February was another really busy month for ALStrays pet transport from Spain to the UK and Europe with a total of 100 cats and dogs transported on all of our transports. It is hard to decide what is the main news this month: the new vehicle in the UK to reduce the costs of deliveries to the North East, North West and Scotland which takes our ‘fleet’ to three vehicles dedicated to pet transport between the UK and Spain and within Spain and the UK, OR the amendment to the schedule as we introduce three weekly pet transport to the UK from Spain. See below for more details.
The most depressing part of the month without doubt was the increased level of bitchiness, unprofessionalism and disrespect that continues to blight the world of animal rescue. No way are we whiter than white, and we have ‘black listed’ people in the past, but here and now I am declaring an amnesty! If we have blacklisted you and you are prepared to put the past behind us and focus on what we are all meant to be concentrating on: the welfare of the poor dogs and cats, then so will we. There are more and more animals in need of help and surely we shouldn’t allow any personal dislikes, grievances or agenda’s to get in the way?
Hopefully we will see an end to the vindictiveness which has seen some amazing people ‘take a break’ from re-homing, the pettiness that sees people banned from sites helping re-home animals, and unbelievably, transport companies trying to poach clients by bad mouthing others.
At times this month it has been worse than an episode of Dallas and I think we should ensure that this is the nadir and that from now onwards we all ensure that the welfare and wellbeing of the animals is our first, second and third priority!
March
We have a transport scheduled for the UK on the 23rd March. At the moment we have 10 confirmed bookings, 4 awaiting confirmation and 6 other enquiries so we now need to start confirming the places or they will be offered to others on the waiting list.
Currently we have room for a third person looking for a FREE trip to the UK. We will depart on the 23rd March and arrive in UK on 24th March in the morning. We will leave the UK again on the 27th March arriving back in Spain on the 28th March.
April
The transport in April will be the 27th April arriving in the UK on the 28th. We will be returning on the 30th, arriving on the 1st May back in Spain.
The third person space is available for anyone looking for a FREE trip back to the UK.
May
The transport in April will leave Spain on the 18th May, arriving in the UK on the 19th May. We will leave the UK again on the 22nd May arriving back in Spain on the 23rd May.
The third person space is available for anyone looking for a FREE trip back to the UK.
News
Future Transports
We are going to be making some changes to the transport schedule for the transport of pets to the UK from Spain and the transport of pets to Europe.
At the moment we can’t satisfy the demand for the transport of cats and dogs to the UK from Spain with just one transport a month. Before we bought the bigger van we did two transports of 10 dogs to the UK each month and thought that one transport of 15 each month would suffice, but that is not the case and as we have invested heavily in the van and the ability to transport pets to the UK from Spain and to transport pets from the UK to Spain this has to be our priority.
From April we are going to introduce a schedule that is based around a transport of pets to the UK from Spain every three weeks. This will give us more time to help collect and kennel the cats and dogs from around Spain and then transport them to the UK.
With regards to the transport of dogs to Europe we are going to stop this for the foreseeable future. As things currently stand we really can’t make this work at the prices people want to pay, and the logistics are too difficult. On a recent transport we had to collect and kennel 17 dogs the night before a transport and this is just not sustainable.
We have been working with a local Protectora for a number of years and they have now asked us to consider being their transport provider, transporting their dogs under TRACES regulations. They were extremely supportive when Sands first started re-homing cats to Germany so we want to repay their support. It would mean that we will be able to help even more dogs get to their new homes which is important to us.
We are going to concentrate on a new charter transport service where we are effectively just hired to provide the transport: the organisation and logistics will be left to the people contracting us. We have had an increasing number of requests to do this but to date have been unable to schedule them in.
We also want to help more dogs within Spain either collecting from ‘killing stations’ or delivering to new homes, and at the moment we don’t have time to fulfill all of these requests.
It will take us some time to set all of this up and to be honest we need a break for a while.
When we set up ALStrays Transport we held the view that the best thing we could so was to provide a sustainable, consistent service that enabled us to transport as many pets to their new homes as possible. We still believe that this is the right thing to do as without reliable affordable, regular and approved transport the rescue centres and re-homing projects wont be able to move their animals on to new homes.
It is important that we don’t lose track of that by trying to never say no, so we need to make this change now so that we can continue to provide our service both financially and physically.
Bosnia
The Bosnia project is coming along slowly. The date has been set provisionally as 17th June and we are currently sorting out the necessary paperwork with DEFRA as Bosnia is deemed a none EU country so will require a different ‘license’.
New Vehicle
We have purchased a new Nissan Qashqai in the UK ti help with the transport of dogs and cats within the UK. We can get three cages in the back of the car and will use it to keep the costs down when delivering to the North East, North West and Scotland.
Next Transport Availability
23rd March
27th April
18th May
More Information
ALStrays Transport Newsletter: March 2013: February was another really busy month for ALStrays pet transport from… http://t.co/Z4RjBMhVDL