Following on from articles from the Lincolnshire, Suffolk and Portsmouth homefinding schemes, plus a hugely positive overview from GBGB’s Paula Beniston, we hear from the Yarmouth and Brighton branches. While Brighton also reported a highly successful year, trustee Dolly Shew was keen to acknowledge the ongoing support from a (perhaps) surprising source.

 

When COVID-19 struck we placed six of our 14 dogs in foster homes to relieve the pressure on our staff as we closed the kennels to volunteers. Of course, all were adopted by their foster homes as people found their lifestyles were much changed.

We have homed more than 100 greyhounds so far this year and could home more. We now have a waiting list for prospective owners and an empty list of dogs waiting to come to us. At this time last year, we had 25 dogs waiting for anything up to six months to come to us this year we are contacting trainers to see if they have any dogs needing to be rehomed. Bitches are in noticeable short supply and sadly we have families who have had a pair of dogs and now having lost their bitch want to home another, all offering fabulous homes.

We realised there is a general lack of greyhounds for re-homing when we had requests from all over the country for specific dogs. Home checking was a problem, but we overcame this with videos, proof of identity and utility bills and in some cases reference from their vet. We now have greyhounds from Aberdeen to Wales from Yorkshire to the Isle of Wight.

The GRS system has been a great help as in common with other animal charities we have had extremely limited fund-raising opportunities this year. Our volunteers have been very generous and most of our funds have been raised through online events.

Hopefully in 2021 we will gradually get back to some normality at the kennels allowing more of our many volunteers back to help with the dogs they love and some more greyhounds for rehoming.

Corinne Douglas

Voluntary Coordinator, Yarmouth Greyhound Homefinders

 

I would like to acknowledge the truly enormous assistance we receive from ‘Support Adoption For Pets’ / ‘Pets At Home’, to independent greyhound rehoming centres like ourselves and the national Greyhound Trust. 
We have had an association with them for many years, first as a partner charity which then became the charity of the year.
Twice a year they run fundraisers to support us, usually a summer one and then the Santa Paws Christmas campaign.  We are made very welcome to be in store during the fundraisers (obviously not in 2020!) with our hounds, which is of double benefit to us, as we both support the fundraiser but at the same time their customers get to meet our beautiful hounds, so we are raising awareness at the same time.

Customers really enjoy meeting our greyhounds, finding out more about the breed, and seeing them sprawled out and often dozing their time away in store. We also have honorary hounds who attend these days in store, as it is very important to show people that greyhounds can live with other breeds, so that they are seen as mainstream family pets.

We are the charity of the year with the Burgess Hill Pets At Home store, and the management team and colleagues work really hard to promote the fundraisers with their customers.  These fundraisers bring in thousands of pounds for us, and are a massive financial support to us.

We are also offered pallets of food, which might be slightly damaged goods or short life dated, usually a mix of dry and wet food.  Whilst we cannot change the daily dry food we feed our kennel hounds to such a variety of donated goods, we add in a small amount to our food, which makes our stocks go further.

We have had numerous pallets this year, including one totally of wet food in the Spring which was amazing and a massive boost to our supplies.
A donation point is also in store, where customers can donate goods to us, which we empty on a regular basis.
There is also a VIP Lifelines Scheme, and these are generated every time a VIP Club member swipes their card when making a purchase for essentials, treatments or treats, and the lifelines are then converted into vouchers for us to spend in store.
Support Adoption For Pets also operates a grant scheme, and right at the start of the lockdown we were given an emergency funding grant from them, which took the pressure off those uncertain times when we closed the kennels during the first lockdown.

Support Adoption For Pets raise millions of pounds for animal charities, and are huge supporters especially of greyhound rehoming centres, so it would be really lovely if you could give them some recognition in the Greyhound Star.

Dolly Shew

Trustee Brighton Retired Greyhound Trust