A Bracknell family-run dog shelter offers ‘hopeless’ hounds in need a second chance at life.

The Greyhound and Lurcher charity have made a vow to help those difficult cases and give them a good quality of life.

From their shelter hounds, to those that can be re-homed after rehabilitation, this family run rescue will provide a home and shelter to greyhounds that may not have been wanted elsewhere.

Fall in Love with a Rescue, located between Bracknell and Twyford never turn away a dog and believe in a ‘no kill’ policy.

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Jane, the owner said: “it’s not first come first serve with us. We need to make sure that any of our dogs go to the right home to make sure they don’t bounce back.

“Generally, greyhounds and Lurchers have very low re-call and they need to have enough space to run around. This means we’re not the quickest at re-homing because we’re religious about doing every single check.

“Some dogs are easy peesy and you think anyone can have this dog, it’s a lovely first dog. Then you have other dogs - we had one recently called Crazy Maisey who we had for 4 years because she was ferel when she came in, and she needed to grow up, get confident and then wait for that perfect home,” she said.

“There is no time scale on rehoming them.”

The shelter has around 20 dogs on their site, including horses and red kites. Emergency spaces are also kept for animals that simply have nowhere else to go. Jane tells me that she will get calls from all over the country to collect dogs that need an emergency rescue.

The special niche that ‘Fall in love with a rescue’ offer is if a greyhound or lurcher arrives to them injured or in need of medical services, it will be nursed back to health to the best of their ability.

“We try to make one dogs donation the medical costs for the next dog,” she said.

 “Unfortunately, though the poor vets have had to put their prices up so we are always running at a loss and that’s without any incidents.”

The dogs that are taken in as sanctuary animals are those unable to be slotted into a regular environment. This may be because they are in need of comfort and training after a traumatic incident or are violent and untrainable.

Whereas in other rescue centres the decision may be taken to put these dogs down, Jane makes sure that they are given the best quality of life and the treatment they need to thrive.

“We recently had a dog from the pound who had a heart murmur and was going to be put down and we thought he was coming on palliative care. After some rehabilitation and the right treatment, he’s waiting to have teeth out and teeth cleaned and then he’s ready to rehome.”

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The shelter has a fantastic local community behind it that supports them with food, blankets - and the occasional sofa for the shelter dogs. In February 2022, the shelter was chosen as one of the six recipients to receive the Burgess Pet Care £8,000 food donation.

Jane Mac added: "We were so grateful and honoured to be awarded this, it will help so many of our shelter dogs and will save us £20 a day for feeding them."

“It’s amazing how for a very small family run rescue centre, we do mad things. Things that people would say you couldn’t really do it if you had to answer to anyone.

“You have to have a sense of humour, you have to have a little bit of stamina for it and we have all that including the passion to keep it going.”