Earlier this year, Gibe raised £1000 by running 1000km for Bristol Animal Rescue Centre, a fantastic charity that look after and support vulnerable animals, giving them shelter and training with hopes of helping them find their forever homes. To help them continue the great work that they do, some of the team at Gibe volunteered for the day, and here's what we got up to:
MEET AND GREET
We arrived at around midday where we met Luke, who gave us a tour of the centre before giving us a brief history lesson of Bristol ARC, which is summarised on their website. But in short, what started in 1886 as one man setting up a small kennel for a stray dog that he had found, slowly grew over the following century to home many other animals, partnering with the RSPCA, and developing their own in-house Clinic so that they can provide essential care for their animals without taking them out of their homes, while also reducing their costs to do so.
LET'S GET TO WORK
Luke then showed us how we'd be helping out for the day - creating dog tug toys and cat scratchers to provide some entertainment and comfort for the animals during their stay at the rescue centre. For the cat scratchers we split into teams of 2 - myself and Sophie, and Hugh and Elliot. While all this involves is cutting and gluing some cardboard together, it is deceivably time consuming, and so working in teams made this much easier to get done! Despite iterating that it wasn't a competition between the teams, it clearly was, with team Hugh and Elliot pulling ahead and finishing theirs first. Although you know how the saying goes, slow and steady...
We then moved onto making the dog toys, which I found fascinating and very resourceful. Essentially, it's just long strips of old fabric woven together tightly and then tied off at each end. Kind of like those friendship bracelets you'd make as kids, but on a bigger scale. The other team were once again very efficient at this, getting through a couple each, whereas we just about managed to finish one of ours before time. It must be said that none of them looked like they'd come straight from a shop, but we hope that they were functional all the same!
END OF DAY TREAT
As a thank you for helping out, Luke gave us some time to meet a few of the kittens that they had on site! While I was very excited at this prospect, I was also worried that I'd be tempted to take one home with me (and considering that I'm not allowed pets at my current home, might have been a problem!) Once again me and Soph went together to meet a slightly older, but very sociable kitten named Cosmic Creeper. She was adorable and playful, we both thoroughly enjoyed spending time with her.
Hugh and Elliot's experience on the other hand, despite meeting 3 lovely little felines, was dimmed from the stench that came as they all marched in one by one and proceeded to do their business in the litter tray, which led them to wonder how something so small could kick up such a stink!
FINAL THOUGHTS
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent at Bristol ARC and felt honoured to make a small dent in the work that this group do every day. Luke and the rest of the team were very welcoming, and you could see the passion and care that they brought to the job. If you love animals as much as we do, and providing support for the local community, it would mean the world to us if you considered donating to Bristol ARC. I'm sure they'd be incredibly grateful too!
