by Nigel Newman, Director of Smith Newmans
Like many of our clients, we’re a team of dog lovers here at Smith Newmans and we’re proud to have been supporting Pensions 4 Paws – our chosen charity – over the past few years.
The pandemic has made things more difficult in so many ways, but finally, we managed to hand over our most recent donation to the charity (socially-distanced, of course!) made up of last year’s fundraising and our Christmas donation in lieu of sending Christmas cards.
Supporting Retired Police and Fire Service Dogs
Pensions 4 Paws is such an amazing local charity. It assists retired dogs from all police and fire services from the forces in Hampshire and the Thames Valley. The dogs normally have a 8-year working life and they are then rehomed and Pensions 4 Paws helps with vet bills and other costs.
Everyone involved in the charity is a volunteer and all the funds have to be raised as no money is received from the police, fire services or any other authority. One of their main fundraising events is a family day, and as you can imagine, Covid has had a huge impact on this.
We are very grateful to Sam, Kelly and the lovely Retired Police Dog Molly for taking the time and making the effort to meet us at our Winchester office for the presentation, as both Sam and Kelly are full time police officers. Kelly is a dog handler and Sam is on traffic, and all the charity work is undertaken in their own time.
Molly retired from the police service at age 4 due to ill health, and despite being 15 in July she still loves her ball which is the reward at the end of a search. She did drop it eventually when dog treats were on offer!
While the dogs are in service they live with their handlers. Kelly has 2 dogs: Chase who is a general purpose / firearms support dog and Enzo, a VR search dog. The general purpose dogs are the large breeds that you see at the crowd control situations and the search dogs are often spaniels or similar. Search dogs are used in many situations, from finding vulnerable people who have gone missing, to searching out runaway criminals, drugs, money, explosives or cadavers. Often when a dog retires they stay living with their handlers.
Smith Newmans’ Chosen Charity For 2021
We are happy to be making even a small difference by supporting this fantastic charity during what has been a very tough time.
I’m very pleased to say that Smith Newmans will be continuing to support Pensions 4 Paws with our fundraising events this year.
If you would like to help , or would just like further information on the charity, either contact us to make a donation, or take a look at the charity’s website pensions4paws.com.