Champions' Tuesday: Champions Chat at Raystede Animal Sanctuary

Seven of our Champions had a fantastic trip to Raystede Animal Sanctuary on the 3rd April 2018. Raystede covers 43 acres and cares for over 2000 animals a year, rehoming over 1000 animals and providing sanctuary to even more.The theme of the chat was how to take care of animals and in particular dogs, cats and horses.

The morning began with Cat Bray from the Sanctuary explaining what to look for in dogs’ behaviours that demonstrate how they are feeling. We then learnt how to introduce ourselves to a dog, before heading out to meet a new dog Tinker who had been recently received by the Sanctuary. The Champions’ were tasked with assessing how Tinker was feeling, which included looking for signs of stress and his appearance, and how he dealt with meeting other dogs.

The next task was to visit the cats, and match them with new owners based on their situations and environments. The team did really well assessing which cats should go with which humans, and decided that some situations weren’t appropriate for cats.

After a lunch session being entertained by Goldie the amazing robot dog, we were taken to visit the horses. The herd mainly consists of older animals, however Raystede also look after horses and ponies with various health issues such as blindness. They are allowed to live as naturally as possible, having access to inside and out at all times. The Champions loved grooming the two horses, even cleaning out their hooves.The session finished with a quiz about what we’d learnt. Our Champions loved the session, with one shouting “this is the best day!”.

Huge thanks to Cat Bray for the fantastically informative session and to Mark Phillips and Raystede for donating the session to us. Also we are extremely grateful as always to Claire Clements our Starr Trust Ambassador for volunteering her time. The last but not least thanks goes to the wonderful animals at Raystede! We hope we can come again soon!