National Animal Welfare Trust in Bedfordshire has been helping animals find their forever homes for 5 decades

We take a look around the National Animal Welfare Trust in Bedfordshire and speak to staff about their work.

Transcript

00:00 I am Daniela and I am the supervisor here at NAWT Bedfordshire.

00:07 We were originally Hoola Animal Rescue, which was a rescue centre that started back in the

00:12 70s. We were then taken over by the National Animal Welfare Trust a few years ago and are

00:17 now part of a bigger organisation. We have definitely seen an increase in animals coming

00:22 into rescue or needing a rescue space, especially since Covid-19. Now we are sadly seeing a

00:29 lot more younger dogs coming into our care that were potentially bought during lockdown that now

00:35 sadly need to be rehomed due to people going back to work. We have definitely seen an increase in

00:41 bull breeds here at the centre. So like Caesar is one of our dogs here that is sadly a long stay

00:47 with us. So he's been here over three months and we are seeing a lot more larger dogs like him,

00:53 Mastiffs, American Bulldogs, coming through our doors and sadly they do come with a certain

00:59 perception of them being maybe a more negative breed as they are in the press quite a lot

01:03 for negative reasons. They are sadly less popular so are with us for longer. So yeah,

01:10 definitely do your research before getting one but they can be wonderful pets as well.

01:14 I'm Shannon, I'm an animal welfare assistant here at NAWT Bedfordshire. My job role is to

01:20 clean the animals, make sure their accommodation is spotless, walk dogs, look after rabbits,

01:25 cuddle cats and all the general day-to-day things of making sure that welfare is top priority.

01:31 As well as an increase in dogs after the pandemic, we've also seen a really sharp increase of rabbits

01:36 coming in after the pandemic. These are the silent sufferers of the pandemic. Everyone was getting

01:40 dogs, cats and rabbits and unfortunately because vets were not open, no animals were being neutered

01:45 and obviously you've heard the phrase 'breed like rabbits' and that's exactly what has happened.

01:48 So we've seen a really really sharp increase of people desperate to rehome rabbits. Our waiting

01:52 list is months and months long. I mean we're not allowed favourites but if I did it would be Lottie.

01:58 So Lottie is about a seven or eight year old American Bulldog who I first met in January 2021.

02:04 She was in extremely bad state because she was an ex-breeding dog and so she was extremely skinny,

02:09 had skin problems, eye problems, the whole nine yards. But we found her a home, we worked with

02:13 her behaviours and she had a tumour behind one of her eyes we found. We had to have her eye removed.

02:18 She did brilliantly well recovering from that and got rehomed in August 2021. Unfortunately

02:24 their circumstances changed in November 2022 and she came back to the centre here. Again her

02:30 behaviour was much improved. It still has a little bit to work on but any adopter who wanted her now

02:35 would have the best dog ever.

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