“Thank you.”

Those two little words (or “thanks” if you want to be quick about it) can mean a lot. Or, depending on how you wield them, they can mean almost nothing. Just like “How are you?” or “I love you,” “Thank you” is a phrase that can hold great weight or have all the heft and permanence of a morning fog.

In our case, Thank You holds great weight. So much weight that our gratitude and appreciation knows no boundaries!

We recently sent out an urgent Appeal for community members and animal lovers to come forward and donate dog food to our kennels in Campbell Road, Howick, Through Facebook and the Village Talk, we humbly asked kind people to donate a bag of biscuits or dog tinned food to assist us in feeding the huge amount of animals in our care, mainly dogs as we had had a lot of Biliary cases in the hot months, coming in needing treatment. These animals need to stay at our clinic for a few days in order to ensure they receive treatment and care. They needed food morning and evening, so our food stock began to run rather low. On average, we have over 500 dogs coming through the clinic monthly as we also have a very active Outreach Sterilization Project.

The response we received was incredible, to say the least! The day after the appeal went out on Facebook; many people came and dropped off food and money for us to buy food. This continued over the next few days and we were overwhelmed by the generous spirit of folk in our communities. After the appeal came out in the Village Talk we then received another huge batch of food from people and companies alike. Wow!!! Thank you to each and every one of you that rushed to our aid and saved us from having to go and buy food with money that we would rather use to actually treat the animals that come in. We remain eternally grateful to all you fierce Animal Warriors for every bag and every tin you so generously donated to us.

If every person in Howick and Hilton would donate just one bag of dog food or a can every month to us at the kennels, we will never be in the situation we recently found ourselves in. Please think about it and please continue to assist us with this food drive.

At this time, more than ever, our thoughts turn gratefully to those who have made our progress for animals possible. And in this spirit we say, simply but sincerely – Thank You.

On another note: Our Golf Day raffle will be out in shops and stores soon. First prize is a sturdy dog house made and donated by Stephen Arpin for the raffle. R5 will buy you a ticket to win this splendid dog house or a bottle of whiskey so look out for the raffle sheets in town and please support it.