7th Heaven Support Ventures

P.D.S.A: The PDSA is the national charity which provides free veterinary care for owners of registered pets.

Two of our Trustees recently held a meeting with Paul Wright, National Fundraising Officer for the PDSA, on a recent trip from England. He was visiting the Province to discuss their plans to set up an animal hospital in Belfast. This will hopefully open in January 2006 at a cost of £750,000 and will cater for people who cannot afford veterinary treatment for their animals. Deeming this a worthwhile venture as it will be providing a service that is so desperately needed in N.Ireland, we agreed to help them where we can. We will be taking their publicity leaflets to any events we participate in and helping with occasional fundraising. We have donated £1300 for an operating table for their new hospital.

Chance of a Lifetime project: We recently became aware of Assisi Animal Sanctuary’s, ‘Chance of a Lifetime’ project. This entails taking up to twenty dogs at a time from the province across to England. Volunteer drivers take the animals from various sanctuaries and council dog pounds and travel by ferry to deliver the dogs to reputable animal sanctuaries in England. As there doesn’t appear to be the same levels of abandoned dogs in England, Assisi has found that nearly all the dogs they take across are rehomed much more quickly in comparison to N.Ireland. As this was such a wonderful idea, particularly since councils do not operate a ‘No Kill’ policy, we contacted Rosemary Glendinning of Assisi. After discussing the logistics of the scheme and the costs involved, we decided to donate £700. This will pay for two runs that will now be helping up to forty dogs find new homes in England instead of languishing in sanctuaries or, if in a pound, perhaps facing a worse fate. We hope to continue to support ‘Chance of a Lifetime’ in the future, funds permitting.

The Welcome Centre: The Welcome Centre is based in Belfast and caters for the needs of the homeless. As quite a few homeless people have dogs as there only true companions, we decided to see what we could do to help their animals. We contacted The Welcome Centre, and agreed ways in which this could be done. Although the scheme is not yet finalised we have preliminarily agreed to provide free neutering, free health checks, veterinary treatment up to a specified limited and supplies of free food. We will continue liaising with the Welcome Centre to get this scheme up and running as soon as possible. In the meantime if anyone out there knows any homeless person or homeless charity that would like to get involved please contact us.

Dogs Trust: We held a meeting recently with Dogs Trust in Ballymena and have agreed to help them with future neutering campaigns. We will do this by advertising at our events and also by doing leaflet drops on their behalf. As neutering is a vital part of animal welfare, we thought it important to help in any way we can.

7th Heaven will also continue to liaise and work with other animal welfare groups on an ongoing basis.