80th Anniversary weekend

The proceeds of our celebration weekend will be matched by the Meredith Trust, to be donated to Luna’s Legacy Golden Retriever Rescue. This organization is doing sterling work to rehome goldens that other rescues may struggle with. Join us on 8th and 9th August.

Here are some more details about the charity:

"Our aims are broadly to rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome Golden Retrievers already in the U.K. but via a referral from other rescues who aren’t able to help rather than from the public.  Over the last four years we’ve taken from Midlands Golden Retriever Club, Eastern Counties  Golden Retriever Club, South Western Golden Retriever Club, Rescue trust of Northwest Golden Retriever Club and South Golden Retriever Rescue. And we have recently committed to help Irish retriever rescue  with a dog that they are struggling with. I would have to actually go back and count up the number of Goldies we rehomed in the last 5 years, but it’s 70 to 80.

95% of the dogs we take are dogs with issues. Mainly resource guarding / reactivity.  We also take quite a few medical dogs and dogs that require a very rapid response that other GR rescues may not be able to provide to avoid a dog going to pets for homes or being unnecessarily PTS.

We are able to take most of the dogs that are referred to us, but if a dog comes in with more than three incidents of aggression or unprovoked to its name, given we aim to keep dogs in a home environment, if we determine the dog unsafe to be placed in someone’s home ( with the best will in the world, fosters don’t always listen to advice) we will refer on to a few of the premises based rescues if it means the dog can be saved from a decision at least until it’s assessed. Unlike many rescues our view is that quality of life must not only encompass the physical, but also the psychological and emotional. If we have a dog referred to us that is never going to be able to safely live in a home we would attempt to find a sanctuary space or, depending on the dog and their level of psychological distress, present euthanasia as the kindest thing for that animal.  We have had to find a sanctuary space for one dog that we assessed as unsafe to live in a home, thankfully we’ve never yet had to deem a dog as needing euthanasia for safety reasons.

We do not work (and will not) with any of the rescues that import from Eastern Europe but have helped two dogs already in the UK from owners that originally adopted from one of these rescues and then found there was no rescue back up.

We are physically located in West Northamptonshire, so slap bang in the middle of the country, but we will take dogs from, and adopt to all over mainland UK. It’s about the best home for the dog rather than geographical boundaries

We don’t yet have premises, although that is the dream albeit an unrealistic one. We use a combination of foster carers, 2 residential trainers, and a complex dog boarder (not quite as intense as a residential trainer but a very experienced dog handler). All these residential options are obviously paid for and quite expensive.

We consider ourselves niche and as such try and stay small, although the number of dogs coming in recently has been overwhelming.  Because the dogs we take are complex, finding the right home is more difficult than a straightforward dog, and the post placement support and backup is very intense for the first few months. We call this the hyper care stage. However, we do support these dogs for the rest of their lives and will always take a dog back if the placement fails.  Thankfully, our failure rate is low, presumably because of the due diligence that goes in to selecting the home and the hyper care following placement.

We are funded by adoption donations which vary from £0 to £500 depend depending on the age and the needs  of the dog. Generally those that are medical options will go £0 because the adopters will have more than enough to pay for to keep that Dog healthy. Our adoption donations are suggested and not mandatory. We would never want an adoption “fee” to stand in the way of the perfect home, although most people are obviously very willing to make a donation. We will also ask people surrendering their dogs if they wish to make a donation that dogs care - again that is not mandatory and more often than not they don’t wish to. It would not stop us taking a dog.  We have put in our intake policy that if The Dog comes with no vet history and no behavioural intervention and they are declaring behavioural problems sufficient to rehome the dog, we would ask for a £250 donation, which would just cover us for a week in our complex Dog border if they turned out to be a serious and undeclared  problem with that dog. So far we’ve not had to implement that because for the most part our owners really care and the decision to surrender to Rescue is a very difficult one.

Where dogs come in from the breed clubs or another rescue and the plan is for residential training, the first period of that will generally be picked up by the referring Rescue. Those funds don’t come to us, they are paid straight to the trainers at our discounted rate.

If a dog has been paid for the first period in training, but we feel it would benefit the dog to stay a bit longer generally we will pick up the extra cost.

As I’m sure you can imagine, we don’t deal with large numbers of Dogs deliberately, and we have some extra extraordinary costs of rehab rehabilitation with these dogs, so we always run a pretty lean level in the bank account. We normally run at less than £1000 in the bank account.  

We don’t rely on the public paying our bills as we feel it’s completely unsustainable. The Rescue has to wash its face financially with incoming and outgoings, because we have seen so many rescues that become so completely reliant on public donations that they don’t know how to manage their own finances and end up closing. Very very occasionally we will put an appeal out for donations for something we didn’t expect, such as the Transport to uplift this 11 week old Puppy as an emergency that the weekend. But if I’m completely honest, I have neither the time nor the appetite for ongoing fundraising.

I’m in daily contact with around 15 of the breed clubs rehoming coordinators via a WhatsApp chat, which is a great place for sharing information, breaking down some of the regional boundaries in Golden Retriever rescue, and just offering each other support and advice - as it’s a very challenging environment at the moment with the number of dogs being surrendered."