KC Charitable Trust donation

Tailwaggers Club Trust was very pleased to recently receive a £5,000 donation from the Kennel Club Charitable Trust.
Tailwaggers also receives many referred cases from the KC and struggles to help all the people with unexpected vet bills.
Tailwaggers recently received a referral for a struggling pet owner on DLA benefits who had bought a KC reg Labrador pup that has developed severe HD and needs a very expensive operation. The bill for this surgery is predicted to be £8,000. We are investigating the case, but the chap had bought pet insurance without understanding the small print and sadly found when he wasn't covered for anything other than emergencies.
Tailwaggers is very grateful for all donations and works very hard to help as many people as possible. While the donation from the KC Charitable Trust is very gratefully received we do still need your help to raise funds. Increasingly often Tailwaggers is the only charity people can turn to for help.

This thank you letter made us smile

Percy, the cat had been involved in a traffic accident and faced being PTS. He's all better now thanks to an operation to mend his broken jaw.

Help them home

Pet Passport confusion left a family heartbroken and deeply stressed. The credit crunch had hit them hard and they needed to make a swift return from Bulgaria after their business failed.

Mr and Mrs Chamberlain, from Epsom, Surrey, have struggled to pay the kennelling fees for their dogs, Clio, a two year old Boxer, and Chanel, a year old American Cocker Spaniel.

On the 17 January the couple discovered their dogs could not enter the UK under the Pet Travel Scheme because they hadn’t had a blood test proving their rabies vaccine had worked – despite being assured by a vet in Bulgaria that all the documentation was in order.

Mrs Chamberlain said, “Here our nightmare started. The only option we had was to contact a quarantine kennel in the UK to arrange entry for our girls.”

Understanding the couple’s unfortunate situation, the quarantine kennels kindly reduced the bill from £5,400 to £3,600. Mr and Mrs Chamberlain planned to find work and save £500 a month, but a week after returning to the UK, they discovered that Clio was pregnant. She gave birth at the kennels and the couple were forced to sell her pups to help pay the bill.

Mrs Chamberlain continued, “Without work and money our family started to suffer. The stress has made my husband unwell; now he is on strong medicine and I am caring for him every hour of the day, so now I cannot look for a job either.”

After hearing of their plight, Ann Podmore at Home Counties Boxer Welfare has sympathetically offered to settle the couple’s bill on their behalf, so Clio and Chanel can be released from kennels without delay. With the generous owners of the quarantine kennels reducing it by a further £2,400 and Mr and Mrs Chamberlain paying £1,300, the final fee was £1,053.13.

If you can make a donation to help repay the money Home Counties Boxer Welfare has advanced, please visit www.justgiving.com or send a cheque payable to ‘Tailwaggers Club Trust’ c/o Dogs Today at our usual address.

Blind hope

Chunk has been diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes, leaving him completely blind at only three.
Chunk, a Yorkshire-Scottish Terrier cross, arrived in the care of Rob Kipling and Deborah Harley in March, with cataracts already affecting one eye.
The couple, from Coventry, West Midlands, has looked after his littermate, Missy, since she was a pup. They took Chunk in after his needed a new home after his first owners' couldn't keep him.
Rob was unable to take out insurance for Chunk because of his existing eye condition.
He said, “Chunk and Missy were so happy and excited to see each other, but now he has cataracts in both eyes and cannot see a thing. He bumps into doors and chairs, and is too scared to go outside.”
Rob has learnt that the combined costs of consultations and corrective surgery by a specialist would total a staggering £5,000.
He continued, “We simply cannot afford this even though we are both employed, as Deborah has only just gone back to work and we now have two new additions to our family. We had been saving up for a holiday but are more than willing to put this money towards the cost of the procedure. We have just over £1,000 and with a bit more saving we could possibly get up to £1,500.”
Because Chunk’s condition will soon become inoperable, Rob and Deborah hope to raise enough to have at least one eye corrected, and any other donations would be warmly received.
Rob said, “Chunk is a lovely dog with a long life ahead of him, we just want it to be more comfortable and fulfilling – any help would be extremely appreciated.”

The family approached Tailwaggers Club Trust. In the unlikely event that more money is donated than is needed for this specific case it will be used for other worthy Tailwaggers cases. We have set up a Just Giving appeal - click the box top right or click this link.