A message from Lynn:
My Number One Mutt
"Seven months ago I made contact with Steve about volunteering at his kennels for large breed dogs and on my first day I was led into the cabin and met my first SHAK dog, a long-haired, long-legged, partially bald Wilf looking very sorry for himself in ‘isolation’ until his mange was cleared up. Once seen those beautiful, big, brown eyes are never forgotten and Wilf has been one of my favourites (not that we have favourites obviously!) ever since. As regular followers of Steve’s blog may remember my boyfriend and I took Wilf away for a weekend in May to walk part of Hadrian’s Wall and to see how he behaves away from the kennels. This would give us valuable information to help us begin looking for a ‘forever foster’ home for him, which he undoubtedly deserves. On his Hadrian Wall trip he met everything from cyclists to other dogs to traffic and had trips in cars, metro trains and buses, none of which made him bat an eyelid.
Unfortunately, a few months down the line, poor Wilf still hasn’t managed to find a home so we decided to give him another weekend away from the kennels, this time to look more at house situations. Once again Wilf has done himself more than proud and fitted in fantastically. He is a very well house-trained dog who slept perfectly in his crate overnight, asked out when nature called, ignored us when we were eating our meals (no scrounging at all!) and even ignored my temperamental cats. On Sunday we enjoyed a lovely morning out at the Dyke Neuk county show where he met numerous dogs and we were even asked if we were entering him in the dog show as he was such a handsome example of a lurcher! Not bad for a rescue dog! Today saw me and Wilf visiting Dunstanburgh Castle for a walk along the coast and a few leaps onto the ramparts.
After such a tremendous weekend with a loving, friendly, well behaved dog it was devastating for me to have to take him back to the kennels this afternoon (as Jill and Geoff will confirm having seen the floods of tears) even if his ‘girlfriend’ Nina was waiting for him. I would love to give Wilf the home he so very badly deserves but one of my cats seems not to want to share her house with a dog so the next best thing for all of us at SHAK would be to see him going in to a loving home somewhere. Having spent so much time with Wilf I have struggled to find anything he won’t take in his long stride and he has a huge amount of love and pleasure to give someone who will treat him well. We are all desperate to find somewhere for him so if you think you (or someone you know) can give this boy the home he’s dreaming of please get in touch."