Welcome to Hopeful Hounds! We are a small, home run dog rescue service based in Reading offering placement's for dogs looking for new homes. Founded and run by a professional dog trainer, we offer training to the dogs that come into our care as standard to help them to best cope with the changes that come with finding a new home and they live in our family home or with our foster family whilst they are looking for their forever homes!
What was the story behind starting Hopeful Hounds?
I have been passionate about working with rescue dogs, particularly rescue dogs with behvioural issues who need professional training in order to be rehomed successfully for many years now. With 7 rescue dogs between myself and my husband who have all needed behavioural training and many who were due to be euthanised, my dream for many years now has been to open a rescue who have the experience and time to work with these dogs and give them a second chance at getting the support they need to find a forever home. In 2022, I flew out to California to take part in a women's workshop with Cheri Lucas, founder of Second Chance at Love Humane Society in California and was very lucky to be able to work with her and some of her rescue dogs. Having been on the fence about starting my own rescue for a while now, this was a huge confidence boost and working with Cheri and learning from her was the kick I needed to start actually getting Hopeful Hounds up and running! So 2023 was all about the behind the scenes planning, creating plans, paperwork and more paperwork and getting ready to officially launch once we were ready. Then we decided to launch at the start of 2024 whilst we continue behind the scenes at finalising the paperwork and start helping out dogs!
So what does the vision for Hopeful Hounds look like?
At the moment, due to a lack of facilities, we are only able to offer 2 spaces at one time for dogs to come to us for rehoming. We are not like other rehoming facilities and the dogs we work with all stay with us for a minimum of one month to ensure they get the training and support they need to be ready for the changes that come with finding a new home as this can be a stressful process for a lot of dogs despite the exciting outcome of finding them a new, loving home. This does however mean that dogs are with us generally for longer periods of time leaving us limited on how many dogs we can help at one time. So the initial vision for Hopeful Hounds would be to be able to help more dogs at one time without having to compromise on the model which we believe is an important part of the process in making rehoming as least stressful for the dogs we work with. Initially, this will be by increasing availability at home (in whatever way we can) or by opening up experienced foster placements that are able to work with the dogs we work with whilst they are with them. This initial aspect is likely to be a slower process as we lack the funding and staffing/volunteer basis to open up a specific facility but this is obviously a long term goal we have once we have the ability to do so!
Where do we start?
Although only being able to help 2 dogs at one time sounds like not much, it still allows us to help a good number of dogs and begin building on the rescue on a smaller scale. In order to offer more spaces, we need a team of foster families or volunteer's who are able to help care for, train and work with the dogs we have in our care and in order to do that, we need to first of all be more well known! So by growing the rescue's reach, reputation and success, we reach more people which means we reach more people who are likely to be able to help either physically or not. The goal at a later date would be to have a location where we can offer more placements longterm but that starts by building up a team, a good reputation and ensuring we have the funding to run something on a larger scale. We'll get there!
How can you help?
At this early stage, the best way you can help is by sharing our posts on social media! This early in the process, what we need most is people to know about us and our dogs! The more people get to know about Hopeful Hounds, the dogs looking for homes and how they can help, the more people will be able to help us at a later date. We are still working to finalise the charity paperwork and once this is all sorted we'll be able to open up a bank account and start accepting donations but in the meantime, people need to know about us and what we are trying to do! Share our content, interact with it and tell people about us and our dogs so we can find them their perfect forever homes and we'll update you as we continue along the process and start to build this dream together!
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