 
| | 42 Dogs rescued from a stable In November 2004, we received an anonymous call claiming that there were over 40 greyhounds abandoned in disused stables. At first we thought (hoped) this was someone having a sick joke but we soon discovered it wasn’t!
We visited the place a few nights later and to our horror there were 42 greyhounds, of which around 35 were very young - some just little puppies and they were indeed being kept in horrendous conditions in these stables. The poor things were starving, cold, underweight, dehydrated and covered in their own excrement, it didn’t look like they had been cleaned out in some time, the stench was indescribable. In one stable block we found two10 week old puppies huddled together and very scrawny.
The dogs, we found out next day, were owned by an individual with an unsavoury and violent reputation. Our main concern was to feed the dogs and ensure they had water. We intended doing this on a daily basis but we were then threatened by the owner to stay away – in our view this was not an idle threat and ignoring it would have had serious consequences.
We had to think of a way to get these dogs out, as the reaction of the ‘official’ organisation for prevention of animal cruelty was to do nothing in the meantime and only take action once the dogs were near death. We refused to watch and wait for this.
The only safe option to save these dogs from their suffering was to contact the owner, start a dialogue and if that went well, offer to buy them out.
We met him there one night and got our first 4 dogs out – the two 10 week old puppies (Snoop and Dusty), one blue brindle girl (Meg) and one black, terrified lad (Clyde). Many of the dogs were already visibly deteriorating fast since our last visit so we were getting extremely worried about how long some of the dogs in the worst condition were going to last.
After we got the first four out safely we launched an appeal, so with the help of all the GAGAH people and the amazing response we also got from the appeal placed on the ‘Dogpages’ website we managed to raise more money to buy more dogs.
Over a period of 3 weeks we managed to buy all 42 dogs out of there, leaving the place empty. 15 of the dogs went to Greyhound Rescue West of England and Saltburn Animal Rescue who kindly offered us their help, as we couldn’t have coped with this amount of dogs on our own.
Many of the dogs we got out of there were walking skeletons and as young as 4 moths old. A good few were completely traumatised. One blue girl who we called Chrissy weighed in at 13 kilos, another two girls in a horrendous way were 16 kilos, a lot of the pups were just skin and bone. A special mention to the vet’s who initially examined and treated these poor souls, they did so at either no, or substantially discounted rates, thank you.
The only reason they survived long enough to give us time to move them was due to GAGAH supporters who went there on a daily basis to clean, feed, walk and cuddle them. This bought the dogs some time till we could raise the money needed and the spaces to get them out.
All 42 dogs are now safe and well and beginning a new life either in foster care or their permanent homes. It was an amazing achievement being able to get them all out safely, one which wasn’t possible without the hundreds of people who sent money, blankets, food, coats and for the people who went up to the stables to feed the dogs while they waited on their turn to be moved.
It is amazing what can be achieved in an emergency, everybody just worked together and the whole operation went like clock work.
Final happy note: All the dogs found a permanent home.
|
