Blog

A walk is a chance to build a bond with a dog, and the moment you arrive at the kennel is where it starts. But for an excitable dog, that moment can be hard to make the most of. By the time the lead is on and you're heading for the gate, they may already be spinning,...

The sights and sounds of a kennel block are obvious to us. We can see the dogs watching from the front of their kennels, and we can hear the doors, the bowls and the barking carrying down the row. What's far less obvious is the impact on smell. We can't smell what a...

We've all been there, stuck outside a kennel, conscious of everything else we have to do, and feeling for the dog. It can look like stubbornness, or like a dog who's "being difficult," but a dog planting their feet at the kennel door is communicating something. The...

If you walk a kennel row often enough, you'll know the sound before you see it. Barking cascading down the block as each dog reacts to the one before, sometimes before you're even in view. It's a hard cycle to break, and for dogs already carrying stress from kennel...

The Rucksack Walk Given the choice, what do dogs actually choose to do, and with whom? Most walks don't answer that question, they're steered by a lead, a destination, or a handler's agenda. The Rucksack Walk flips that. It strips a walk right back to nothing but...

Most of us learned the swap first. The dog has something they shouldn't. You get the chicken, you make the offer, they drop it, you pick the thing up. Everyone breathes out. Swapping is a useful skill and should be part of your approach. But in a busy shelter with...

A study recently carried out by the Royal Veterinary College and funded by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home provided figures on something many of us have been considering for some time now. Namely, that as the cost-of-living crisis goes on, dog owners are gradually...

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of rescue work is appropriate assessments, and therefore there is often a lot of attempt to improve best practice. One thing that has been identified as an important part of the assessment process is early identification of...

Relinquishing a dog can be a challenging thing for owners to do and is often full of mixed emotions. Any information provided to us maybe of varied use due to: fear of judgment; concern about what will happen to the dog post relinquishment, particularly in the case of...

Where do our dogs come from?   Dogs find themselves in rescue for a variety of reasons, data form the 2022 Dogs Trust annual review showed that Dogs trust, the Uk’s largest dog welfare charity received over 51,000 relinquishment requests. The most common reasons for...

"Let him sleep. For in dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.” Albus dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I don’t know about you, but I often wonder what my dog, Jess, is...

This week we have talked a lot about frustrations, today I just wanted to provide some further context about why it can be so prevalent in shelter. If we consider the oxford dictionary description of frustration “The feeling of being upset or annoyed as a result of...