TAILS MAGAZINE

Spring 2023

In this issue...

Pets looking for homes

Latest news

Events guide

Behaviour corner

Plus much more

Welcome to our Spring edition of Tails.

We are looking forward to the warmer weather after what has been a very cold winter. The last few months have been very challenging for us as we saw our electricity bills rise from £25,000 per year to £90,000. However, we must keep going and continue to care for the hundreds of animals we will take in this year.

As predicted by all rescue centres across the country, we are now facing a crisis of ‘lockdown dogs’ being put on our waiting list to come in - now they are a few years old and causing problems for their owners. Many of these dogs will struggle in rescue centres as they have not been properly socialised or trained due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions and have either bitten or will bite if not helped soon. We can only take so many of these dogs in at a time as we need to have the time to rehabilitate them and then try and find safe and experienced homes for them – which is becoming increasingly difficult.

Most of the dogs in our care now have some kind of behaviour issue that makes it hard for us to rehome them safely and sensibly, which then upsets a lot of people who apply to us to adopt but don’t have the experience required, or in some cases have young children and other animals. We do take in dogs and cats that are suitable to be rehomed with children, but as you can probably imagine we could rehome that 1 dog to 500+ people! Pages 10 & 11 give you an idea of what we have been and are still facing.

As always our fab fundraisers have been out in force raising money for our animals. We are always amazed at the lengths people go to raising money for Gables as well as challenging themselves. Pages 6 – 9 give some wonderful examples of how our community support us.

Even more exciting news is that our new kennels are finally open and are already full of lovely dogs waiting for their forever homes. These new kennels are fantastic and much more energy efficient to hopefully reduce some of our ever increasing energy bills going forward. The kennels are lovely and spacious, giving the dogs a more comfortable and relaxed environment to stay in. Please see page 5 for more details.

This spring we are celebrating more long service awards for our staff and volunteers. We are incredibly fortunate to have so many wonderful people working for us and volunteering to help with all sorts of things. Without them we couldn’t do what we do.

We have some lovely happy endings to share with you, which I always love to read and I hope you enjoy them too.

We are so grateful to everyone who supports us, donates food, bedding and other items we need and to all the local businesses and people who have our money collection pots and food collection bins. You all make a huge difference and keep our charity going.

Claire Sparkes General Manager