21st November

I cannot let today pass without mentioning the weather. It has been atrocious here today. Yesterday was wet  so that it was impossible to keep the dogs clean. Rosie still has a recent scar from her spay. The garden is waterlogged, this morning seemed to be starting the same, then suddenly at lunchtime the wind strengthened, it went very dark and poured with rain driven on by a strong ,cold wind. It did eventually stop raining but remains very cold.
Something else I also wish to record for posterity. I was 'poo picking' in the ponies field today with Jesse when another dog came down the bridleway. He saw it and stood watching, I called him and eventually he came back to me. I was so proud. With him and Rosie it is a case of one step forward two steps back.
 Just as you feel you are getting somewhere they then do something making you feel you are back to stage one.

Thank you to everyone who donated. With the walk money, what we collected in store and online donations we are up to £79.91 which is great but somewhat short of the £400 we were aiming for.
When we launch an appeal like we did for Saffy we have a tremendous response but when we send out a plea for running costs we get hardly anything. Yet with no funds we cannot continue the work of re-homing Staffords.
I often hear people say 'when I win the lottery I am going to have hundreds of Staffies and buy beautiful kennels ...etc.'  The truth is, even if this were to happen and they had money to spare,the dogs would still get stressed in the kennels, however beautiful, for however many you helped there would still be more you could not help. It is a pipe dream.

When I started Guildford SBT Rescue (although I had no idea then how much work it would be, I thought it would just involve a few phone calls a day) I had very few resources. Our house would probably not pass a homecheck as the garden is separate, down the drive so dogs have to be taken on the lead from the house. We used boarding kennels for some of the dogs then, now with dogs staying so long in rescue, kennels would cost too much and the dogs become too stressed. After a year we joined SBT Welfare and they helped us with money (though all of their money came from public donations and fundraising)
Earlier this year we parted from them due to restrictions of only being able to take full Staffords.
Since then we have struggled with very little funds
.
How are we funded?

We charge £150 for each dog adopted. If we have had the dog neutered, vaccinated and microchipped £150 does not come near to covering the cost without taking into account food and flea treatment especially if the dog stays months!

We attend fundraising events, and have our partnership with Pets At Home and for the rest we rely on donations from YOU.

At the moment we  have Jesse, Angel, Rosie and Chloe relying on us.
Val pays for Tara's food and veterinary costs, that is her giving.

We have cut down on the dogs we have in to take the pressure off us and give a better quality of life to the dogs with us but lack of funds means we cannot help other dogs out there.

We are asked EVERYDAY to take dogs in. Today we were asked if we could help with four dogs in pounds who are to be pts tomorrow.

There were two males who the owner had taken to the vet to be pts as he could not keep them and all rescues were full.
 Every week we have an email with a list of dogs from pounds. This week there was a male only about 9 months old. He had Demodex mange . I was so tempted to help him, he was young, we could have treated his mange ...

Presumably everyone who reads this does so because they are sympathetic to our work.

IF EVERYONE WHO READ THIS BLOG YESTERDAY GAVE £5 WE WOULD HAVE RAISED £300
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GIVE A LOT.     GIVE WHAT YOU CAN.
  THESE DOGS NEED YOUR HELP               WE NEED YOUR HELP TO KEEP GOING.