July 13, 2004 - When Nancy Janes boarded a plane for a hiking trip in Romania three years ago, she had no idea the experience would change her life.

The Livermore resident wanted to learn more about a people and it's culture, but when she arrived in Bucharest she found a canine subculture that made her gasp.

"We were absolutely blown away by the dogs," she remembers. "Dogs everywhere you look."

It was not a pretty sight.

Furry creatures, most of them just skin and bones, roamed the city streets. Some had open wounds and infections. Others were waiting at bus stops for passengers to feed them.

One image is forever burned in her memory: A dog limping down the street with a bone sticking out of it's leg.

Berkeley resident Susan Rubio, who was with Janes, remembers feeling a bit uneasy among all the strays. But Janes wasn't.

"Nancy would go up to them and they were relaxed with her," Rubio says "She was clearly moved by what she saw every day."

Janes had a hard time moving on to hiking trails after seeing such misery.

"We ended up doing very little hiking, but taking dog food around in our backpacks" she says.

Back at her farm in the Livermore hills, surrounded by Brittney, Josh and Goldie, her own healthy dogs, Janes was haunted by the disturbing images of her trip. She searched the internet, looking for a Romanian group dedicated to helping stray dogs. She found Dana Costin, a 27-year-old law student running a small rescue organization called Rolda.

Costin was feeding strays in Galatzi, an industrial town about 180 miles from Bucharest. About 10,000 street dogs live in the city of 300,000 inhabitants.

"They call them Ceausescu's dogs," Janes says, describing a legacy of Romania's last communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu. His "forced industrialization" policy moved people from houses and farms to crowded city apartments and pushed pets out on the streets.

After Ceausescu's fall in 1989, the dog overpopulation problem ballooned into the crisis it is today.

Costin says the government, has proven neither effective nor humane in dealing with it. "In most Romanian towns," Costin says in an e-mail, "authorities are mass killing dogs more or less under cover."

She says in some cities authorities paid vets to sterilize homeless animals. At least in part because of corruption, the projects failed. As a result, dogs continue to be killed by barbarian methods: beating, poisoning or injecting strychnine to the heart, With Rolda. Costin has taken matters into her own hands, paying for dog rescue services herself. Costin's dedication impressed Janes so much, she wanted to help her realize her dream of building a shelter in Galatzi.

"I can't let this girl down," says Janes, 47, who together with her husband Rory owns Western stores Baughman's in Livermore and Christesen's in Pleasanton.

After learning about Rolda online, Janes started its American partner organization, Romania Animal Rescue, Inc., and has been donating money, medication and supplies since. Janes also is working on sending American veterinarians to Romania and organizing fund-raisers, including a benefit Romanian film festival July 25 in San Francisco.

Costin says her American friend has invested a lot other own money to the cause. Kirn Bartlett of Animal People magazine calls it one of the best animal shelters in Eastern Europe. Rolda today has volunteer workers and a vet to care for injured and abused stray dogs. Most importantly, the organization launched a spay and neuter program to tackle the overpopulation in a more humane and effective way. Janes, who goes back to Galatzi twice a year, says she has become very fond of Costin, seeing her almost as a daughter. The fondness is mutual.

Costin calls her a "lady with a golden heart." Rory Janes' involvement in the project has grown through the years. "It was pretty much her project until I went and saw for myself," he says. "Now I am definitely committed to helping--it's hard not to once you've seen the situation."

About a month ago, the Janeses returned home from their most recent trip to Romania with a mixed-breed puppy. Ion, named after a worker in the shelter, is 3 months old. Seeing him dart through their spacious back yard, it's hard to believe mat he once was so infested with worms that he almost died.

Ion's adoption process was easy, the Janeses say. Because he is still a puppy, he needed only a few shots and a medical check-up before they could take him to the United States.'

Janes says not everyone under-stands why she is so passionate about a problem so far away, when so many abandoned dogs are in the United States. Others question why she's not helping out Romanian orphans.

She finds such questions un-founded. "I don't see that one excludes the other," Janes says.

For now, she has chosen the welfare of Romanian strays to be her cause.

She says, "I'm doing this because it is right. I can't do everything and I think I have the ability to do this well."