Tailwaggers Club TrustChairman and trustee
Jan. 2005 - Jun. 2016UKSadly this ancient and wonderful charity has now closed but the memory lives on. In its heyday even the Queen was a member of Tailwaggers and there was even a Hollywood branch! Tailwaggers donations helped start Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Royal Veterinary College. I first discovered the Trust in the 1990s purely by chance, when I inadvertently infringed their copyright by using the name Tailwaggers for a campaign to stop cosmetic docking. The more I heard about this, by then, a very tiny charity the more interested I became in it. For many decades the Trust had been quietly doing good works and helping people with pets, but hardly anyone knew they existed. The pot of money left to the trust was declining rapidly and fresh donations were few and far between. Even with the oxygen of publicity, even more people who needed Tailwaggers services emerged - and donations could not keep up with demand. But, despite the considerable challenges, the remarkable little charity continued to make a tangible difference to those lives it touched - and sadly increasingly not everyone could be significantly helped financially, but often, just finding someone to talk to who cared at their darkest hour often proved a comfort to pet lovers. The trustees could see that the numbers of people seeking ever more substantial assistance were so great and the income still so small that the time was coming where we would need to stop.
It was an honour to have been involved in this lovely charity and I fondly remember the cases where lives were changed or in some cases even saved. It is the end of an era. It was an honour to work alongside some amazing compassionate people in some cases giving decades of voluntary public service, our secretary Sid Nye deserving special mention as he continued in post well into his 80s. As with all things to do with pets, you have to know when it is the right time to say goodbye - no matter how much your heart may want you to continue.