welcome to paws
Help us keep our dream alive.
"To Educate Our People, And Especially Our Children,
To Humane Attitudes And Actions Towards Living Things
Is To Preserve And Strengthen Our National Heritage
And The Moral Values We Champion In The World..."
John F Kennedy
PAWS is a work in progress, we started out in Feb 1997 with the intention to rehome unwanted dogs from their current homes. However, we soon realised the huge amount of abuse, neglect and abandonment of dogs throughout the County and we started to give them shelter and veterinary care... News spread fast and soon we were dealing with cases from Cork and Kerry to Sligo and Donegal... Since that time PAWS, has rescued, vaccinated, neutered and rehomed thousands of dogs and as 70% of these were adults, our neutering programme has prevented millions of unwanted puppies being born and consequently dumped in ditches, dustbins and dog pounds.
Sometimes we feel like 'giving up and giving in' but then somebody says a kind word or calls to visit, with a happy, healthy adored pet, which when it originally came in to our care was a quivering, ravenous, petrified mess. Days like those give you the strength to carry on that extra mile.
As you may know, we at PAWS depend totally on the public to help us to keep our doors open to abandoned and abused animals. The National Lottery have thus far ignored pleas from Animal Welfare groups to grant aid our work and the Dept of Agriculture very kindly give a small grant each year to rescue centers Sadly, however, this covers only a minute portion of the running costs, which ran to over 300 thousand euro last year. The rest is made up from flag days, fundraisers and donations. We, at PAWS now find ourselves under serious pressure. Our biggest expense being veterinary fees... we never seem to reduce the debt because of the vast volume of dogs coming through our doors, for a rescue our size to handle an average of ten dogs a week for vaccination, worming, neutering and micro chipping is extremely difficult financially.
Every day of our lives, each one of us gets out of bed, puts our feet on the floor and drearily face the working day.
Since we started PAWS that has changed.
We know we are making a difference.. against the odds..
It has been a long and bumpy road and we have hit many potholes along the way.
I still thank God each day; for the people like us all over this island, who make a difference,
For our Vets Southview Clinic Clonmel & Beaufield Veterinary in Celbridge,who have unbelievable patience,
I thank God for our underpaid and overworked employees and volunteers who give their time and compassion to try to ease the burden,
But most of all we thank God for YOU, our supporters, because without you, we would not be here today and we would be unable to keep our doors open to those in need. Believe me, together, we have made a
Difference
There is no going back now, for if we stop tomorrow.. What will happen to those unheard voices ?
We MUST go on, despite lack of Government support,
We MUST go on despite lack of funds,
We MUST go on because we have to...
Because somebody has to....
Thank you for visiting our website, do take your time and browse. If you are interested in adopting a PAWS dog, here's our Adoption Policy. We also now have a secure Donate Online facility - if you've been thinking of sending in a donation, this makes it even easier :-).  |
