The Company of Dogs
St Martin, Jersey
www.thecompanyofdogsjersey.org/thecompanyofdogsjersey@gmail.comAbout
What do we do?
We help people to adopt dogs
We are a support group that will help you meet and find a dog for you, your family or as an addition to an existing dog group. We will advise, check and bring over a dog that will give you the love, fun and enjoyment of a life partnership.
We will be honest, caring and truthful to you and in return we ask you to work with sometimes abused, scared but always loving animals, and watch as you make them become great animals, friends and pets.
Why?
Jersey and the Channel Islands exist in a part of the UK where adoptions are hard to come by. This is primarily due to the fact that many UK rescue centres are reluctant to home dogs to Jersey because should the rehoming prove unsuccessful, withdrawing the dog would be logistically difficult.
Many of the rescue dogs available are not always the kind of dogs that will easily fit into the majority of families and people’s lives. Locally the JSPCA do a great job as do Greyhound and Sight Hound Rescue. We look to fill the area that is non specialist, basically from scruffy mutt face to average family dog. Why dogs from Spain? We know Spain and we know the attitude to dogs out there means that thousands of normal, sweet dogs lose their lives on a monthly basis due a lack of neutering and an attitude that places dogs as mere commodities. We also are aware of the burgeoning puppy farm production in the UK and we would like to work towards wiping that market out. Hundreds of dogs have arrived in Jersey from these puppy farms. The owners know little about their past and have never visited the kennels. The parents of these dogs are often kept in poor conditions and their lives have little quality.
The homes they go to are not checked or considered and frequently those dogs will end up in our own shelter. In Spain, the over population of dogs is due to lack of education. In the UK the problem happens because of the legislation. No one breeder should carry a certificate for over 400 breeding dogs, and yet they do. If you buy a dog, always go to a reputable breeder and visit the dog with its parents. If you can’t, do not buy.
How we started
Rebecca had a Spanish Water Dog, Ruby, she was the first of this breed to come to Jersey and she came from Belgium. I had fallen for the breed and when she reached 6 years old I decided to find another one, and rather than go to the UK I went to Spain the country of origin. Here I chose Theo at the Ubrique Kennels owned by one of the best breeders in Spain, Antonio Garcia Perez. I chose Theo as a tiny pup, and knew it would be 10 months before he came to Jersey, So I went back and visited when he was 5 months old, and then again when I collected him. During the time I visited the Kennels I saw in one of the runs an astounding looking dog, an Andalucian Podenco. Antonio had found it tied up outside the ranch a few weeks before, abandoned by a hunter. He told me hunters abandoned hundreds of dogs every year, and at least this dog was alive. He managed to rehome her later in Madrid. A year later, I got into a conversation with a friend, Heather Sprately, who was trying to bring a dog over from Spain, from Adana Estepona. Another friend of mine saw his picture and noticed he had a sister, So now we were bringing over two dogs. Sid eventually went to live with Heather in Cornwall and Zula moved in with Michelle Spanswick here in Jersey. Whilst talking to Helen, the lady who runs Adana in Spain, she said it was a strange coincidence, but another lady from Jersey had also taken a dog from her that year (Tim). Her name was Joe Fry. A message, email and a meeting later and we decided that having seen how bad things were in Spain we would try, somehow, to help. Ironically in Jersey many people who wanted to adopt a dog found they could not because the UK rescues wanted to keep the dogs on the mainland. So people were buying dogs ‘online’ without ever meeting the dog’s parents, breeders or visiting the kennels. We had a mass invasion of puppy farmed dogs arriving. We had two things, people who wanted to adopt a dog but could not, and dogs that were being killed because no-one was there to adopt them. We became the glue. We started to think and plan it until I had a message from Joe saying "I have sponsored this dog and he needs a home" that dog was called Clive, our first dog.
Standing orders or donations;
Lloyds TSB Off shore ltd
PO Box 10
9 Broad st
St Helier
Jersey
JE4 8NG
Sort Code
30-94-61
Acc Number - 64976260
IBAN - GB94LOYD30946164976260
Swift/Bic Code: - LOYDJES1001Categories: Charities, Pet Care Services.
