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Jollyes Petfood Superstore, Gloucester

Julie Williams, 03/02/2012

Collection & Awareness Day Saturday 28 January

We were back for another collection at this fabulous pet superstore, where manager, Matt, and his staff always make us so welcome! Many volunteers and hounds helped out throughout the day, including some first time youngsters, Tuppy and Millie, who had a great time play-wrestling. The kennel dogs also came for a day out, well-wrapped up of course. Lovely black Bob, spent the day snoozing in the winter sunshine. Mickey did his best to convince some people that HE was the dog they were looking for…and gorgeous, calm Alex watched patiently, and he even ignored the rabbits inside. Shoppers were very generous and we collected £141.57. Several people expressed interest in homing a hound, and one family who were thinking of getting a dog joined in the kennel dog walking the next day. Great news! Many thanks to the volunteers and the public for your support.

Tesco Thornbury Collection 27-28 January

Julie Williams, 03/02/2012

We happily returned to this store, this time collecting on both a Friday and Saturday. Trish and Julie E. set up the leaflets etc, which looked very professional in our new leaflet holders (thanks, Helen). (No more chasing around after bits of paper after a gust of wind for the Glos volunteers)! They were accompanied by Seth (new to collections) and Coco (a pro at collections, but not feeling her best, poor thing). They were relieved by Mary and Islay, with owners Sarah and Janet, followed by Doreen & Brian with Cassie and Holly. As we’d had plenty of offers to help with the collection it was extended until 6pm. I took along kennel dog, Bob and was helped by Andrea and Ivy, who sang her way through her first collection! Business was pretty brisk all day and we took a healthy £331.
Next day we were back on duty, thanks Trish again for setting up with Gill (& Alfie). The next two hours were covered by Jacqui (who did a fab PR job for us!) and Abi with hounds Chloe and Sophie. All girls were followed by all boys (doesn’t happen often!) with Ian and John, Casper and Homer. We collected £257.90, meaning a grand total for the Tesco collection just right for rounding up to a neat £600! Thanks to all the volunteers and public who contributed to the collection (and thanks Tesco, of course).

Haldon Forest New Year Social Walk

Ellie Dudley-Clarke, 15/01/2012

At 11:00 a good number Devon hound owners got their dogs all suited and booted up for the New Year’s Walk up on Haldon Forest.

At 11:15 we all set off, the weather was kind and relatively warm! With quite spring like conditions, we followed the Raptor Route which took us on a circular walk, with Dartmoor on one side of us and Exeter on the other.

As well as seeing many familiar faces, I think hounds and owners can say, we all made a new friend and that is what these walks are all about.

I would like to say a huge thanks to Lynne and Dave Greyhound for selling human and dog snoods along the route. With the thought of hot chocolate and a bacon roll in our minds we all completed the walk.

One again I would like to thank all who attended and especially the people who brought along items that can be used for Raffle or Tombola prizes.

December Events-Dorset

Liz Baker, 09/01/2012

11th December
Walk, meet and greet at Maiden Newton Youth Centre.
Thank you to all who turned up in the most miserable weather for walking. A hardly little group of us headed off into the wind and rain along the River Frome. All agreed it would be a lovely walk in the summer! We cut the walk shorter than it should have been and the Youth Centre seemed very inviting. Graham was busy back at base and had warm mulled wine, and goodies to warm us and our hounds. Thanks to all who attended and for donations of raffle prizes and food. There was too few of us to raise much money but we covered the venue hire costs and refreshments.
16th December
Groves Nursery, Bridport
A lovely bright chilly day, and we did surprisingly well for a Friday. Thanks goes to Colin, Judith, Sean, Laura, Rachael and David plus our wonderful hounds. We raised £135
21st December
Dorchester Tesco
Lots of shoppers getting their big Christmas shop done and so many of them stopped to say hello to our festive hounds. There was lots of interest and a steady flow of coins making our collecting tins heavy. Thank you to Ann, Fred, Shirley, Laura, Sherron and Bryan - and hounds. Our last event of 2011 raised a brilliant £360.97.

Sherborne Collection

Liz Baker, 15/12/2011

10th December - We took to Sherborne’s streets in some seasonally chilly weather (but thankfully, mostly dry). We started at 9.20 and shoppers were soon stopping to say hello to our festive hounds and filling our collection tins. And the money continued to trickle into the tins, we were kept chatting to lots of enthusiastic shoppers and, as ever, we’re hopeful that some of those conversations lead to homes. There was a lovely Christmassy atmosphere with a local charity brass band playing carols and lots of people rushing with big bags of shopping – Sherborne is a lovely town that seems to be surviving the economic climate quite well.

We raised a wonderful £457.50 (which was £100 more than the same collection venue last year!).

Huge thanks to the great team: Toni S, Alfreda, Maureen, Penny, Pete and Joyce – and all the hounds.

Letchworth Collection - Sat 10 December

Claire Gambrell, 14/12/2011

Lots of layers were the order of the day for the Letchworth Town Centre collection, as it was rather cold! Sure enough humans were wrapped up and wearing Christmas hats to get in the festive mood (and providing much needed extra warmth!). All the hounds were snugly in their coats, with snoods to keep their necks warm too. Many had Christmassy coats and headgear, and drew lots of attention.

The day had begun rather quiet with a lack of Christmas shoppers. With two other charities collecting in this fairly small town, together with three real life reindeer to grab people’s attention, I had been slightly worried as to how successful the day was going to be!

However, by 11am there were lots more people in town and our gorgeous hounds seemed to be drawing as many admiring glances as the Reindeer. We handed out lots of leaflets and had some very positive homing interest, with three names and numbers to follow up after the collection. The total at the end of the day was a pleasing £314.71.

Weymouth Street Collection

Liz Baker, 07/12/2011

Saturday 19th November: We hadn’t collected at Weymouth for a couple of years (apart from our collections at the Weymouth Pets at Home). My fault, Weymouth’s perpetual road works and road closures and horrendous parking costs have discouraged me from applying. However our collection went really well and nobody got stuck in queues of traffic; the weather was on our side, dry, sunny and comfortably warm which I’m sure helped.

We started the collection at 9.45 and were busy from the start. Ann with Luby Lou was on the early shift. Later we were joined by Alex with the gorgeous Lanae (adopted as a pup but growing up fast) and Sherron and Bryan with handsome foster hound Paddy. Laura and Shaun joined us all the way from Wiltshire with Georgie and kennel hounds Bailey and Fraizer.

Weymouth shoppers kept us very busy and we had some encouraging conversations. The Weymouth team raised a brilliant £410. I have also been informed by Laura that there has now been two home offers, fingers crossed all goes well.

Despite the traffic and the outrageous parking costs, we’ll be back to sunny Weymouth in 2012.

Bath Street Collection

Emma Ratcliffe, 07/12/2011

Fortunately the weather was not nearly as cold and wet as last year because it's a long time to stand out in the freezing rain as my family, my dogs and Jackie will tell you!
Volunteers turned out, enthusiastically with their dogs and hit the very busy streets. The dogs had Santa suits on and drew many an ooh and arrrh.
By the end of the day we had collected £1107.59 (apologies to the volunteers for my initial miscalculation...we were very tired!)
One chap insisted to his wife that all he really wanted for Christmas was a Sponsor Dog. And another lovely couple gave us their festive donation of treats and snoods for the kennel dogs.
Thank you to everyone who helped, especially Sophie who is at Uni in Bath but hails from the Eastern region. She came just to say hello and spent an hour with tin in hand and got added to the volunteer list in Somerset!!!
I love Christmas!!! I hope it's a good one for all of you.

Gloucestershire Christmas Party Weekend

Kirstin Finning, 07/12/2011

We had a busy weekend kicking off with a stall at Stroud Goodwill Evening.

This was much quieter than last year, and wasn’t helped by the powercut that left us with reduced lighting for the last hour. We only raised £60, but that was still £60 better than nothing. Thanks Tara, Charlotte and Lucy for helping me out.

The following evening we had a Christmas Fair at Teckels animal shelter in Whitminster. This was a lovely cosy market, with a brass band playing carols, mulled wine and hotdogs. We had plenty of visitors, hound and human, to the stall, and Billie the greyhound attracted lots of admiration wearing
her purple pyjamas and snood. We took £211.20 in just a couple of hours and had a great time. Thanks Julie and Marlene for helping with this one, and Teckels for letting us come along. Will definitely go back next year!


The next day was our Christmas party at Newnham Equestrian Centre. We had a fantastic team of volunteers for the day - Chris on the door, Julie Evans, her mum, Nancy and the Polleys as Team Catering, Helen and daughter Samantha helping me on the stall, Susan organising the dog run and Jan doing the raffle.

Volunteers kindly supplied drinks and food and Che warmed up a nice
chilli on the camping stove. I don’t know how many people came throughout the day as I was too busy on the stall(!) but we took £400 on the door, £121 in the raffle and sold lots of merchandise (thanks everyone for being so generous). Thank you so much everyone who came to support us. It was great to see so many people there and all those brightly dressed hounds! Thanks also for the many fabulous raffle prizes and knitted coats. Check out the photo of cute puppy, Austin, keeping warm this winter thanks to a coat made by Jane!

The total raised for GRWE, including the many kind donations that people
made, came to a brilliant £1,576, a record-breaker for us here in
Gloucestershire, and a great way to finish up the year! Have a lovely
Christmas holiday everyone, and hope to see you all again in 2012!

Cheltenham Street Collection 26 November

Kirstin Finning, 02/12/2011

I’m pleased to say my first impression of Cheltenham as being one of the most dog-unfriendly places I know (dogs not allowed on park-and-ride or in car parks) were totally unfounded! Thanks to local volunteers the logistics of getting hounds to the collection were solved – and the shoppers of Cheltenham definitely LOVED our hounds! People were putting money in our pots and thanking us for the opportunity to stroke the dogs, how lovely!

Alfie Claus got the early shoppers' attention in his festive outfit made by Gill, leaving the rest of us a wee bit underdressed in comparison, but all the dogs had a fuss made of them nevertheless. Dogs and children (and me!) were flagging by late afternoon as you can see in the photos. It was lovely to see Sadie, homed a few months ago with house mate Guesty, and Davey the greyhound got waved off to his new home. So that was homed hounds past and present...we had some really positive homing interest (more than usual at a street collection)...so hopefully that will lead to homed hounds of the future.

I have to say a big thank you to the volunteers who helped on the day and who suggested the spot outside M&S; we did very well and raised a brilliant £536.33

Frome Extravaganza

Emma Ratcliffe, 01/12/2011

Actually, I have to admit I wasn't there. My lovely husband and daughter had it all under control ...ably assisted by Sallie, David, Linda, Sophie, Ruth and a bevy of stunning hounds.
Grateful thanks to you all.
This is the second year for this event and it was set up differently, so it has been a learning curve for all. Andy felt it was slow to get going but they had lots of interest in the dogs and the charity....AND raised £145.15

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