One of my dogs is adopted and had a terrible life before she was rescued. For years she was just tied in a field with a heavy, tight iron collar around her neck tethering her. When we first got her she was very shy and scared of her own shadow, anytime we raised our arms or walked up to her she would cower, thinking we were going to hurt her. One of her ears is weird and crumpled which the vet said was caused by her getting an infection and it never being cured and she only has a few teeth and they are rotten and often broken into odd shapes (we think she was probably kicked in the jaw).
Years ago we had another dog, Patch, who we had rescued from Battersea. He had been abandoned and before that must also have been abused. Everytime anyone picked up a newspaper to read, or a stick to throw for him he would start trembling and cower. My parents rescued him when he was about 1 and at the time i was a 1 year old baby. I grewup up with him at my side until we were 14 and he had to be put to sleep because he had cancer. He was the sweetest, most beautiful dog.
Minnie too has grown from that scared, sad little thing into a beautiful mischievious, greedy little hound. Despite being quite an old girl (around 8) she has tonnes of energy and loves rolling around playing with Digby or racing across the park and always comes and sits on our laps for cuddles.
So adoption is a cause that is incredibly close to my heart. Lots of people are hesitant to adopt animals because they worry the animals might be agressive or damaged permanantly in some way. While of course on occaision this can be true (i know this myself but i haven't been put off adopting. Thank god) the majority of the time these animals have done absolutely nothing wrong, they are simply either abandoned or abused, or just come from loving families who, for whatever reason, can no longer take care of them. So i feel a huge amount of love, honour and respect for anyone who works in animal sanctuaries or adopts animal, when i am more financially secure i will certainly donate money to them and if i can get over my phobia it would be wonderful to volunteer.
Anyway, why am i writing this? Well i saw on Tanya's Blog an amazing post that alerted me to a brilliant thing the big brand Pedigree are doing. Pedigree have launched 'The Pedigree Adoption Drive 2010' to try and bring awareness to the public about how many dogs are without proper homes right now. There are many ways to get involved such as donating or adopting yourself, but of course not everyone is in a position to help like that. So Pedigree have made something that everyone can do. They have made a video about the drive and for the first 100000 views they will donate £1 per view.
(i took this info from Tanya's blogpost who in turn took it from the youtube channel)
"Last year over 107,000 dogs were abandoned in the UK and one abandoned dog was put down every hour. This year Pedigree wants to change this fact.
Help us by adopting a dog, donating money or simply by making sure as many people as possible see this YouTube Channel page.
Paste a link into your facebook status, tweet it, email it or send it as a text message.
We're looking to improve the lives of thousands of dogs across the UK - not to mention the dog in the video. For the first 100,000 views, we will donate £1 - see below for details.
*For every viewing of an episode of Charlie's story, Mars Petcare will donate £1 to the PetPlan Charitable Trust (Registered Charity Number 1032907), up to a maximum of £100,000. Terms and conditions apply - please visit pedigreeadoptiondrive.com."