Welfare report

The first Shar Pei Welfare and Rescue organisation

to be officially recognised by the Kennel Club

The official rescue site of the Shar Pei Club of Great Britain

Welfare Report

Since taking over welfare in the Autumn of last year we have had a number of successes and some good results for a number of dogs.

Sadly we started with no paperwork and hence no history of what had gone on before in rescue. We began from scratch so cannot comment on any dogs homed prior to our involvement. We can only comment on dogs we have been involved with since Paul Saxton was removed as co-ordinator by the committee.

I’m sure you are aware that the Club has successfully brought a County Court action against Paul Saxton concerning a puppy he homed on behalf of the club. Luckily, in that case the Chairman was in touch with the foster home of the pregnant bitch and we had an audit trail to take to the court.

However, there may be other dogs that have been rehomed by the former co-ordinator for which donations may be due to rescue but our advice from the police is that without paperwork or an audit trail, we cannot pursue them at this stage.

We have had a total of seven dogs in foster care one (in addition to the two Jenny Webb fostered when Paul Saxton was still in charge) one of which sadly still remains in long term care due to the lack of a suitable home and through no fault of his own.

Sadly we have also had one notable failure where an older dog was rehomed to lovely people but after having been a one person dog for so long and a long stay in foster care was unable to make the transition to family dog and sadly had to be put to sleep on veterinary advice after suddenly becoming aggressive. Every effort was made to find someone suitable to take on this 8 year old dog and I am confident that there is no fault with either the rescue team nor the new home. Sadly, some you cannot win no matter how hard you try. I challenge anyone to have done more for that dog.

We have been made aware that there are rumours about a dog that attacked someone by jumping on their back and that this is alleged to have been homed by us. I can categorically assure everyone in this room that SPCGB Welfare and Rescue did not home this dog.

Foster care is a last resort as we don’t really have the money to afford proper boarding kennels and are reliant on people’s good will. Shar Pei don’t do well in kennels when they’ve lived in homes and foster care where they can live in the family is extraordinarily hard to find. Not many will disrupt their own dogs and family to bring another, often adult dog, often with issues, into their home.

We do reserve the right to charge £2 per day for the dog to cover food, keep, worming and the time and effort we put in to working with the dogs to get them to the stage where they are able to be rehomed, but in fact none of us have been very good at claiming expenses and most of the work has been done out of the goodness of our own hearts.

The three chocolate puppies handed over by Simone Anthony are now happily settled and doing well. Each needed a lot of time and effort to turn them around from the frightened pups we fist met into lovely balanced pets they are now. The boy was castrated at the expense of the club as it was cheaper than paying to re-carpet Jenny Webb’s home which, given she has two males already, he felt the need to constantly mark. Once castrated, the problem was solved and Jenny able to regain some sanity and hopefully salvage her cream carpet in her front room.

The five year old horsecoat dog Rufus who was in Glasgow City Council kennels is now settled in his new home after a spell in foster care.

We have found homes for 9 dogs and have a small list of suitable people waiting for the right dog – and that’s key with rescue – the right dog for the right home.

However, we realise that some of these will go on to find dogs of their own through other rescue services and agencies, indeed many appear on other sites as well as our own. The dogs we advertise are not exclusive to the Club. And to be honest if you are looking for a new home for your dog you will use every avenue available. We have 20 dogs on the website but would remind members that not ever dog that appears on the site has been homed by us. Indeed one has been homed (Lila) but not by us and we will be updating the site this week to take Lila off and two we believe are in SSPCA care will be homed by them. Some are homed by their owners independently, some through other rescue organisations.

Sadly the number of suitable people coming forward for homes is low. Some are looking for a cheap Shar Pei little realising that dogs it may have issues or have been brought up differently to the way in which they would want a dog to be brought up. Most people have cats and the dogs in rescue would not be able to live with cats, indeed some of them would kill the cats.

We are looking to change the way in which rescue works and to offer an advertising facility for those looking for homes and a registration service for those looking for dogs. We propose in future to merely match prospective owners to prospective dogs and allow them to sort out the adoption between them. This would remove responsibility from the club for the dogs and the suitability of homes, leaving it to those who have the dogs to satisfy themselves that the home is right for their dog. It would also speed up the process considerably as at present we need to assess dogs and check new homes and simply don’t have the resources to do that. Sometimes that means that people who might have been perfect for our dogs are lost as they go and find a rescue elsewhere before our process is completed. It is particularly frustrating if we have done the home check and wastes valuable time and effort by the committee.

The 'price of admission', if you like, would be that prospective homes have to sign up as club members before we would pass on details of prospective dogs. For those looking for homes we would want a small contribution towards running rescue for advertising their dog. That way we can use the funds for extreme welfare cases. The dogs would not be signed over to the Club as now. We would no longer foster dogs except in very extreme circumstances and each would be taken on a case by case basis and these dogs would have to be signed over.

This would also speed the process up and allow more dogs a chance of a new home as we simply do not have the home checkers and dog assessors out there among the membership willing to help.

We would propose to use the website and a quarterly newsletter to inform all those that have registered of the dogs available.

We would welcome comments from the membership on this proposal and any comments can be made direct to the welfare team via email or in writing.

The welfare team