Fetcher Dog's latest fundraiser!! Thank you to those who have donated, please consider donating if you have not already

As you know, fundraising has been really tough for us recently.

The cost of living crisis has increased our bills like it has everyone but it’s also lead to less people having the spare income to donate. We moved into our new centre in April and it was a big step for the charity to own our own premises. We are so happy that we did it and know it will be a wonderful place eventually but we have a lot of work to do to get things done.

 

This move has also come with a few extra costs as it is a new area and we don’t have the relationships with the companies that most of helped us previously or have as much of a stamp in the local area for donations. Even something as simple as a skip is double the price here as the local companies don’t do charity discounts.

As well as these extras, we are being asked more than ever to take in new dogs and I’m not sure why but most of them are coming to us in terrible condition.

That means that not only are we paying for the standard vet care that we’ve always fundraised for (spay/neuter, vaccines etc) but covering the cost of other health issues. 

We’ve had multiple dogs in with skin issues which take a long time to sort and require trying lots of different approaches before finding one that works and makes a difference. We’ve also had several dogs in need of huge teeth extraction procedures which are very very expensive. Any long term health issues also mean that adoption interest is lower as people don’t want to take on a dog with a health issue which just means that the dogs are costing us more just by being with us longer.

The same applies to the scared dogs we are known to take in. We are so happy to be able to help the scared dogs when they end up in the pound. A lot do rescues won’t take them because of how hard and how long you have to work with them before you can find them a home and we are so happy to give them a chance but they do cost us more than the easy to home confident dogs that we take.

We have also been seeing an increase in the amount of people returning dogs after years in homes. This has happened a lot in the last few months with dogs being returned after six years because of a new baby in the home or a change in circumstances.

We always want our dogs to come back to us rather than go somewhere else but they are a lot harder to home the second time round as they are often now seniors and people assume something is wrong with them and therefore don’t want to adopt them.

All of this adds up to increasing costs on centre which we are trying to cover using very stretched resources. We are not like other charities, we do not get many grants or any funding. We are not like the big charities that get money from huge corporates or have endless volunteers out on the streets raising money. We are a tiny team and we do our best with what we have.

We are so so so grateful for the support we get from our adopters and supporters and we know that part of the problem is that our posts aren’t being seen by the people who want to support us because of the changes on Instagram and Facebook.

So, if you can donate anything to help us reach our goal, please do. If everyone who sees this donated £1, it really does add up. It doesn’t need to be a big donation to make a difference.

Please consider donating if you can and please share if you can’t.