16┆ Guest: Tania Holmes from Bulldog Rescue & the Realities of Dog Ownership

Welcome to today's episode, where we explore the world of bulldog rescue with Tania, a dedicated advocate with over two decades of experience. Join us as we delve into the challenges of rescuing and rehoming bulldogs, the importance of responsible breeding, and the realities of dog ownership. Tania shares her journey, offering insights and stories that reveal the heart and dedication needed to give these beautiful dogs a new lease on life.

Episode Highlights:

• Starting a Rescue from Scratch: Tania shares how she unexpectedly took over a rescue operation and started from the ground up, overcoming early challenges and building a successful rescue organisation.
• Impact of the Pandemic on Bulldog Rescue: Discover how the pandemic led to a surge in rescue cases and the space constraints rescue organisations face, highlighting the ongoing need for support and responsible pet ownership.
• The Importance of Responsible Breeding: Tania discusses the critical role of reputable breeders in improving bulldog health, reducing the number of dogs needing rescue, and how education can lead to better choices for future pet owners.
  
  

Join this insightful discussion on bulldog rescue and responsible dog ownership. We hope Tania's stories and experiences inspire you to support rescue efforts and make informed decisions about dog ownership. To learn more about how you can help, visit Bulldog Rescue's website and consider attending their events or contributing to their cause. Together, we can create a brighter future for these beloved companions.

📝 Click to read Show Notes

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W: bulldogownersclub.com 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sara: For this episode, I'm excited to introduce our first interviewee, Tania Holmes from Bulldog Rescue. We discuss all things to do with vets, volunteers, and how to avoid compassion burnout. Welcome to the Bulldog Broadcast the Pure Torque Pedigree podcast. Join me Sara Lamont as we delve beyond the pedigree, propaganda and misinformation surrounding the beloved Bulldog breed. Together, we uncover the real life realities of Bulldogs, sharing insights with admirers, owners and breeders worldwide. Let's start at the beginning with you before Bulldog Rescue. How did how did you get roped into it? So where did it all start? Because I know for a fact you were showing dogs before you got roped into Bulldog, and that's probably the. Absolutely. So just do a bit of pre pre rescue Ask Tanya and and dogs. How did it happen? How did you get okay.

[00:01:03] Tania: Well, I split up with my first husband who had working dogs, working spaniels, got with Dizzy, who I've known forever way before his accident. I've known him and he came with a Bulldog we'd got from Olive hunt, and she was a cantankerous, vicious, horrible little thing that didn't like me sitting in her chair. And then when me and Diz got together properly and we moved in here, this was in 1996. We moved in here and she obviously came with us now. She hated children, and I had a five and a six year old children that came with me. We lived around that. We sorted that. We just kept her away from them. That was never a problem. She lived for a year, died at 13 and we were one week into not having a Bulldog and we went, this is horrible. There's no snuffling, there's no tapping on the nails, tapping on the floor. And it's just awful. So  we got a rehomed dog called Amber from Alison Gunson didn't know Alison at the time, but she was rehoming one of her ex show dogs. So we took Amber on. She was spayed. That was sort of really when the bug kicked in and we thought, oh, you know, we want to sort of take this a little bit further. So we bought a puppy from Olive hunt called dozer. She gave us our first litter and we showed two out of that litter. Sid and Nancy.

[00:02:46] Sara: They're the two I remember.

[00:02:47] Tania: My. Yeah. Sid did quite well. Nancy, my my son jason was using her as a junior handling dog because she was okay, but she wasn't going to win any prizes. She then got injured and we were advised to do hydrotherapy to fix the shoulder that she'd damaged, and she ended up having a heart attack in the hydrotherapy pool and died.

[00:03:12] Sara: And then on her first session was.

[00:03:14] Tania: That. No, we were about six in. This was during the foot and mouth thing. So and the local paper had run a, a feature on how people were exercising their dogs as an alternative to the woods and into the common. And they'd actually featured they took a picture of her in the pool, and that paper came out on the day she died.

[00:03:38] Sara: Oh, gosh.

[00:03:41] Tania: So we'd, like, rushed out and bought a copy of the local paper. She's all over the front page in the in the hydrotherapy pool with foot and mouth alternative exercise and all the rest of it. And she actually she doesn't know she died. She just She loves swimming. She carried on swimming. I just noticed she'd gone too low in the water. And then when we put the harness up, she'd just flopped and she was gone. Sid didn't last too long after that because he'd always been together. So it was only a couple of years I had Sid for, and I showed him right up until he came out of junior class. Once he'd come out of the junior classes, the competition was too much. He was. He wasn't that good. He did well in puppy. He did well in junior. Beyond that, he wasn't really. And so we got another puppy who our intention was to breed and show that dog was an absolute disaster. Couldn't do either. So we bought another puppy from Jeanette and Trevor Jones. Yeah, yeah, Mabel. She ended up with these with great big sticky up ears that I showed her once, and I heard somebody ringside go look at the ears on Tanya's dog. And that was the last time she ever went in the ring.

[00:05:06] Sara: So you haven't had a straightforward introduction into the breed, though?

[00:05:11] Tania: No, no. And then we mated Mabel, and it took three attempts to get her in. Well, when she did finally have a live litter, I mean, the nature was stacked against me the whole time. Everything was was telling me reading and showing was not the path I had. Everything was going wrong at every single stage. We finally got a live litter out of Mabel and there was only three of them. Two of them died in the first three days. The third one did die, but we resuscitated him, which was an absolute disaster because he was then brain damaged and really vicious, and we ended up keeping him because he was really vicious, but it was during the time we were. We were talking about mating Nancy before she died, Kevin Davis was really interested in her, and I was in talks with him about using one of his dogs on on Nancy. And then Olive said, we're emigrating to Tenerife. Could you take over you? And I said, no, because we had big plans for Nancy and we were going to, you know, we were going to go on and breed all these champions and be absolutely amazing in the in the show ring and what have you, and, and fix all the problems that the breed had. And we were going to put all this right and that right. And then she died. But the week before she died, I'd had this conversation with Olive, and I'd said no, because I wanted to pursue breeding and showing. Then Nancy died and I thought, well, actually, maybe that's a sign that I should have said yes. So I called Olive said our plans have just gone out the window. I'd like to talk about taking on the rescue. And she said, well, we're going out to Tenerife to sort out the villa. Could you watch the phones for a week? I never saw her again.

[00:07:10] Sara: Oh, don't. Oh, I didn't realise it was. I didn't realise it would happen that quick. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

[00:07:17] Tania: So I watched the phones. I had no bank account, no waiting lists, no files, no information, no absolutely nothing. Just a phone number that was being diverted to my home phone. So we ended up in the early days, we were funding it out of our own pocket because we had no access to the bank account. We had no access to anything. We had to start the waiting list from the from the beginning. So we literally just wrote off everything Olive had done. Started it again. Started from scratch.

[00:07:50] Sara: And so there wasn't any dogs that needed passing or moving over at that point. Then it was just, you know, literally starting from fresh from from zero and going, wow. And the first.

[00:08:02] Tania: Ever we had was like, we took we took the rescue over around mid April 2001. We had our first proper enquiry on the 23rd of April, which is the date we use as our anniversary. And it was a dog in Norfolk and me and Diz drove up to Norfolk. We had like five people on our renewed waiting list, which was bizarre. Drove up to Norfolk, got this dog, which was absolutely heartbreaking because it was an old lady going into a nursing home. So I felt really bad taking her dog off her. We dropped it in Harlow on the way back home to somebody on the waiting list, and then came home. That was our first job and it was the only job for about three months.

[00:08:51] Sara: Wow. Before taking our rescue and before meeting Dizzy. Did you have dogs before? Like, how? How did you have the confidence just to go? Yeah. We're just going to roll with this rescue. Or was it just learn as you go and ... 

[00:09:05] Tania: It was. Suck it and see. So we'd had. How many dogs have we had by then. So we'd had Bessie. The first one. Amber from Alice and Gunson. Dozer from a puppy. Reggie from a puppy. Sid and Nancy. Obviously we'd kept out the first litter, so we'd only really had the one litter. Then we had the fiasco with Mabel litter. And that was right at the beginning, because I remember I had George, the surviving puppy. I had him in my dressing gown pocket while I was on the phone to somebody who wanted their dog picked up now. And I remember thinking, I'm trying to keep this puppy You're alive and you're badgering me because you want rid of yours yesterday. And that was the point. I think we said, right, we've got to do one or the other. We can't carry on breeding if we're going to do the rescue. So then we decided at that point we'd got this one surviving puppy that was not very well. So we made the decision. We wouldn't keep on breeding and showing we'd just put everything into the rescue. And initially it was like two evenings a week. We worked on rescue and the rest of the time we ran the record company. I ended up having to leave the record company because I couldn't fit it all in. Yeah, I.

[00:10:25] Sara: Was going to say it just sounds like such a mammoth thing to take on. It just sounds sounds a bit crazy, really.

[00:10:32] Tania: It was looking back and say, and in amongst all that, I had two small children. I remember the first first conversation I had with Jason, who would have been ten. I remember sitting on the doorstep with him explaining what quality of life meant to a ten year old. Because I'd put a dog to sleep that day. That's crazy. And he wanted to know, where's that dog gone? Why? Because he used to come home from school and find dogs in his bedroom. This is pre kennels. This is before we had kennels. They. He'd walk in from school and there was a dog in your room by the way.

[00:11:06] Sara: I'd be traumatised by that.

[00:11:08] Tania: Yeah. And I say and I remember sitting down and having to explain to him what quality of life meant because this, this old girl that we'd taken and she'd been abandoned in a back garden, she had absolutely no quality of life at all. And the vet advised that we put her to sleep. And I remember going home and Jason saying, where's that doggy? I suddenly thinking, shit, I've got to explain to a ten year old what I've just done and why I've just done it.

[00:11:35] Sara: Yeah, well, it just, it just the whole it's just changed the course of your life, has it not? Yeah, totally.

[00:11:44] Tania: Just don't do anything else. But now.

[00:11:46] Sara: No I can't. A big, you know, massive respect to all the rescues because I love my dogs, but I just don't have the ability to bite my tongue in certain situations.

[00:11:59] Tania: We have a little saying which I've got tattooed on my hand that says smile and wave. Wow. And it's what we say to the volunteers. If you walk into a house and you feel you want to tell this guy what a complete and utter arsehole he is, don't you smile. You wave, you take the dog, you go out, you go home, you punch the wall.

[00:12:20] Sara: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So let's delve into rescue. What's the evolutions of. Because as you say, you've gone from dogs in bedrooms to kennels to like the growth. What are the numbers? How has it gone? Did you say you're only busier?

[00:12:40] Tania: It's horrible at the moment because we can't help. All the dogs were being asked to help. The pandemic really put pressure on and this is not just us, it's every rescue in the country have all got no space, absolutely zero space. So where we always used to be able to keep a space aside for emergencies, that emergency space is filled pretty much straight away. In the beginning, I think in our first year we helped about 20 dogs. We're now looking at 200 a year. Wow. The the figure since 2001. We're now on dog number 4500 and something, and that's steadily grown. But I look back through my early handwritten notes that I used to keep. Everything was on paper and it was like paper everywhere. I don't do anything on paper anymore. I hate paper. I don't touch it. Some of the notes that were on there are just things never change. People still don't. I won't say don't care about their pets, but they see them as a disposable. I don't want a dog anymore. I got rid of it and I'll phone up and it's like we've made the decision. We need it done quickly and especially at the moment. We can't do it quickly. There's just no way it's going to happen quickly. You've either got to work with us or you've got to find your own way. And people are rude. They just, you know, I want my dog gone. Well, that's what you're there for. What's the point of you being there if you can't help me? And it's not just us. You ring every other rescue in the land and they'll tell you the same story. And it's disheartening because we're not being able to achieve what we set out to achieve, a bit like National Health Service. I suppose being a nurse there, you're not you're not doing what you to do because the system is against you.

[00:14:40] Sara: Well, I think the problem now, as you say, I think it's kind of easy come, easy go the way I sell my pups. You go on a wait list and I, I slow everything down as long as possible. And the way we do. Yeah. You're, like, going to be on air six months, and you'd be lucky to get one if I'm not for you, go somewhere else. It doesn't bother me. But what that ultimately does is test that person because they really appreciate that puppy when they get it. The people that get thrown out and go on Friday, they go, oh, let's get a puppy at the weekend. And by Sunday they've got one. Yeah. When you get a dog it goes that easy. It's and that's.

[00:15:16] Tania: And I think that is the problem. I think that because it is so easy to just go out and get a dog, and it's just as easy to say, I don't want this dog anymore. And that is why everything's in such a crisis. Because if it was harder to get a dog, and I'm not saying the dog license was a good was a good thing. But I think a variation on the dog license system that made people prepare for their dog, get ready for their dog, registered to own their dog. So if you do, then decide you're going to tie a brick around its neck and chuck it in the river, it's traceable back to you.

[00:15:54] Sara: Yeah, 1,000%. I think in Holland their dogs are a bit like the XL bully ban. I think the Americans looked at us in England and said like what are you doing. How have you what. Like we don't understand it. No other country's having this issue. There's tons of bullies in Holland. But in Holland you have you're effectively like an owner's license. And you have to do a socialisation test and you have to pass with that dog. And that's why they don't have problems. Absolutely. Because if you don't pass the test, you have to keep doing it until you and your dog do. And it is. You do. Yeah, yeah. You leave the dog with a group of people away from them. They have to not react. Then you walk and they are making all of this noise and then you go back to them and yeah, you're teaching dogs and well yourself. You're teaching your yourself as an owner and basic skills and the dog. So going forward you're going to have a happier life with them.

[00:16:53] Tania: Yeah. But people don't want to do that. They'll they'll phone me up and they'll say my dog's doing this. How can I fix it? So I'll give them some basic things to try. Now one of the things I, I do with training is I very much work on the repetitive way of doing it. So if you keep saying to your dog, do this, do this, do this, do this, and reward him every time he gets, he'll do it and he'll get it right. But because you've got to put in the work and you've got to and I say to them, put an hour aside and just, this is your command. This is how you're going to teach him the command. And by the end of the hour he will know that command. And they go, oh, I tried that. It didn't work. Well, how many times did you try it? Well, I told him to do that and he just looked at me. Well, you got to do it again and again and again and again. And they're not prepared to put the work in. They think if they ask for help or I asked a behaviourist, it didn't work because they think it's like a magic. Yeah. Oh, I've asked my dog. Not fixed. It's not just this sector. It's every sector. Where would the government start putting things right? Because every sector is in crisis. They couldn't say, right, I'm going to fix the rescue sector or I'm going to fix the the health sector because every other sector is in exactly the same situation. It's it's. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah.

[00:18:22] Sara: Hell, yeah.

[00:18:23] Tania: It's fucked. Yeah. Everything.

[00:18:26] Sara: Yeah. But you've got to. You can't have that mindset. Basically, you can't have the mindset of everything's not going to bother and obviously you don't because otherwise you wouldn't exist. You'd be like, oh, get on with it. Like, we don't care. Like, where does the responsibility lay into educating people? As you say, dog trainers are banging their head against the brick wall because and a lot of people now, they are that lazy. They'd rather pay for done for you training. They'd rather drop you off, send it.

[00:18:57] Tania: Off to boot camp. How's that going to help? Yeah. And then and.

[00:19:01] Sara: You train it and then it's going to come back fixed. Well, no, because now the environment's totally different that it's trained in to what? The reality of real life. That's no different to me. Going to fat camp and all being locked away from all the chocolate and all the all the all the fizzy and coming back home next to a petrol station. It's 24 over seven. I can buy all the time. It's not going to work, is it? No, but I just think and obviously that's the reason for this. Part of the reason for this podcast is like the realities of actually not just owning a Bulldog, but actually owning a dog. And it is a responsibility. But it does blow my it does blow my mind because like I say to people, my Labrador, she wants to learn it. And I just said, I don't know how Labrador Rescue exists, because if I tell her something, she will do it. But obviously people just don't want to tell them what to do. And I say Bulldogs are even easier. Half the time they don't even care. Yeah, they're just like, oh, the thing I'm.

[00:19:59] Tania: Noticing at the moment is a lot of the dogs that are coming through us now are like two, three, four years old. They're they're lockdown dogs. And the amount of anxiety I've got, the one I've got at the moment, we kept him because his anxiety levels were through the roof, and the only way he survives without savaging anybody is he's constantly looking at me for direction. Am I allowed to do that? Can I go to the door? If someone knocks the door and he goes running at it. I'll call him back and make him wait. And that's the only way we can keep him on a calm level, right? People are not prepared to live like that with their dogs, not prepared to spend that. They just let the dog get on and do it, and then it'll bite somebody. Because the anxiety levels are that great, because it was never socialised, it never knew anything outside its breeder's home. And suddenly it was plunged into a family that never went out. And then it was all lifted and everybody was. This dog was expected to know what life was like before.

[00:21:02] Sara: Do you think those numbers as your rescue numbers will decrease then, like after a certain point, once those puppies.

[00:21:12] Tania: I'm hoping so. We we we we sort of see things moving a five year cycle. So it's like after the London Olympics, we knew that in within the next five years, we'd start seeing the dogs that were bought purely because they were British and because it was the Olympics and the Jubilee and people were going out because it was the British Bulldog and all the rest of it. And we started seeing them come through. But as that tailed off, that's when the fad colours started coming through. So the beginning of the FAD colours tied in with lockdown? Yes. And because the decent breeders were not rich during lockdown because they couldn't check the people they were selling to, all these fad colour farms filled that gap. They were like, well, we're breeding, we've got puppies, you can have this puppy. And they were literally taking puppies that had been bred in a kennel environment, selling them to the first person with the money in their hands and putting them in homes where everybody was there. They're not there when it all goes wrong. So when the when the people went back because the people genuinely thought they'd never go back to work. I mean, I don't know what goes on in people's heads. Suddenly they've got a dog that they were after.

[00:22:30] Sara: So they were hoping they never had to go back to living in a little dream there. Yeah.

[00:22:34] Tania: But, you know. Oh, we got a dog during lockdown because we were home. Well, what about when you go back to work? Oh, we'll worry about that when it happens. And when it happened, suddenly all these dogs were being given up left, right and centre. So that was like the beginning of the problem. And then the amount of people who had bulldogs, especially the lilac ones, who thought they had an XL, that was the other thing. We were getting calls from people saying, can, what do I need to do to register my Bulldog? Well, nothing, because it's a Bulldog, not XL. Yeah.

[00:23:08] Sara: Yeah.

[00:23:09] Tania: So we had that on top of that. And now all these dogs that were bred during lockdown, they're all being abandoned left, right and centre. So all the main rescues who were dealing with the XL's as well. Space is just filled up literally overnight.

[00:23:28] Sara: What are the top reasons that you get dogs into rescue? If you had to name like your top three or.

[00:23:35] Tania: Well, it used to be divorce, new baby, new job. It's not that anymore. I think when, if, when people divorce now they really do seem to make an effort to, for one of them to keep the dogs. I know people with cars with their dog because they couldn't get rented accommodation. But I would say moving into rented accommodation is one of the high ones because landlords, even though the law has changed and landlords are not really allowed to tell you you can't have a dog there now, they're still doing it. So people that find themselves lost their house through the through the cost of living crisis need to go into rented accommodation. Can't find a place where the landlord will let them take their dog. That's one of the high reasons the cost of living crisis in itself. But don't even start me on that problem. No, you're right there. Is your average person can no longer afford treatment for their dogs because these vets are not doing it on their training and on their experience. You used to be able to take a dog into a vet and say, what's this? And the vet looked at it and go, oh yeah, that's a you know, you just put this on it, it'll be fine. Now they're saying, you've got to go for an MRI and you've got to go for a scan and you've got this done, you've got that done. And, and like five grand down the line, they tell you what the old vet would have told you just by looking at it. Yeah. And that that's created a massive problem because people who love their dogs and you've got vets saying, well, you get treatment. It's illegal to withhold vet treatment and scaring the owners.

[00:25:19] Sara: Oh my gosh. Really?

[00:25:21] Tania: Yes. Part of one. One of part of the em ... i don't know if it's the original dog laws or the new dog laws, but it is an offence to withhold treatment, and vets are using that to make people have all these tests that they don't need, which they can't afford.

[00:25:38] Sara: Well, it just makes me laugh because the first question when you register a new dog at a vet practice, are you insured? And like, oh, why are you asking? Why does that matter? Why does that matter to you?

[00:25:49] Tania: Because it created a culture where the vet, and because a lot of the vet practices now are owned by corporate vets, they're being run by people who are not animal lovers. They don't care about the people on the front line. They don't care about the dogs that are coming through the doors or the cats or whatever. They care about their profit margin. They care about when. When my vets were bought out by IVC, we were all assured the prices wouldn't change. Nothing would change. It was just the management that was different. Everything else would run exactly as it always had done. Absolute rubbish. Long standing bets. Because it was cheaper to hire a newly qualified vet. All vet, all newly qualified vets. And I know this for a fact because our coordinator's daughter has just trained as a vet. You are told on day one of vet school that all brachycephalic breeds are a disaster. Yeah, it didn't surprise me.

[00:26:47] Sara: Yeah.

[00:26:48] Tania: So you take your Bulldog into the vet and it's got. You've got this 12 year old vet fresh out of vet school saying, oh, you know, it's going to need this doing and that doing. And you know it's not going to be able to walk or breathe or, or you know, it's going to die when it's three. And all the rest of it and you sort of look at it and think, oh, he's walking fine to me, you know. Yeah. So you've got this constant culture of anti breed vet who are all inexperienced, told you not to start me on this. They're all inexperienced. They don't like the breed. They've been told to go for the most expensive option every single time. People can't afford that. They don't want, you know, if they take their dog in with an interdigital cyst, they don't want all these tests and surgeries and all the rest of it. They just want to be told to go and soak it in salt water. You know, like the vet would have told you. Yeah, ten, 15 years ago. Yeah, but people just can't afford to keep their dogs.

[00:27:49] Sara: Long term, realistically. What do you think will happen? Do you think numbers will hopefully start to decline to reflect that? I hope.

[00:27:58] Tania: So. I really hope so. I'm I'm hoping that the flip side of the cost of living crisis is that people know ahead of time. They can't afford a dog, we can't afford a dog, so we're not going to get a dog. And that'll just give us some respite spike in the whole craziness for people to stop getting dogs. So in a few years time, there will be a lull where nobody bought a dog and we can catch the ones that are coming through because people can't afford the treatment. By the time they've decided we actually can't afford to treat this dog, we can't keep it. So by the time they come in, they've got really severe skin problems and eye problems. Funnily enough, breathing is very, very low down on our list of problems. These dogs come in with it's eyes and skin is the big issue, and that's because it's been allowed to get out of control because they couldn't afford to treat it. So that dog will bed block until it's better. Yeah, I did some figures for the breed council in April 2023 to April 2024. We were asked to help 400 and 391 dogs. We could only actually help 160 of them. Wow. Yeah. In a normal year, there would be 200 dogs. They'd come in, they'd be assessed. So we'd like to get to know the dog and then move it on. But at the moment, the dogs are just staying for so long. They're so poorly, so neglected. Not because the person who owned it didn't care about it, but because the person who owned it couldn't afford to do anything about it.

[00:29:47] Sara: So what worries me is that the Britishness of people is that everybody has a right to own a dog. It makes me laugh because people sort of say, oh, the UK will be really animal-friendly. I don't think we are as a culture. Like, there's not many dogs you can take into into a shopping centre and, you know, down into it, you know. We're a bit like, oh no, he still shouldn't go in there. But I think everybody feels they have the right to own. So what worries me is that if people realise, well, people know dogs are expensive, it won't stop them buying a dog. They'll just end up buying a cheaper dog. And the cheaper the dog then potentially the more problems. Yeah, the more.

[00:30:28] Tania: Problems it's going to have. Yeah.

[00:30:30] Sara: Yeah. Exactly. So the only thing that's sort of, in my opinion, can counter that is that if the vet fees still remain high, people will breed less. So hopefully then the quality is better overall. Yeah. Because why would you.

[00:30:48] Tania: That's what I'm hoping yeah.

[00:30:50] Sara: Stop the people going, oh, I've got a female and I want to use the dog down the road. You know anything about their pedigrees, but, oh, they're healthy because they're alive.

[00:30:59] Tania: It's that old adage that was around when you and me first started, when there were people around who went, I need to go on holiday. I just paid two grand for my puppy, or let's have a litter of puppies. I can, you know, it was £1,000. Then I can get £1,000 of puppy that'll pay for my holiday without any thought going into.

[00:31:16] Sara: Yeah, I mean, that's. It still happens now, unfortunately. Yeah, I can I can be scanning a dog and confirm they're not pregnant. And the people literally go, oh, well, how is that going to get paid for now then? And you realise I'm still here. Like have those conversations when I'm not around, please. Yeah. As you say.

[00:31:34] Tania: It shows them for what they really are. Smile and wave. Yes. Smile and wave. It gets you a long way in life. You have holes in your wall. But yeah you've got a.

[00:31:45] Sara: Nice punchbag at home. Yeah.

[00:31:47] Tania: So, but the whole, the whole dynamics have changed from the kind of person that owned a Bulldog back when I first got into bulldogs, to the kind of person who owns them now. A lot of the people that own them now are the kind of person that would have had an American Bulldog back in the day.

[00:32:07] Sara: To be landing in the breed. Debris. That's to pass that baton on to the next person. I can have conversations with show people, and I start banging on about dogs, and I didn't realise that they weren't even around like these people. They're like, no, I've only been showing the last eight years. I don't even know the dogs you're talking about. And so of a breed, you have so many people duck in and duck out. But actually, really, the breed is only as strong as the long standing people.

[00:32:35] Tania: Absolutely. One of the arguments I have a lot with people is the fact that we're a rescue that support breeding, and my argument to that is I'm not supporting breeding per se. I'm supporting responsible breeding because if the breeders breed health tested nice, healthy puppies, there'd be no dogs for me to pick up all the time. You can go out and whack out a litter of lilacs for ridiculous amount of money. Although that bubble has burst now and all the time they could do that, it was undermining everything the good breeders were trying to achieve by doing the health testing, by making sure that they picked a suitable stud dog for their bitch and all the rest of it. And people say, well, how can you support breeding? You're a rescue. And to me, to me it is clear as day you can get the right people breeding. My job's a lot easier. Yeah. If I can educate people to go to the right breeders. I don't want the breeding of bulldogs to stop. I don't do this because I want breeding to stop. I do this because I love the breeds. But I want to be able to say to people, buy from these people, not those people. And then in five years time, there's less of a chance that that person's going to say, I don't want this dog anymore.

[00:34:03] Sara: Yeah, I think the problem is it's the exposure, isn't it? Because that's what what I've realised. Obviously technology and we all get to a certain age that we just like what we like. We're like, let's just stick to this, you know? Like, I almost feel like a granny now being on Facebook because that's not where the cool kids are at. It's all like TikTok and Snapchat and.

[00:34:24] Tania: Oh, I can't do any of that.

[00:34:25] Sara: No, I don't, but but the problem is, and that's to a degree, some of the people that decided they want to be breeders, they effectively were have become better marketers then, yes, a long standing breeder because the long standing breeders never need to master that. They just said, I've got my little.

[00:34:45] Tania: That's been an issue in itself. Yeah, the big non-standard kennels with the website weren't a pack on the the top breeders in the show world. Yeah, because they just carried on as they'd always done.

[00:35:02] Sara: So we have and this is what I kept on. And I'm not like, there's some great people like you, people on the council doing all they can to educate people on what a decent Bulldog is and where to find one. But unfortunately, they're being outsmarted by greedy marketers being on platforms. And and so ultimately, what ends up is that someone doesn't even know that the dog they're buying is not a recognised colour. They to then this.

[00:35:29] Tania: No they don't and they genuinely don't know that.

[00:35:33] Sara: Yeah. So they go this person seems super helpful. They're always doing TikToks showing me how to brush my dog and clean my wrinkles. Obviously it's go and buy a dog for them and then they turn up at a show with it and everyone's like, are you? What are you doing here? There's and it's bad. So then I then because in their head they've made the effort. They've done the research. They've found the breeder that's giving them advice. They've they've taken it to Ringcraft, they've gone to a show and they've literally fallen over at the last hurdle or some somebody yeah. Happened to break the news.

[00:36:04] Tania: Of any different. Yeah, yeah. And so. Absolutely.

[00:36:08] Sara: So and that's a reason for this podcast is to try and access that type of demographic. So to make them realise that, oh no, there's loads of stuff going on over here. It's just that you don't know about it. And, and yeah, a lot of my podcasts, I've kind of said just go to a show, like regardless of whether you want a show dog or not, go to a show. It's a great place to see a load of readers all in one place and to see a load of Bulldog all in one place, and they'll be sat in your love. And some of you were like, oh, I don't want that type of dog. And I said, that's just so much better than. But obviously it requires time, energy, effort. Yeah.

[00:36:46] Tania: And it's reaching these people. This is the thing. Say I'm education lead on the breed council, and one of the things we come up against time and time again is reaching the right people. And because a lot of them, a lot of them are show people who don't understand the world beyond the show world, who have their waiting lists and, you know, have got people waiting for one of their puppies and what the rest of it. The big problem is reaching the kind of person that comes to the picnic with their dog. They're so proud of their dog. Yeah. You know, and it's. And I find a lot of the behavioural issues that I deal with are non-standard dogs and trying to educate the people. Well, the the reason why we're assuming because we don't actually know for sure, but the reason why we're assuming the colours were written out, the standard is down to temperament. So all these breeders have done is doubled up on these colours that were written out because of temperament, and they're bringing the temperament back in again. So you've got a dog that was bred during lockdown, so he was never socialised. He's a black tri, so he's Predisposed to be an aggressive dog in the first place. So why didn't nobody tell me that we can't reach those people until after it's happened to them? And that's the big problem. Time and time again, replied magazine. The only people that read the magazines are the people. I said to them at the last three council meetings that I'm not doing the Gazette, because the only people who read it are the people in this room. They're not the people I want to read it. I don't want a DVD on how your dog should be moving, because the only people who will buy it and watch it are the people in this room. Yeah. I want everybody else. Yeah. So it's constantly trying to come up with a way of reaching these people. It's really hard. Like some of.

[00:38:45] Sara: My podcasts, like I did, I recorded one talking about the Bulldog jaw, but I've tried to come at it from a pet owners point of view, because they don't really care whether the dog to a degree and also or not, or this or that.

[00:38:59] Tania: How many? How many owners have wry jawed dogs have been told by their vet that the dog was kicked in the face as a puppy.

[00:39:06] Sara: Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And to be fair, that the vets are kind of another problem in themselves because I always and I've bleated on on all the podcasts. And this is where it's important to find a decent breeder. Speak to your reader first. Just I get it. The vets are. We need them. They're professionals, but they are not breed specialists. So you they should not supersede what your breeder has to say. They are on to me. In my opinion they aren't equal pegging. You need to speak to your vet and your breeder to find out what the problem is with your dog and how to best fix it. Because as you say, vets could send you down a whole nother path and it ain't even the path you're meant to be on.

[00:39:51] Tania: Yeah, and a path that you don't need to go. And one of the dogs that I bath, he come in a couple of months ago. And he said, my vets told me he needs some operation on his cruciate. It's going to cost me £4,000. I mean, back in the day when I had a cruciate ligament done, it was £400. And I said, well, when you bring him in for his bath, I'll have a look. And he and he was putting weight on his leg, so I said, no, just rest him up. Just give him some rest. He came back in yesterday for his bath and he's walking absolutely, perfectly. And he said, God, if I hadn't come across you, I'd have spent £4,000 out on an operation that wasn't needed. Yeah. And I said, because the vets don't want to tell you to send, they don't want to send you home and say, crate rest your dog because they want the 4K they're going to get for doing the surgery. You've still got to crate rest your dog after the surgery. It's just cost you four grand to do it.

[00:40:48] Sara: Yeah, yeah, and so much riskier for the dog to be doing anaesthetics and surgery and like.

[00:40:55] Tania: Absolutely.

[00:40:56] Sara: Out of that as possible. I mean, this is where it makes me. I mean, my dogs are minimal at the vet's like they really are. And I'm beginning to feel I'm lucky because when I hear the stories of other people, like I say to people like I tell you now, none of my dogs are insured. And if that's not motivation as a breeder to breed the healthiest dogs possible, I don't know what is.

[00:41:14] Tania: Absolutely.

[00:41:15] Sara: Why would I insure my dogs and have all these vet bills when I could just be healthier dogs? But some of the numbers. I had one lady come to me for a second. Well, she she'd had a Bulldog from somebody else and she'd come to me for a second one, and she said she claimed over £150,000 on her insurance for her dog. But then I was like, well, actually, as you say, was the dog really that ill, or did they know every time she walked through the door? And I think there is like this level of anxiety that general people are having now any day anyway that they will she just, oh, a bit of a hypochondriac with a dog and running it down there too often and say, why didn't they just go, no, you just need to rest it or you just need to do this. So is there some weird expectation from owners now that they want to see their vets doing something?

[00:42:10] Tania: Yeah, I think there could be. Yeah, there could be.

[00:42:14] Sara: But it out with some pills or some medication or that.

[00:42:17] Tania: Lack of common sense on behalf as well. I mean, they keep harping. That makes me sound really old. Keep harping back to the old days. But when Hilda, one of the dogs we had more recently, she developed a mammary tumour and I took her to the vet and it was this 12 year old vet. This was before I told my vets of 30 years to go shove it where the sun don't shine. I said, I just want you to have a look at this and let me know what you what you think's going on. Is it just a mammary tumour? She was ten at the time and I said, whatever it is, I'm not doing anything with it. I just want your opinion on what it is. And she said, oh, she needs surgery and you're not doing surgery. I just want you to look at it and tell me whether you think this is, you know, going to be an aggressive tumour or just a cyst or something. Oh, I can't possibly advise without putting her under anaesthetic and having a look. You're not opening her up. She's ten years old. I just want you to have a look at it from your experience. Her reply to that was my experience is my training, which told me everything I needed to know about that. My original vet actually lives in the house opposite me and we're out, out the front talking. And Andrew came out and this just said to him, oh, have a look at this, see what you think of that. And he said, we turned her upside down and he had a look and he went, yeah, it feels all grapey. So I think it's probably a tumour, he said. But at our age I just let it do its thing. And that's the difference between the original good vet and the newly qualified vets we've got running practices now is our original vet said, yeah, that's a tumour. Just let it do its thing, you know, old age. You'll get her before that does.

[00:44:11] Sara: But that's only how they've been trained, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. They're the whole curriculum and how they're trained is just different now to older school. More stockman type. Yeah.

[00:44:23] Tania: And I think also they're constantly being told don't get the practice sued. Make sure you cover every single base. Don't tell somebody something. Don't look at something and say what it is. Because if you're wrong, we'll get sued. You've got to do an MRI. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to be absolutely sure that when you tell that person their dog's got a tumour, it is actually a tumour and not a cyst.

[00:44:47] Sara: So vets are under their own pressures and I think the suicide rate is actually quite high isn't it, for vets.

[00:44:53] Tania: It's absolutely through the ceiling. Yeah.

[00:44:55] Sara: Yeah. It just goes.

[00:44:56] Tania: But we should all be on the same side that the conversation that I ended up having with, with my practice of 30 years, I've been seeing this. The same practice was to have a different dog. He also was what I suspected was a testicular tumour. But he was he was a hemivertebrae dog that I'd kept and he was doubly retained. He'd never been castrated because he didn't cope with anaesthetic. We knew that from when he had his x rays. So we thought, well, we'll just leave it and see what happens. And one of them did become cancerous and I took him down. This was during lockdown, actually, so that the actual consultation, the car park in front of everybody else waiting to be seen by the vet. And again, the conversation. He's ten. You're not doing anything with it. I just want to know what it's about. And she looked at him and she went, oh, look at his poor knees. There's nothing wrong with his knees. I'm not here for his knee. I just wanted to have a feel of this lamp. And then she went, oh, look at him. Struggling to breathe. He's not struggling to breathe. And he's ten. You know, just fill this fucking lump will ya. And I actually turned, that was the last time I ever saw them. And I turned around in the car park and said, your job is not to tell me what breed of dog I'm allowed to have. Your job is to treat the dog I have just presented in front of you. And if all you're going to do is stand there and tell me my dogs are deformed. Genetic disaster. When he's standing there with Hemivertebrae and he's ten years old. Yeah, you can.

[00:46:42] Sara: Get some perspective.

[00:46:43] Tania: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:46:44] Sara: But yeah, I don't know.

[00:46:45] Tania: That's a big, big problem now in why people don't keep their dogs is because they're being terrified by vets, who then charge them a fortune for stuff they don't need doing.

[00:46:58] Sara: Well, I don't know how we fix this problem. Like, I don't know how.

[00:47:01] Tania: We fix it either.

[00:47:02] Sara: We can educate the.

[00:47:03] Tania: Government or just, like, let just put our heads in the sand and hope it hope it goes away, but it's reaching those people. I mean, this has been the a goal of mine for absolutely decades to educate people. You can't reach some. You can't get to them.

[00:47:20] Sara: Yeah. I mean, you wrote a book. You wrote a book on trying to pass on that breed knowledge and, you know, specifics, haven't you? And yeah, we've got a.

[00:47:31] Tania: Course as well before you register on the waiting list. Now to get a dog. You're encouraged. You don't have to do it, but you're encouraged to do a course. Okay. And it's just an hour long course that just is basically extracts out of the book, and then at the end, at the end, there's a multiple choice thing just to make sure that you read it. If if you put the wrong answer, it just says try again so you can go back and go through all the answers until. But it means you've actually got to sit and tick the right boxes. There's quite a few, I would say people that register don't do the course.

[00:48:09] Sara: I just think that's the way of the world nowadays. I mean, people don't read books, to be honest. They don't write much. It's all on the screens. It's all I think in exams nowadays. They're bringing laptops in, aren't they? How people are learning is different. And unless we keep pace with that or try and access those people. Yeah. Then then what can you do? Apart from.

[00:48:30] Tania: I did try starting up a TikTok channel, but I couldn't I couldn't do it. It was way beyond my I thought, I've.

[00:48:37] Sara: Given up on that and I could post a picture of a bit of music, but apart from that, that's it. Right. So Tania, how can the people listening help Bulldog rescue? What can we do to support you? The charity going forward? What do you think is.

[00:48:55] Tania: Like you said, we need to encourage people to get the dog from the right place in the first place. If. If the dog has been bought by a good breeder, that's going to be there for you five years down the line, and who knows what they're talking about? One of the things one of my big bugbears is breeders who just go, oh, I've never had that in my life. Just because you've never had it in your life doesn't mean to say you shouldn't know what it is. If you're going to be involved in this breed, even though you personally have never dealt with it, you should still be aware of it. So that's one of my things, is finding a breeder that will answer your questions years down the line, regardless of what their own personal experience is. Somebody who's taken the time to sit down and learn.

[00:49:42] Tania: About the breed that they're selling and dealing with. Also, I think one of another big problem is being able to rehome your dog online. To be able to go on a social media platform, get rid of your dog, or get a dog because these dogs are being passed around with no history, no no way of anybody in that chain of owners knowing what happened. 3 or 4 owners down the line, dogs that have bitten, for example, something that somebody said to me right at the beginning is that dog. That dog doesn't bite because it's had so many homes that dogs had so many homes because it bites and nobody took responsibility for it. And I'm afraid I do feel that all dogs, regardless of the breed, if it bites a person, it should be put to sleep because that dog is a danger. And another argument I have with people all the time when I say, look, you've really got to either live around this dog or seriously consider having it euthanized. And they go, oh no, I couldn't do that. So I said, well, so you're quite happy to make it somebody else's problem. You're quite happy to give that dog to a complete stranger so he can bite them instead? Yeah. And they don't think that far ahead.

[00:51:03] Sara: Out of sight, out of mind, isn't it?

[00:51:05] Tania: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that goes back to education. But right at the beginning of that dog's life. So the person you've bought your dog from actually knows what they're doing, actually knows what they're talking about. Could go wrong. Doesn't just turn around and go, oh, I've never had that in my life. Oh no, no, I don't know what. I've never dealt with that. I don't know what that is. You should still know what it is and and and what to do about it. The, the the one big problem we've got at the moment is money. During lockdown, Defra, in their wisdom, decided that we could take in emergency cases, but nothing else. So every single dog that came into our care during lockdown was a poorly dog. So that was a vet bill. Instant vet bill, right? We weren't allowed to rehome him.

[00:52:00] Sara: Okay.

[00:52:03] Tania: So we've got the only dogs that are coming in are emergency cases. So they're costly cases. And then they sit around for a year because we're not allowed to rehome them. And then when when that restriction was lifted, nobody wanted the poorly dog that came in a year ago. So that dog stayed for another year because nobody wanted it, because it was too much work, too much hassle. So that drained the funds crazily. And now it's just because everything is just so crazy.

[00:52:37] Tania: we were left a legacy and it was quite a substantial legacy. And if we didn't, if we hadn't have had that legacy, we wouldn't be here now. We'd have run out of money a long time ago, but two years ago. So it's keeping the financial side of it going without compromising the service that you're offering. Because I don't want people to just say, oh, I love that one. Give them the dog and off they disappear. I want to be there for them ten years down the line. I want, I want to be there for not just the people that take the dogs on from us and help them through everything that's going to go wrong from that point forward, but also the people that gave their dogs up, because in a lot of cases, those it's up to those people. They don't want to give the dog up and circumstances has forced them into a situation where they can't keep their dog and those people need looking after as well. So at the moment our one big problem is money.

[00:53:43] Sara: So how do you generate or the ways that you generate as a charity so people can help you?

[00:53:50] Tania: The biggest income is the adoption fees, right? And the amount of people who think that they're doing us a favour by taking on a dog and shouldn't have to pay for it, is crazy. But those adoption fees, what that is the regular income that keeps us going. We've got other fundraising schemes that are going on with you. Some of the dogs that we can't rehome, they're on a sponsor a dog scheme. So you can help pay for that dog's care by sponsoring it for a year. And you can sponsor a kennel here. So the dog that's in that particular kennel will keep you up to date with what's going on. The picnic that's the biggest fundraiser is our picnic. That's a guaranteed ten grand every time. And we have just taken over Bulldog day as well, so I'm hoping we can do the same with that and all the little walks that go on in between. I mean, every little walk sets up, it's, you know, £100, £200 a pop. So yeah, it the thing is, what I've noticed in the last few years is my brain no longer computes money in hundreds. It computes money in thousands. So when somebody gives you £1,000 donation that's gone on the next, next vet bill. Yeah. Our month, our monthly vet bill now not including bog standard neutering because we pay for all the neutering as well. Just dogs that need to see the vet and a vet that's are regular vets that are happy to bill end of the month. At the moment, we're paying out on our annual monthly vet run five grand every.

[00:55:30] Sara: Wow. Wow. Well, ski.

[00:55:34] Tania: On top of that, your normal castration, spaying and all the rest of it. And also we we do a scheme which I don't want to have to ever stop doing, because I think it's a good thing to do because we rehome dogs from home, which saves space. It just means the person keeps their dog. If that we do go out and see the dog, we do go out and assess the dog. And we do spend a lot of time talking to the owner and in the home with the dog. But they see you and they still hide things from you, and they still make that dog look like something that it never was. Yeah. So we say if you take the dog on and there's something wrong with it that nobody was aware of will pay for it. So things like they, they, they've done a really good job of cleaning up a gunky eye before we've turned up. You know, an hour later, that dog can't see again. But at the point of the visit, the eyes were okay. Yeah. I don't want to be able to ever have to turn around and say, sorry, we can't help you. You took that dog on. It's your responsibility. I want to be able to say to them, oh my gosh, that I'm so sorry. We didn't know that was there. We will cover that because it's something that's not insurable. But again, that vet bills now are not hundreds of pounds. They're thousands of pounds. And it's it becomes really hard to balance it into how far can we help this person to a point that I mean we do a vet fee-help scheme, people that don't really want to rehome their dog but can't afford an operation.

[00:57:14] Tania: If that dog comes into our care, that operation has got to be done anyway. And then on top of the cost of the operation, you've got the travelling to get them there, the cost of feeding the dog and all the rest of it. So we do a scheme where we're lending a person the money to get the operation done, and then they can pay us back at £20 a month if they want to. However long it takes them to pay it back at whatever is affordable to them. More recently, and for the first time ever, we've had to cap how much we can lend them. We've never had to do that before. We've always been able to say, look, don't worry, get in booked in, we'll get it done. We'll liaise with the vet, we'll get it all sorted, we'll pay for it. And also that way with us, liaising with vet means that the vet's not sneaking in extras that don't really need doing. Yeah, because Georgia will go, well, no, we're not paying for that. We're. This dog's coming in for a crucial operation. We're paying your operation. Nothing else. Yeah. Whereas if it was the owner dealing with the vet, the vet would go, well, he needs this blood test and that. And he needs this wormer, and he needs this, and he all these things and have to now be in a position where we're saying we can lend you a thousand. No more. It's very demoralising at the moment because we're not we're.

[00:58:28] Tania: Were not. Able to do what we set out to do.

[00:58:32] Sara: Well, you're just getting all these curveballs left, right and centre. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you're doing an amazing job from my point of view.

[00:58:41] Tania: We all volunteers always need foster homes in particular. And cash cold, hard cash because that at the end of the day, is what keeps it going.

[00:58:50] Sara: And so in regards to your foster homes, are these people that already is it. No. They've got no other dogs so they can take dogs in and out. Or is it a mix of.

[00:59:02] Tania: It's a mix of the only thing we ask you to do if you volunteer for us, you don't volunteer for any other rescue, because we need to know that your foster space is free when it's free. We don't want to allocate you a dog, ring you up, and then you go, oh no, I'm fostering one for. Or I've got a dog's trust dog in from Shoreham, I can't take it. So we do get you to say your exclusive volunteer just for us. Yeah. You get expenses in return, so your mileage is paid. You don't have to take your expenses. You can donate them back. And then if you donate them back, we can gift aid it. So there's a little bit more money on top of it then little loophole around that. So you're exclusive to us and you're basically doing what you're told. So you can't just rush off to the bit on your thoughts. You've got to run it past Georgia. You've got to say, I'm a bit worried about this dog. Georgia will always try stuff that we've got in stock through the clinic first, and then if that doesn't work, then we've also got a really good trusted vet, even though he's up north. So if push comes to shove, we would railroad the dog up to the stables rather than risk the owner's own vet bodging it.

[01:00:15] Sara: But that's a good yeah, I've never really thought about that, especially for people. Yeah, maybe they're just new to the breed and they want to sort of jump in the deep end and not totally commit to something, but find out like whether the breed is for them or not.

[01:00:29] Tania: Yeah it's a good way of learning. Yeah. And and you deal with all kinds as well because I've got a list of rules for volunteers. I don't know if you ever saw NCIS. They're a bit like Gibbs's list of rules. So it's like one of them is rescue doesn't necessarily mean rehoming. You can take a dog out of a bad situation. I mean that the dog has to be put to sleep, but you've still rescued that dog. You don't necessarily have to find it another home. And things like don't give more than you've got, because if you go in headfirst all enthusiastic and all, yeah, I'm going to change the world and I'm going to, you know, take this dog in and I'm going to you're going to burn out. Yeah. And you'll end up with, you know, you're you're just completely burnt out. You'll get compassion fatigue and you'll be no good to anybody. So we try and sort of keep them grounded. But that's quite hard in itself, because a lot of people want to be a volunteer because they want to make a difference, and it's just you just reminding them every now and again, just pull it back.

[01:01:33] Sara: The long the long game is the better game. Yeah. Like yeah. You want them for the long haul. Not just to come in. Absolutely.

[01:01:40] Tania: Yeah.

[01:01:41] Sara: And be gone. Yeah. So as with anything, showing commitment to anything long term is always going to have a massive so much more of a bigger compounded impact then ducking in and ducking out again.

[01:01:50] Tania: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and I think.

[01:01:52] Tania: We've managed to extend the life of a volunteer as well. It was it used to be we never really had volunteers for longer than a year because I think they I think a lot of them would come into it thinking it was all happy endings and roses round the door and then realising that actually there was, you know, a lot of tears involved as well, and a lot of stuff that goes the scenes that people don't necessarily realise goes on in a rescue that emotionally is hard to to deal with. But we're finding now.

[01:02:22] Tania: That our volunteers are staying sort of five, six years to the point that we're doing long service awards for our volunteers as well. Now, if for every five years you volunteer for us, you get a little star badge. So every five years is another badge. And then when you get to ten years, you get a little badge saying long service volunteer. Just trying to keep keep them interested. Yeah. And that that's something we never had before. They used to come in, burn out, realise it wasn't all happy endings and disappear.

[01:02:57] Sara: Yeah. Not all unicorns and rainbows, unfortunately.

[01:03:00] Tania: And we don't. I personally don't like what a lot of rescues do. Whereas they'll put out on Facebook. Can anybody foster this dog? I don't want some random to foster this dog. I want somebody I trust and who I know who I know is going to do it how we want it done, not just some random will then go, can I keep it?

[01:03:20] Sara: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:22] Tania: Every volunteer that keeps their foster. That's one less adoption fee to our desperately dried up funds.

[01:03:30] Sara: Honestly, the amount that you do that you've just reeled off is just insane. The amount that you have to think about juggling, balancing books, numbers, you know, having that foresight to sort of get prepared and. Yeah. And weather the storm. So what's when's the next, when's the Bulldog day and the Bulldog picnic. When are they? Right.

[01:03:53] Tania: So Bulldog day is the 9th of June. In Newark. Same as it always been. This is the first one we're doing. So this one really will be a suck it and see what's going on. And then I think it's the 7th of September is the picnic. There's lots of little events that go on around it as well.

[01:04:14] Sara: So what's the website that people can go to and find out more, basically?

[01:04:19] Tania: If you go on to www.BulldogRescuek.org.uk and then click on fundraising, there's a fundraising events diary in there. And also other, other ways you can help us. Lots of little sort of commission things that go on, you know, like Amazon Smile used to do that kind of thing.

[01:04:40] Sara: Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Is there anything else you feel you need to share with us before we sign off?

[01:04:47] Tania: I can't I can't even remember what I've already said. So just sort of falls out of my mouth without. Without me thinking. Thinking about what I'm saying.

[01:04:57] Sara: So, yeah. Because you're however many decades in. That's why. So that's no surprise, is it?

[01:05:02] Tania: Well, I'm just.

[01:05:02] Tania: Starting year number 23.

[01:05:05] Sara: Wow.Wow.

[01:05:07] Tania: Fred Hunt. Don't do it any more than eight. It'll ruin your life.

[01:05:10] Sara: And what's the plan, then? What's the plan? You're going to get your badge at 30.

[01:05:14] Tania: I'm just going to keep going for as long as I can. Because it's the the thing is now because we say in the beginning when I first started, it was like a couple of evenings a week. It was I had two small children. Me and my husband ran this massive record company that him and my son now try and do on their own. Now I draw a small wage. Now it's from the minute I open my eyes to the minute I close my eyes. I'm on call 24 hours a day. The kennels are in my back garden, so there's no getting away from it. If I said tomorrow, I'm going to retire. That easy to retire because my entire house and my entire life and everything that's here revolves around the rescue.

[01:05:59] Sara: Yeah, you're the brainchild behind it. All right. I think we've nattered enough. Thank you ever so much for your time. I hope everybody goes along to either Bulldog day, I think every year. So. And I always send them an email out to my list of people saying I'm going, it'd be great to see you.

[01:06:15] Tania: And you've been coming. Right from the beginning when they were in the garden as well.

[01:06:19] Sara: I know, yeah. It just never. Well, it just amazes me that it just goes from strength to strength and it organising one event is hard work. So the fact that you do the picnic and then you do a whole rescue, honestly, I just, I can't believe that you have enough hours in the day to get stuff done. So I hope everybody appreciates that and that they can hit the fundraising page, attend an event, ping you some money, sign up as a foster, and be all their tick tocking abilities to get some content out there so we can help people in the future. What more can we ask for? Literally. What more can we ask for? Okay. Thank you.

[01:06:59] Tania: So much. No, thank you too.

[01:07:02] Sara: Before you leave, make sure to visit Bulldog Broadcast. Com for immediate access to the show notes, community forum recommendations and episode extras.