Dogs Trust is the UK's largest dog welfare charity.
Their slogan "A Dog is for Life, Not Just for Christmas" has significantly reduced the
number of dogs given as gifts and then abandoned.
The dogs, as I say, they're going to be really quite stressed, and the one thing that the
dogs need when they're feeling stressed is a quiet environment.
At their Rehoming Centre in Leeds Manager Amanda Sands is giving an adoption chat.
She urges anyone to think very carefully before embarking on what can sometimes be a difficult
journey.
If somebody's taking one of our strays, people have to remember that stray dog has been in
a home somewhere, been on the streets, been in the stray kennel, in our kennels, and now
it's going somewhere else.
That's five different environments within probably two or three weeks, so the dogs are
really confused, and what we want is people to understand that the dogs may be confused,
and to be understanding and help to help them with that behaviour that they may display.
Two dogs should be going home today, Boomer a four year old Collie Cross and Eddie a Jack
Russell Terrier.
Thankfully the reality of the adoption talk hasn't put off Eddie's new owners Maxine and
Peter Burt.
Three weeks ago they had to have their 13 year old Yorkshire Terrier put to sleep on
holiday after she developed a womb infection.
It's really strange, it's like i thought to myself, I'm going to get another one.
No, I'm not going to because I don't want to be put through this again.
But yeah, it's just - it's not fair
It's comfort for us both really.
Because where we live, we live on a nature reserve.
Yeah, yeah.
You can let a dog do anything he wants.
So we thought we'd try to give it a good home.
That can walk round that while you train it.
Out of this -get it out of these kennels.
The couple have been made aware that Eddie can be a bit of a handful.
But they've had lively Terriers before and Amanda is confident they've found the perfect
owners.
Our training and behaviour adviser spent a lot of time with them explaining the behaviour,
how to help him over any behaviour problems.
And the thing with these people is they've had cheeky terriers before and they're more
likely to be able to cope with it.
Maxine says as soon as she saw Eddie she knew he was the dog for her.
It's its unassuming.
Temperament.
It's so fun, sort of thing.
I mean, you could tell that, the way he were coming to you and licking you.
Oh, it was everything.
So he must have been trained something.
Meanwhile at the vets - Kev the Shih Zhu is about to be put under heavy sedation.
He was rescued from the stray kennels in Bradford two days ago in a poor condition.
The fur around his face is badly matted and one of his back legs is all crusted over.
Let's see what we can do.
We'll just try and do him under a sedative.
If he starts getting terribly excited - all right, all right.
We may need to go a bit further.
The only way to tell how badly the skin has been affected is to remove the fur.
That's it.
Right.
That's a bit sore under there.
The tissue under the eyes is raw but has cleaned up nicely.
Next Mr Wannop the vet turns his attention to Kev's foot.
He must have had difficulty walking.
The claws in some cases were almost stuck together, and the actual nails had grown,
on a couple of his claws, had grown right around and were almost encroaching back into
the pad, which obviously makes it extremely uncomfortable for him to walk.
A lot of it obviously conceded by the fact he was such a hairy dog.
But in his case, it's made a bit of a mess there, so it's just a bit more involved than
we first thought.
Mr Wannop thinks that Kev may be suffering from dermatitis possibly stemming from his
toes or claws.
Okay, let's turn him.
I'll trim his nails, then we'll turn him over.
The nails haven't been clipped for many months but his condition isn't simply down to neglect.
I don't think neglect has helped, and I think there may well be a scenario here whereby
it's so uncomfortable for him that is has been difficult for any previous owner to keep
on top of it.
After a good clean up and with his leg in a bandage Kev's looking a lot better.
He'll be put on a course of antibiotics and Mr Wannop is confident he'll make a full recovery.
As Kev sleeps it off - Maxine and Peter are preparing to take their cheeky Terrier home.
The paperwork is all signed and Eddie is legally theirs.
But as Eddie goes off to enjoy his new life on a nature reserve - it's not such good news
for Boomer, a 4 year old Collie Cross who was also hoping to be adopted today.
His new owner has had a change of heart.
One lady was going to take a lovely dog called Boomer, who'd come from a very difficult background
and most certainly wasn't house trained.
And when I went through the pre-adoption talk with her and the work involved with the house
training, she gave it a little bit more thought and decided that perhaps Boomer wasn't the
dog for her.
And that was the right decision.
What we don't want is the dog to go out and come back.
I mean, Boomer's a lovely dog and somebody with a different environment, he'd be fantastic
for them.
In the next episode The difficulties of choosing an abandoned
dog
When you walk in here you''re ruled by your heart, because you see these dogs and you
see them in cages and you want to make it all better.
And will new recruit Freddy ever walk normally again?
He's got a deformed front leg and a possible dislocation of his back leg.
He's also got a few grazes on his back legs. he's possibly been hit by a car.