Ash finds itself under pressure financially
REMI and Helena Le Mahieu of Ash Animal Sanctuary are struggling financially to keep the sanctuary afloat but are hopeful that fundraising can restart later this year once Covid-19 gets under control.
The Kiltegan based sanctuary currently has 38 dogs and between 35 to 40 cats for re-homing but the dogs in their care are proving difficult to find new families for.
‘We have to just keep going but it hasn’t been easy,’ said Remi.
‘Our coffers will be empty pretty soon as the fundraising activities were are reliant upon couldn’t happen during 2020. We usually release a calendar and sell it mainly on Grafton Street in Dublin, but that couldn’t happen either. We had some old Christmas cards that we were able to sell but we didn’t produce any new ones for Christmas. The calendars and Christmas cards involve an investment of money and we knew the return wouldn’t be so great. We are fortunate that we received good support from the general public. The number of donations we received over Christmas wasn’t bad.’
There has been a huge increase of interest in pet ownership over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to fears over what could happen to some of these new pets once people return to their place of work rather than working from home.
‘We haven’t seen an influx of dogs and puppies purchased during Covid. Most sanctuaries actually have plenty of space at the moment. The problem could be when people are able to return to work and find they don’t
have the same amount of time to look after their dogs as they did during lockdown when they were working from home. Then you have dogs bought as puppies which are slowly becoming young adults. People might not want to keep them anymore. We do eventually expect plenty of dogs needing new homes but only when things start going back to normal,’ said Remi.
Meanwhile, Remi, Helena and their staff are focusing on finding new homes for the 38 dogs currently in their care.
‘ The dogs we currently have would be mainly dogs with issues and we are finding it difficult to rehome them. They need a good bit of work. We have a few strays that wouldn’t be used to walking on a lead, like farm dogs. We are focusing a lot of our attention on training the dogs so we can put some sort of manners on them to make it easier to find them a new home.’