Help city’s dog and cat home help pets caught in crisis
It’s normal to hear a phone ringing in an office isn’t it? It’s expected. What you might not expect is that every time our frontline team pick up the phone they have no idea how difficult and distressing that call may turn out to be.
Each call will often have a different challenge to talk through but no matter what, it will always come down to the fact a pet is caught up in the crisis and the difficulty their owner is experiencing. Anything ranging from relationship breakdowns, moving into temporary accommodation, needing to work extra jobs to make ends meet or mental health challenges.
Not only are these calls difficult and upsetting to navigate they are increasing at an alarming rate for the Home. We had 872 hours of calls to our helpline between January and June this year – this was 17,995 calls in six months – compared to 17,021 calls which we received for all of 2023.
The reality is we no longer have a phone line; it is in fact a help line. Our caring team try their best to support those owners turning to us for our help, but the sad fact is they can’t assist everyone that calls.
Our work centres on protecting loving homes, finding loving homes and running a loving home, for dogs and cats in need. With such influxes of numbers and such a staggering need deeply entrenched across the communities we support it’s hard to understand how the Home can meet this demand while facing the hardships that the cost-of-living crisis has brought to our own doors.
Our Winter Appeal is about celebrating the warm hearts of our supporters. We know that the generosity of our supporters enables hundreds of dogs and cats to receive the love, care and protection they deserve and that it is the warm and generous hearts of those people allows the work of our Home to keep going through these even more difficult months.
Through the 81 foodbanks we are supporting this year alone, we have helped to feed tens of thousands of pets and kept them with their families. Throughout 2024 we have seen a record number of animals come in. There have been almost 400 admissions and without our supporters so many animals would have missed out on a life filled with love and warmth.
Without donations to keep the Home going these pets and their owners would be facing more heartbreak and difficulty. Thank you to everyone who has supported the Home over this past year. It’s been some of our most difficult times, but you have helped to light the path forward for us.
To support the Winter Appeal, visit www.edch.org.uk/winterappeal or text WARMHEARTS to 70085 to donate £10.
Lindsay Fyffe Jardine is CEO of Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home