Our time working with the Great Dane Adoption Society....
Back in 2004, the Great Dane was a breed that we knew nothing at all about, so volunteering our help in transporting them seemed a great way of gaining some knowledge and experience. Having offered our help a few months earlier, Friday 22 October 2004 was the day we did our first "job" for the Great Dane Adoption Society. Baxter needed to be collected from his foster home on Merseyside the day before there was a place available for him at the Sanctuary in Lincolnshire where he was going for some medical tests. So we agreed to collect him and keep him overnight with us before transporting him to Lincolnshire. So it was that Baxter became the very first Great Dane we welcomed into our house. (You can seem more about him on the "Great Danes and us" page.)
Although he was with us for only a matter of hours, Baxter really made a huge impression on us and we went on to offer fostering on a regular basis. Our offer was accepted and up to today, 23 October 2011, exactly 7 years after Baxter put a paw down in our home, we've had 39 others stay with us for at least one night or more. Of that 39 we've had a total of 23 who we've had for a month or more. Our longest visitor was Beula, a very nervous Fawn bitch who came to us on 14 December 2007 and went to her new permanent home on 12 October 2008. Of course the Great Dane Adoption Society occasionally helps other large breed dogs, so although the majority of our fosters have been Great Danes, we've also had Sully the St. Bernard and Neville the Basset Hound.
We're very proud to have helped just a very few of the hundred or more Great Danes that are taken in, given veterinary care and treatment when necessary and then rehomed every year by this great organisation. If you feel able to help in any way at all, please do consider volunteering. Please go to www.danes.org.uk and click on the link "How you can help". You'll be able to see the many ways in which you may be able to help, even if you're not a resident of the UK.
