Chance, the 11-year-old terrier cross didn’t have much going for him.
Thin and bedraggled, he had been ill treated and abandoned, ending up on death row at a council dog pound.
“There wasn’t much chance for him, because of his age,” says Pip Vaughan, one of the founders of a new dog rescue organisation in Kirklees and Calderdale.
“He was in the kennels and his seven days were up - that’s the time previous owners are given to ring round and reclaim a dog.”
But finding a happy new home for animals just like Chance is exactly what Canine Allsorts was set up to do.
And so Pip and her co-founder Sue Wolstenholme found a temporary foster home and set about placing Chance with a new owner.
It didn’t take them long.
“We ran a fund-raising book stall at Huddersfield market and I put a board up with pictures of the dogs to be re-homed,” explained Pip.
Passerby Sue Booth, who lives in Springwood, stopped to offer her services as a doggie foster carer, saw Chance and immediately took a shine to him.
“The moment I saw him there was no way I could let anybody else have him,” said Sue, 60. “And he is such a gentle, loving dog.”
In fact, Sue is now not just the owner of a rescue dog but has also signed up as a fosterer.
She is currently caring for a foxy little cross corgi called Mia, whose previous owner died. Mia is 10 and because of her relatively advanced age faces similar problems to Chance when it comes to re-homing.
But Sue is sure that someone will love her because she too has a sweet nature and gets on well with both people and other animals.
“And when she goes to a new home I will foster another,” says Sue, who now supports Canine Allsorts by helping with fund-raising.
Canine Allsorts is just one of many rescue organisations that have sprung up around the country. But it differs from most in that Pip and Sue don’t rescue and re-home a particular breed or type of dog.
“We thought for a long time about what we should call ourselves,” said Pip, “and came up with Canine Allsorts, because that’s what we take, all sorts.”
Most of the 15 dogs they have successfully placed with new owners in the past 10 months have come directly from the Fleet Lane kennels near Queensbury and are true waifs and strays - and therefore harder to rehome.
“Our aim is not to discriminate against any dog, young or old, big or small,” said Pip. “We will take any dog if we think it can be rehomed, but we will never take an aggressive dog.”
The background of many dogs is unknown but Pip and Sue, who became friends after working for another animal charity, say that neglect is usually evident in dogs left on death row.
“With Chance we think somebody had booted him out. His owner might have been an elderly person who died and the family didn’t want the responsibility of him.
“He had signs of being abused but we see that in quite a lot of dogs - they cower when somebody approaches them because they are used to being beaten. Some are terrified of raised voices,” said Pip, a retired police support worker from Wyke.
They were delighted to enrol Sue Booth as a foster carer, as she has had many dogs.
“We desperately need more foster carers and we like people like Sue who are dog-savvy,” said Pip. “The more foster homes we have the more dogs we can save.”
At the moment Canine Allsorts has five dogs with fosterers and awaiting new owners (see www.canineallsortsdogrescue.co.uk for details).
A survey conducted by the Dogs Trust in 2011 found that in a single year as many as 10,000 stray dogs were handled by local authorities in Yorkshire.
However, nearly half were reunited with their owners (32 per cent were identity micro-chipped) and one quarter were passed on to re-homing and rescue organisations after the statutory seven days.
Around six per cent were destroyed and six per cent were re-homed by the local authority. So-called status dogs such as Staffordshire bull terriers, Akitas and Rottweilers accounted for 11 per cent of the total.
Kirklees Council, whose dog warden service takes animals to Cliffe Kennels near Hoylandswaine, and Flushdyke Kennels in Ossett, collected 624 stray dogs in 2013 - a decrease from 2012 when 691 were impounded.
Since 2008 the West Yorkshire Dog Rescue, founded by Marsden’s Kathy Trout, has handled 2,800 unwanted dogs.
The charity receives between 40 and 50 calls a day and needs to find up to £4,000 a month to pay for veterinary treatment.
Kathy says she launched the organisation to “help dogs and people”. Many of the animals she takes come directly from their previous owners.
“There may be circumstances that have befallen them, preventing them from keeping the dog and they don’t want to have it put to sleep. Others have been neglected or maltreated,” she said.
WYDR also uses foster homes to care for the dogs. Kathy believes this is kinder than putting animals into kennels. She added: “Using voluntary fosterers means the dog is housed free of charge and gives them the chance to enjoy a normal family home. It also has the added benefit of allowing us to see what the dog would be like to live with. Putting a dog in kennels for months on end affects its personality.”
Kathy is passionate about the work she does but feels that dog rescue associations like her own don’t get the support they need from the wider public. Funding, she says, is a permanent worry.
She is also looking for more foster carers - at the moment some of her fosterers take in three or four dogs at a time, while she has 11 dogs in her home.
WYDR won’t take aggressive dogs or those with a history of biting but it does work with those whose behaviour have been affected by ill treatment. “We get dogs that have been physically neglected and those that have been maltreated and traumatised. Some have been both neglected and abused,” said Kathy. “One of the problems is that people don’t understand dogs. They will allow children to over-handle little dogs and then have the dogs put down when they snap at them. It’s all about education.”
For details of the WYDR and dogs needing homes, go to www.westyorkshiredogrescue.co.uk
