional love, Michaela believes having a dog brings so much enrichment to our lives, and can teach us valuable lessons from a young age. “It forces you to go out on walks and I think that’s incredibly good for your mental health, your fitness and for meeting people. I also think it’s great for kids to be able to take care of something other than themselves, for them to have responsibility and to learn about connection and loss, because obviously our pets don’t live as long as we humans do.”
Michaela with her pet dogs, who accidentally ingested crystal meth in South Africa (Instagram)
Michaela and long-term partner Nick Chevallier live over there (Instagram)The Springwatch presenter says Rio – a terrier spaniel mix – is “part of my way of life” and their hikes up Cape Town’s Table Mountain is where Michaela finds her “sanctuary”. However, such is her love of dogs that she feels strongly about their mistreatment, hitting out at those who don’t spend enough quality time with their pets.
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She says: “I think it’s really sad when people have dogs for completely selfish reasons and the poor dog is sitting inside five days a week until their owners come home. What’s the point of having a dog when you work 9 to 5 and nobody’s at home all day? We must remember that dogs are pack animals, and many of us only have one dog, so we become their packs. It’s not natural for a dog to be on its own.”
Until a couple of years ago, the wildlife presenter had another pooch, Timmy, who she lost unexpectedly when he died of hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer in dogs that often goes undetected until it’s too late. “He was perfectly fine in the morning. After breakfast, Nick tried to take him for a walk, but he collapsed,” she recalls. “Nick rushed to the vet who opened him up and discovered he had a burst cancer tumour. He phoned me up while I was at lunch with a friend and I said, ‘Something’s the matter, isn’t it?’ He told me, ‘I’ve put Timmy down.’” He had been fine that morning, so it was a shock."
Before he died, Timmy and Rio gave Michaela the fright of her life when the pair dramatically suffered a suspected overdose on crystal meth. “We’d been on a walk and it was sunny. We got home and they passed out,” she says. Michaela knew something was wrong when Timmy was “staring into the distance” and paying no attention to her. “I waved my arm in front of him and he didn’t react. I looked in his eyes and clicked my fingers a few times. He jumped and I thought that was very weird.
“Rio then began convulsing. She was outside in the sun, having a fit. Neither of them could stand up. I went into utter panic mode. I thought they’d eaten some poisonous plant, worried they would both die. “I was sobbing in the back of the car while Nick drove to the vets and the two dogs were just completely spaced out. I explained to the vet I’d taken them to the ‘old fort’, and she knew right away what had happened. She said, ‘This has happened before. They’ve eaten poo off a tick user.’”
Michaela is one of the stars appearing on new TV show Pilgrimage: The Road Through North Wales (BBC/CTVC)Michaela explained that ‘tick’ is the equivalent of crystal meth in South Africa. She adds: “The fort is a hangout place for homeless people, but I knew none of this when I took them there. The vet gave them some medicine before sending both of them home with me with charcoal to feed them. I kept an eye on them and the whole night they were just wandering around the bedroom looking completely spaced out, but by the morning they were completely fine. It was really scary.”
Her furry friends certainly know how to keep her on her toes. In another terrifying incident, Michaela thought little Rio had been attacked by a Cape cobra. “It turned out she hadn’t been bitten and she was absolutely fine,” she says. “But these dogs have caused me a few grey hairs.”
One thing Michaela is passionate about is the “cruel” breeding of certain canines. “We’ve bred dogs that are so unhealthy and unfit for purpose and yet people have absolutely no idea what they’re buying into,” she says. “They end up with a heck of a lot of vet bills or even putting their dog down because they can’t afford the vet bills.
“I think it’s incredibly sad that we’ve got to the point where we’re breeding dogs for looks instead of dogs for health. It’s actually cruel – social media has a lot to answer for. We’ve ended up with dogs that can’t breathe, that can’t give birth, dogs whose ears scrape along the ground and get infected and then have to be cut. What were we thinking in even letting these breeds develop? I think education around that is really important. I don’t think for one minute that people who have those dogs know how cruel it is.
“To get small, cute dogs, you breed the smallest of the litter – the runts – so if you mate two runts, you’ll get a cute-looking little dog, but not a particularly healthy dog. You think, ‘What on earth are we doing?’ It doesn’t really matter what they look like at the end of the day. They love you just as much. I think my wiry-haired terrier Rio is the prettiest thing in the world.”
Michaela’s CV is varied to say the least. She started out as a singer, signing to a record label first, before working on music programmes during the 80s. Since then she’s spent more than 30 years presenting wildlife shows. She co-hosted The Really Wild Show with Chris Packham, then Steve Backshall, from 1993 to 2006, and we now regularly see her alongside Chris on the BBC ’s Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. Most recently, she took part in the BBC series Pilgrimage: The Road Through North Wales in which celebrities trekked the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way.
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In 2014, Michaela’s world was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy – a time she tries to forget. “Someone had to remind me of this, but it’s 10 years since I had my cancer scare. They said, ‘Are you going to celebrate?’ And I suddenly thought, ‘Oh my God, I should!’ Stupidly enough I hadn’t thought about it because I actually forget I’ve had cancer."
The recent loss of her best friend and Really Wild Show colleague Lucy Bowden is a poignant reminder of the disease. Michaela says: “Every so often I’m reminded that a lot of my friends are suffering with cancer. My friend passed away last year. She had the same prognosis and had a single mastectomy and Tamoxifen. It looked like everything was going to be OK, but it came back and now she’s no longer with us. I was filming a show about parakeets and found out that day that she had died. Now, every time I look at parakeets I think of her.”
She adds: “There are similarities between them too – parakeets are loud, colourful, they make you smile, they’re chatty and those were all the things that Lucy was.” With a zest for life, Michaela refuses to live in fear of her own cancer returning. “I feel incredibly sad she didn’t make it and wasn’t as lucky as me. I’m a survivor, I know how lucky I am.”
*Pilgrimage: The Road Through North Wales is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer
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