Fundraising for Hounds For Heroes
On Saturday 1st September we hosted our first ever Dog Show for Hounds for Heroes in our grounds. This charity is close to our hearts and especially to our RGN Cath, who brings in her therapy dog Jack to visit residents. Hounds for Heroes provides and trains Assistance Dogs for injured service personnel. Also for members of the Civilian Emergency Services, such as police and fire fighters. For more information, their website link is here http://houndsforheroes.com/
Thank you to our staff organisers
Lots of our staff helped to organise the event – from concept to the actual day in 4 weeks! And a fabulous success it was too.
One of our fantastic nurses, Vickie, lovingly made carrot, banana and apple flavoured doggy cupcakes, topped with cream cheese and a gravy bone! These went down a treat with all the dogs,who eagerly came back for more. Vickie also made a beautiful caramel sponge with the Hounds for Heroes logo. We ran a “guess the weight” competition, won by our administrator, Julie, who generously shared the cake with all the staff.
Joy, our activities co-ordinator, handmade all the beautiful rosettes for Best in Show and all the other classes.
Dee, who manages our sumptuous new residential unit, put together a fabulous hamper of goodies for the raffle. One of our lovely residents won and was thrilled to share it with her family.
Other fundraisers included another raffle, a tombola, Hounds for Heroes merchandise, a cake stall, refreshments and bric-a-brac.
Staff on the day
Every Dog has its Day
The stars of the Show were of course the dogs. Thank you to all our residents families, friends and staff who brought along their dogs to take part.
There were 7 Classes in the Dog Show, judged by three of our lovely residents. They admitted to finding the task rather difficult, because of the number of wonderful dogs taking part! Best in Show was, however, won by Wade. The winners of each class received beautiful rosettes and looked very proud with them attached to their collars! Dogs placed first to third in each class also received lovely prizes.
All the dogs were so well behaved and a credit to their owners.
Fetch!
Little dogs
Medium dogs
And bigger dogs
The funds raised got tails wagging!
It was wonderful to see so many residents, their families and especially their four legged friends, on the day. We raised £460 on the day – phenomenal considering the event was organised in less than 4 weeks. Our raffle ran for a further week to allow other staff and visitors to also participate. To further increase funds, Dee and Ruth, our Deputy Manager ran a car boot sale to clear some of the left-over tombola prizes.
Car-booting
In total, we raised £575 for Hounds for Heroes, who were thrilled to receive this sum. Alan Parton, who founded the charity, says that every time someone sends in a donation, they tell those who are serving, have served or plan to serve, that the public cares deeply about them.
Thank you to everyone for all your support! We had so much fun and are planning to run another Dog Show next year. It will be bigger and better, with the aim of raising even more money for this fantastic charity.