[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-29170371Terrible news, with 60 dogs killed[/url. A teenager is in custody suspected of arson. Personally I wouldn't prosecute him, I would just get him to clean up the remains. That would make a hundred times more of the seemingly necessary impression than some distant community penalty. He needs to see what he has achieved, hands-on.

If you're not a dog person fair enough but those who'd like can donate to an appeal which has already raised over £1/2m by visiting [urlhttp://www.justgiving.com/ManchesterDogsHomeMEN[/url

You can also donate by text sending MDOG57 followed by £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070.

Maybe he will be made to clear up what he has done and rightly so the little ****.

What sort of warped person thinks "this will work out well for me" and then does that?

As I said on Twitter last night, he may consider that being in police custody is the best place for him right now (if indeed he is the guilty party).

I got my dog a JRT called Sydney from that dogs home so this is close to my heart.

I can't stop thinking about the panic that will have been going through those poor animals.

What suffering they must have gone through (continue to go through).


If anything positive can come out of this they may hopefully be able to re-build but fit for 21st century and it may serve to highlight to people what great pets are available from rescue centres.

This has really touched peoples hearts from all over the world. I heard about it last night about 8pm, I am Facebook friends with the manager of Manchester Dogs Home, Lisa, so was getting regular updates. To see the people of Harphury and Manchester come together, there were 200 people there last night offering foster homes, beds, food, collars & leads, crates. To see them come together like that was amazing and they are upto £800,000 in donations on Just Giving. DIY SOS The Big Build has also been bombarded too. Jewsons have offered building materials for free and workers from all over the Country have offered their service for free. Britain really is a nation of dog lovers afterall.

To the scum who did this, I hope you are very, very happy with yourself because to put it bluntly, there are a lot of people who are not so happy with you and want you to burn to death in a kennel with no escape. I hope you get the book thrown at you but I doubt it.

Run Free at Rainbow Bridge MDH Dogs.

Can't help thinking that £800k would be better spent on the homeless around Manchester.

Apparently besides the 200 people who turned up to help a further 50 Koreans turned up for the barbie!

Bit extreme perhaps.

Maybe, but I didn't say it was my opinion, just a lot of others from what I have been reading.

I am a dog lover, I have had one or more dogs as part of my home since I was a child and never a break of more than a few weeks between each departure and a new arrival, I currently have a large German Shepherd Dog who we sourced from Dogs Trust and I dog-sit a 10 week old Labrador puppy every day, so I'm a dog person ok?

But I agree with you.

My two daughters came in from work last night and independent of each other had both spontaneously donated to the Manchester Dog Home appeal, I'm proud of the fact that they both did that as it shows that dogs are important to them too and maybe we've brought them up to have some empathy - but my first response without thinking was "They should be insured you know".

In retrospect that was probably me being a tight Yorkshireman and £1million will set a charity like theirs up for ever so its a good thing from a bad thing and its true that they will have some immediate recovery costs that will be unbudgeted such as temporary accommodation and replacing supplies, beds etc and yet I still wonder if a humans homeless shelter burned down with the death of 40 or 50 of the sort of street dwellers who you'd normally turn your nose up at on a daily basis when they are begging for your coins outside a McDonalds, then would such a tragedy raise £1million within 24 hours ?

Certain posters on here would, no doubt, put it down to them getting their just desserts.

I am sure they will have been insured, but presumably "they" are a charity and really it is the people who donate time and/or money you are referring to when you say "they".

Rescue premises for dogs are few and far between and if this money enables them to build bigger and better premises then that's great.

I think I read that over 100 dogs were injured, I sadly know a bit about vet's bills, and even if that costs only on average £250 per injured dog then that's a quarter of the money gone already.

The places do have volunteers but they do also have paid staff and any wage bill when added up and annualise can very quickly make even £1m look like peanuts.

So I don't think that the money is actually that much compared with what they need.

I don't turn my nose up at beggars but sadly proceed on the basis that it's odds-on no beggar is actually a beggar since the majority either aren't, or increasingly are parts of criminal gangs even if albeit coerced into begging. Either way I prefer to donate anything I might want to give to homeless charities. Which is very easy to do nowadays and of which there are many.

From what I have seen on visits to the city, Manchester could do with a few less dogs.

Rescue premises for dogs are few & far between? Can you expand on that?

I think pets, particularly dogs, are a very emotive issue.

There used to be RSPCA and a couple more in the Bradford area. We got a rescue dog from each one of the non-RSPCA ones in recent years, and both are now shut. Haven't looked recently but so far as I know if not the RSPCA then there's nothing else now except rehoming organisations, but they don't have a kennels like the Manchester fire one.

I don't know about Manchester except what I read after this fire but they reportedly just have another one, which took as many of the dogs as it could.

Do you think they are all over the place, or what, as I don't really get why you asked?

You said places were few & far between when talking about the happenings in Manchester. You didn't qualify it. I can't see how your perception of Bradford is relevant to Manchester, upon which you were commenting & claiming there weren't enough of the type of place that burned down.

Then you appear to have difficulty in either reading, thinking, or both. I said:

... which they are.

I [ididn't[/i say:

and the context makes it perfectly clear that the comment was a general one, and not restricted to Manchester. I find it hard to see how a reasonable person would think otherwise.

I find it also hard to get the point of it, since if I had restricted the comment to Manchester, it would still, seemingly, be true as according to the reports I have read there is only 1 other similar sized place, and that wasn't big enough to take all the dogs, many of which are having to be 'fostered'.

But I find it harder to work out why a reasonable person would want to derail a thread about the terrible events at Manchester Dogs Home with some bogus and pointless argument about semantics.

Not sure that they actually have a dogs home in Bradford at all, our dog came from the Dogs Trust in Leeds but he was picked up as an abandoned stray in Bradford by the councils dog warden, kept for seven days by the warden service then passed to DT Leeds.

It's not a matter of semantics. Or my reading & comprehension skills.

have you got anything to back up your claim that there is a shortage of these sort of places? Are we now to assume you meant nationally? Or did you mean in Manchester, or Bradford?

Your emotions are getting the better of you, it would seem.

Everything to do, that and your strange need to deflect the thread and try to score points


Of course. Do you actually think there isn't, though? I mean, what is the point of demanding I "back up" my "claim"? (Which was of course an observation in conversation, rather than a "claim"icon_wink.gif when I'd have thought you'd have a good idea that thousands of dogs have to be destroyed year on year as there is no rescue home accommodation for them? Is this something that has passed you by?



First, cut the "we" crap, you aren't speaking for anyone else, you're on your own with this oddball convo. Next, I take it that you now understand what I wrote? Well done.


"Seem"? To whom? On what possible basis? Meaningless nonsense. You've lost the plot!

Is the fact the dogs are put down due to the cost of keeping them or a lack of space?

Both.

The only reason that Dogs Trust manage to honour their "We never put a healthy dog to sleep" promise is because they do not have an open door to every stray that is picked up, its always a case of one out one in, fortunately they have a high rehoming level and there is a constant flow through the door - mainly terrier variations as is the current fashion...

Does it matter? If otherwise healthy dogs are put down, either on cost of keeping grounds or for lack of space, it's the same thing, isn't it?

I mean, in the unlikely event that there are acres of rescue-dog cages that are there but never used, because the rescue centre can't afford to, then they might as well not be there at all, wouldn't you say?

FWIW most rescue centres are pretty much full, most of the time. Given that well in excess of 100,000 stray dogs are rounded up each year, that's not surprising. Of course the majority of these are not destroyed, in fact around 7% are destroyed, of which around half are not destroyed for behavioural issues or illness and as no rescue centre you might think would destroy the rest for no reason, probably the other half is a reasonable estimate of the number destroyed for lack of resources.

In the year to March 2014 around 1.300 strays were put to sleep in the general Yorkshire region.

Depends on your definition of "rescue centre" though, I contribute some effort occasionally to a German Shepherd rescue group who fundraise to pay for commercial kennel space for GSD's that have been handed over for rehoming for a variety of reasons, such rescue groups would never destroy a healthy dog (and the one I am involved in don't even euthanise sick dogs unless its on vets advice) as its in direct conflict with their reason for being.

However part of the rescuing that happens involves other "rescue centres" which are really just holding centres for abandoned dogs, I almost hesitate to name the RSPCA as they aren't the only ones, but its fairly common to find an appeal made for funding for a GSD (in this instance) who is on a time limited stay in a "holding centre", generally recognised breeds will always go to dedicated breed rescue organisations but for the mongrols its often euthanasia simply because there is nowhere else to put them.

Its even worse in the USA where there are constant appeals to help dogs even from recognised breeds that have only days left before euthanasia.