Issue 8      May 2006

 Welcome to the Poplar Farm Kennels newsletter. If you wish to be removed from the mailing list please email us at poplarfarm.kennels@tiscali.co.uk and we will deal with it. For up to date information on available dogs and re-homing please do check the main web site at www.poplarfarmkennels.org.uk 

 We hope you enjoy reading this.

 Dave & Rachel

Forthcoming Events

We are hoping to hold a number of pat and chat events over the summer.

 Fundraising items

One of our volunteers, Mel Singlehurst is a very talented Animal Portrait artist. She has kindly donated original drawings of a number of our Sponsor Dogs and these have been used to create a range of blank greetings cards. These cards will be sold at our Meet and Greet events and we are also hoping to offer them for sale through our website. The current range features Sian the Collie, Missy the Foxhound x Bloodhound and Poppy the GSD. Cards featuring Aramis the epileptic white GSD are currently in production and the next project is Eric the Greyhound.  The cards come with envelopes and are individually packaged. They cost £1.50 each or any 4 for £5.

We have been collecting items donated to us for sale at Car Boots and we are hoping that a number of our volunteers will be attending a number of Car Boot sales over the summer to fundraise for us. If anyone would like to offer their help for this project we would love to hear from you.

 Website and forum

Hopefully many of you will have seen the statement that we have added to the home page of the website explaining the current situation here. If anyone has not yet read it, can I ask that you take a minute or two to visit www.poplarfarmkennels.org.uk and take a look.

Also there are a few references and links to our Forum further on in this news letter.  The ”Friends of PFK"  forum was originally set up as a private list so that our volunteers could keep in touch and plan events etc.  Since then it has grown into a useful resource and record of events here and so we have decided to make parts of it open to public view. We are not interested in accumulating a huge membership of people that do not post so as a guest you will be able to get a feel for what is going on but to view images and participate fully then you will need to register.  Registrations will be accepted from adopters, sponsors, volunteers, transporters, fosterers, home-checkers, past owners and anyone who has helped the PFK dogs in any way. Please use your own name or a meaningful nickname as you would in a group of friends, this is not a place for the anonymous.
 
People who have adopted dogs are especially welcome to share their experiences with their new hounds, hopefully this feedback will help us to do a better job and also help others to deal with problems. Obviously news and photos of our past lodgers will be well received. If we have not met before then you will need to tell us who you are and why you are interested in PFK.

Thank you

We would like to say a huge thank you to Naturediet Petfoods ltd. We started using Naturediet a while ago for a couple of the difficult to feed dog and we had great success, so much so that we have now switched more of the dogs over to it. Aramis is on it because he needs a preservative free diet. Twiglet and Joe need it because they are sensitive to certain types of food and we use it for a number of the others just because it seems to suit them better.

Recently I went over to collect my usual load and whilst I was there the very nice lady in charge told me that there was a quantity of food that they would be happy to donate to us. This has now arrived and we are very, very grateful to Naturediet for this extremely kind gesture. 

GGLL Calendars

Our grateful thanks to everyone at GGLL who organised the calendar fundraising last year. Thanks to their efforts and to everyone who bought the calendars we received a cheque from GGLL for the fantastic sum of £458.11. We had intended to put this money towards the fencing project mentioned below but with the possibility of a grant for the fencing we decided to buy 2 pallets of CSJ dog food instead, which means we have a couple of months supply of food in stock so we don’t ever get stuck for dog food in an emergency (see statement mentioned above).  Organising food for 50+ dogs every day can be a logistical nightmare and running too low can be disastrous so good stocks make things much easier.

Once again, our thanks to everyone who made this possible.

Aramis

Aramis seems to be doing very well. After making changes to his routine and medication we have managed to get several nice long gaps between seizure episodes. The most recent changes have involved avoiding stress and removing the noisy PC from the kitchen as that appeared to be aggravating his seizures once they started.

At the vets suggestion we introduced another medication to his routine, Potassium Bromide, and I am delighted to report that since we started the KBr on March 18^th he has not had any more seizures to date. Fingers crossed we are making progress. There are more details on Aramis’s story on our forum http://s10.invisionfree.com/PFK/index.php?showtopic=63&st=0

Sian, our special snappy collie

On April 27^th Sian, our special girl, had been off colour for a few days and we had noticed that her glands in her neck were up. On that morning they were up again and on checking her underneath I also found a lump in her tummy. As we were worried about the possibility of a recurrence of her mammary lumps I took her straight down to the vets that afternoon.

Unfortunately, after a very thorough examination by our vet, the diagnosis was about as bad as it could possibly be. Sian has Lymphoma

She has been prescribed steroids to try and make her feel better but there is no cure and the vets realistic estimate is that Sian has 3 months at most. We dont feel that it would be in Sian's best interests to try chemotherapy as she would not cope with the hospitalisation and travelling and since that would only give her a few extra months it seems unfair on her to put her through it.

Healing thoughts wont stop the cancer but it may help make things more comfortable for whatever time she has left.

Eric

Eric is a stunning blue brindle male greyhound who came to us 5 months ago from a rescue in Ireland. They had been at a loss as to what to do with him as he had proved to be very dog aggressive and had seriously injured a number of dogs at the kennels they used. They were being forced to look at pts as an option and we offered him a place here instead.

During his time here we have seen no signs of aggression towards other dogs although Eric did prove to be wary round people, especially men, and it has taken Dave a long time to build a good, trusting relationship with him. On Monday we reached a milestone with Eric. We finally managed to have him loose in the paddock with Poppy, one of our sponsor GSD’s and they were both absolutely fine. Pictures of this momentous occasion can be found here http://s10.invisionfree.com/PFK/index.php?showtopic=223

Improvements

The next big improvement is a major fencing project which is due to be started any time now at a cost of £3,500. To fund this project we have applied for a grant from the BGRB Retired Greyhound Fund and we are currently waiting to hear the outcome of this application. We currently have 7 earmarked and one non earmarked Greyhounds in our care and we have been told that we are eligible for consideration. We are installing 6 foot mesh deer fencing round the whole of the dog paddock to make it completely safe for all our residents. We are also extending the area by around 50% so that we will have enough space for even the Greys and Lurchers to get a proper run. We are also installing a fence to section off the grass paddock from the hard standing area in bad, winter weather to reduce mud. The final part of the project is to install double 6 foot high gates inside the existing gate to foil the current gate jumpers and to leave a small enclosed area where dogs can meet potential adoptors.

The fence has been planned to also give us a separate enclosed compound in which we are hoping to eventually install a block of purpose built new kennels. The total cost for the block could well be in the region of £25,000 so it is a long way off at present but the site will be there for the future.

Workshop to kennel conversion

This project is now well underway. We have all six kennel fronts installed and all the partitions are up, although there are a few minor alterations still to finish. The painting is underway as we speak and we now have four kennels completely finished and work is currently on hold as all six kennels are again currently occupied. The final stages will take a little longer as there is a window to install and some minor structural repairs to complete before the final coats of paint can go on and we can then begin to work out the complicated process of building the attached runs without spending any money. 

Rainbow Bridge

Harry

Harry, an epileptic Springer Spaniel came to us last year from Ireland. Unfortunately on 21^st December 2005 he went into status at around 9.30am. Despite our best efforts with rectal valium and an emergency dash to the vets within 30 minutes the vet was unable to help him. During the afternoon we got a phone call from them to say that they felt that Harry’s problems stemmed from a brain tumour and the only kind option was to let him go, which we sadly did. A little more detail on Harry can be found on his thread on our forum http://s10.invisionfree.com/PFK/index.php?showtopic=246

Russ

Russ was a Corgi x and around 11 years old and was one of my own dogs that arrived here with me in July 2003. Russ came to live with me and my ex at around a year old. A girl I was at business college with had got him as a pup and decided that her children were allergic to him. I agreed to take him on with the rest of my crew and try and find him a new home. We never did find him a new home and he became part of the family. Russ was always a bit of an odd character, in fact he was affectionately known as “pot dog” because he never really seemed to do anything much apart from sit and want cuddles.  He would never chase a ball and the only time he would run at all was to chase pears off the trees when they were in season. His other favourite pastime was attempting to hunt out mice. Russ would stand for ages with his nose pressed down holes in the vain hope that one would pop out. I will always remember his face the day he found one that had obviously frozen to death and he was so proud that he had managed to catch it.  Sdly Russ died in his sleep in January after a very short illness.

Sherlock

You may remember from a previous newsletter that Sherlock had used up yet another of her nine lives after a nasty incident with Softy that put her in the vets for a few days. She made a remarkable recovery from that but apparently failed to learn any lessons at all. One day she was on a much higher section of roof when Eric the Greyhound managed to get to her. It was all over in seconds and Sherlock certainly never knew what had hit her.

Sherlock arrived at PFK around 15 years ago as a kitten and had always lived with the dogs here. Because she grew up with dogs she had no fear of them and also no respect for them. This was fine when we had a static dog population but unfortunately Sherlock never adjusted to the many new arrivals and never learnt that some dogs were a threat. Despite our best efforts to keep her safe, including a new indoor cattery, we just couldn’t protect her all the time and sadly she paid the ultimate price for her lack of fear. We cant protect them every minute of the day and we don’t want either ourselves or another cat to go through this again.

We will NOT be recruiting for the vacant post of Stunt Cat.