Greyhound Protection UK is 9 years old today so Happy Birthday to us. I started BGP (what is was called then) after helping a local rehoming centre and seeing how many greyhounds needed help that wasn’t lucky enough to go to mainstream charity’s .I also was anti Greyhound Racing and didn’t want to keep my mouth shut and be told I couldn’t talk out about the industry. At first we were a campaign group with plans to rescue one or two dogs a month. 9 years on we have rescued and rehomed almost 1400 dogs. We also work with rescues all the time if we can’t take dogs in need to try and get them safe.We rescue from all over the world and four years ago I set up our sister Charity Candy Cane Rescue which is based in China saving dogs from the horrific meat trade. Greyhound Protection UK has certainly had its ups and downs and it’s been a massive learning experience running a rescue. Everyday I learn more some positive some not so positive.We were foster based when I set the rescue up, then we had kennels twice and lost them twice due to the HS2 taking the land they were on. When we lost the kennels for the second time I knew I had to change things around so we set up a second branch in West Sussex ran by Sarah-Jane Knight and her amazing volunteers .I then moved from Birmingham to Lincolnshire because I needed more space for the dogs. We are getting a great group of volunteers and big thanks to Vaughan who helps us so much and is only up the road from me now (lucky him.)Also thank you to all the amazing rescues we work with all over the world.We have had a name change and a rebranding. All our new merchandise will be for sale soon.Throughout these mad times we have remained open and still rescued dogs and I have to thank the amazing volunteers for sticking with me and the dogs.Jayne Brack and Lisa Campbell from the homechecking team have worked their ass off to get dogs into homes safely as have the homecheckers. Ann Ward has been unbelievable and got us so much food donated it’s saved us thousands.The long term fosters have been fabulous as always,the fundraising team who have worked so hard like Clarence Grey running auctions for us .The transporters have been amazing and all the admin people too. Also big thanks to our behaviourist Julie Sadler who I drive insane .There’s too many people to name but we have a great team.Some volunteers have been with me since day one and others have joined along the way to make us a stronger rescue. In rescue you start off so positive but after a while things become harder after seeing so much abuse to animals and having to deal with arseholes within the racing industry.This is why it’s so frustrating at times when we work so hard for these dogs for them to be returned for stupid reasons. Now lockdown seems to be almost fully lifted we will be getting back to more campaigning and exposing the dirty racing industry which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Greyhounds each year. Demos will be getting set up and I will be working with Rita Jones from Caged as I have for years.Thank you everyone who supports us and believes in what we do. We don’t always get things right but we learn.Happy Birthday to us