Here at Oldies Club, a small volunteer-run dog rescue registered charity, we have helped around 7,000 homeless old dogs in rescue to be discovered by new, loving families, thanks to our popular website.
Oldies Club is a friendly, helpful, dog rescue charity, and as well as rescuing and rehoming old dogs via our own rescue –- to date Oldies Club itself has rehomed 1122 dogs –- we also promote old dogs that are in other rescues, by carefully crafting descriptions of them and publicising them on our much-loved website.
We are very proud to share the news that we have again been analysing the figures and doing a little estimating based on the feedback we receive from the many rescues we help, and the astounding conclusion we have reached is that in the seventeen years since the Oldies Club website was created, we have actively helped a whopping 7,000 old dogs to find new homes. That’s 7,000 old dogs that have moved in with fabulous, kind-hearted families who perused our website and spotted the special canine destined to be their new best friend.
Let us explain how we get to the magical figure of 7,000…
Since our website began, seventeen years ago, 12,800 of the dogs that we have listed went on to find a new home. And, based on the ongoing feedback our web team receives from contacts in all those rescues we help, it seems that between 60% and 70% of the dogs we list are rehomed as a direct result of being seen on our website. We are therefore confident to claim that at least 55% of the dogs we advertised that subsequently found a home, found that home because they were noticed on the Oldies Club website. Amazing!
But it gets even better than that, because rescues repeatedly tell us that as well as the actual dogs we have advertised for them, they also gain interest in their other dogs, and they often rehome another dog or two, or even three, because people got in touch with their rescue after seeing one of their oldies on our website. How wonderful is that?
Oldies Club’s web team currently consists of just three dog-mad volunteers who spend their spare time writing about dogs they have never met, probably never will meet, and yet, after writing about each old dog’s plight and how it came to be in rescue in its twilight years, we feel we know them so well. The rescues we work with send information about the oldies in their care that they would like us to promote, but often we need to dig a bit deeper to get that extra nugget of information that will help the oldie find a home. We sometimes ask for more photos to try to ensure each oldie looks its best. Or we might ask if the oldie would be happy to live with cats, dogs, or children, or if it is good in the car. All those extra little bits of information might be just the must-have feature that someone is looking for in their new dog. We also use our personal experience of adopting and living with our own old dogs to help us present oldies in a positive light, to give each oldie the best chance of finding that elusive new home.
Feedback such as this from one of the rescues whose oldies we regularly list is what makes it all worthwhile: “Just wanted to send a special thank you for promoting our little girl. You wouldn’t believe but we have been absolutely inundated with offers, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing and I have had lots of emails. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oldies Club ALWAYS helps our Oldies and we don’t know what we would do without you lovely people.”
And we often receive comments such as this one: “I can honestly say that most of our older dogs have found homes through your organisation. We could not be doing this job without you. We monitor where the enquiries come from, so I can say this with certainty. Thank you for everything.”
Just this week, we heard: “He is on a hometrial and doing very well… thanks again so much as we had loads of applications for him via your platform.”
Our website had almost 350,000 visitors in the year to 19 October 2022, and 325,000 of those were new users. Our supporters often tell us that they love reading our website, even when they aren’t actively looking for a dog. We are surely the go-to resource for anyone that is actively searching for a grey-muzzled canine to add to their family.
At any one time, there are around 100 oldies for adoption on our website. That’s a lot of old dogs waiting for their chance of happiness. Sadly, the days of people clamouring to adopt dogs in the post-Covid working-from-home era are well and truly over and all rescues are reporting a dramatic reversal in the situation. People who are now suffering the worst effects of the cost-of-living crisis sometimes have no choice but to rehome their beloved dog. Rescue spaces are in very short supply and so the promotion of dogs needing homes is even more vital.
We are happy to report that our Old Dog of the Week feature continues to have wonderful results in helping overlooked oldies finally find their forever home. Some of the dogs we feature have spent years in kennels, but after having their sad tale told, and their positive and adorable qualities presented, we have had some spectacular successes through the years. Recent examples include Skyla, a 10 year old Labrador Cross who had been overlooked and was becoming increasingly miserable in kennels, but within 2 weeks of being featured as Old Dog of the Week, Skyla had found a happy new home. Dooley is a lovely lad who had originally been a street dog in Romania; and Amie had suffered a severe head trauma before being rescued. The dogs we feature as Old Dog of the Week have sometime waited months, or even years, in rescue, but they often find a home soon after being featured with new photos and extra information from their rescue.
Help us continue to rescue older dogs
Please remember, as well as the thousands of dogs that we have promoted for other rescues, we are primarily a rescue in our own right and we usually have 30 to 40 older dogs in our direct care, in foster homes around the country. We are always extremely grateful for any donations to our work, no matter how small, especially in these days of ever-increasing vet fees. Find details of how you can donate to Oldies Club here. Or you might consider remembering us in your will.
And finally, we would like to end with a HUGE “thank you!” to everyone that has used our website to look for an oldie to adopt, and especially to those helpful people that share the details of the oldies, spreading the word about the fabulous old dogs that are waiting in rescues for someone special to find them and take them home. With your continued help and support, we hope to help thousands more oldies.
This is an updated version of an article from 2017. We have re-run the calculations and added photos of some recent success stories. It is so uplifting to quantify the needy old dogs we have helped.