Who, what, where?
The Birkett~Smith Animal Sanctuary was founded by Joy Keys in 2011 on a smallholding in Dorset and formalised as a registered Charity not long after.
We are one of the very few UK sanctuaries that will take aggressive and fear aggressive dogs and we rehabilitate these animals as much as we can over time to enable them to enjoy their forever home here with us or to go back out into the world with new skills.
We provide forever homes for just under 100 dogs, a few cats and some farm animals including sheep, horses, geese, and chickens. Our animals have behavioural issues, are aggressive, old, disabled, human scared, reactive etc... so we basically take the animals that stand little or no chance of gaining homes let alone the security of a forever home.
In 2016 we undertook a new project to build SOS Safe Havens for human/dog reactive/aggressive dogs. For the previous year the sanctuary had been unofficially sheltering short term dogs who were at risk at nil charge for reputable rescuers and it soon became clear that there was a huge gap in the rescue chain as the demand for the SOS spaces increased exponentially.
Due to the nature of the animals, we have, their care can be intensive, time consuming and very costly. We are unable to re-home our dogs due to their behaviours etc and cannot open to the public due to the nature of the animals on site therefore we do not have the income of a rescue from adoption fees (minimal as that may be) so we continually fund raise to cover the huge day to day running costs of the Sanctuary.
Here are just some of our Sanctuary Dogs, our wonderful resident woofa's.
These dogs have been given a last chance and have a safe, happy, loving place here with us; this is their forever home at last. We have just under 100 permanent residents; some abandoned, some abused, some just thrown away and some pound dogs who simply ran out of time and which we saved by providing a place here with us. All of them have behavioural problems and/or disabilities but that just makes them extra special to us. When possible, they are matched with other dogs and have a wonderful, easy, stress free life here on our hill where they get to be what they need to be....just happy dogs. Rehab is the method but time, trust and love are the keys to these very special kids.
Housing, feeding and caring for them all comes at a hefty price as you can imagine. If you would like to sponsor any of them, even a pound a week would help us to feed and care for them. You can make a donation to either a specific dog from the list below or one you have read about on our facebook pages or you can just send a little something for all of them. Thank you so much for caring x
