Dogs Trust Honours: Follow the action online!

Tomorrow night is one of the biggest in the Dogs Trust calendar. It's the night we get to celebrate the wonderful contribution dogs make to our everyday lives, and reward some of them for it (and one or two of their human friends, too). Its...

The Dogs Trust Honours!

You might have seen the previous blogs about this, and you're about to see a lot more. We (and by that I mean me, Alex, and the Digital Manager Jacqui) will be at the venue from several hours beforehand to document its tranformation and blog, tweet, snap and film every bit of the event we can.

We'll be aiming to interview our celebrity guest presenters, meet the dogs, get the results out there and generally make you feel like you'll be there with us all evening long. Where can you follow?

1. Right here!
2. On our dedicated Honours Twitter feed and main Dogs Trust Twitter feed.
3. On Flickr (photos)
4. On YouTube (video)
5. On our social networking pages like Facebook.

Why we're on Twitter: A second dog is rehomed!

You might remember that we all delightedly jumped for joy when a dog ended up finding a new forever home thanks to a post on Twitter. It was an extremely exciting moment, which proved to us that this being online malarkey can make a very real contribution to the day-to-day work our dedicated centre staff do.

All we could do after that was keep working hard building relationships, and hope that the magic would happen again. And thanks to some conversation going on around us, it has!

One of the great things about Twitter is the way that messages can go around the whole site through "retweeting" - someone copying what you've written and passing it on. This generates a whole world of conversation you might not even be aware of at the time, and is very valuable when you're trying to get a message out to the world! One of our lovely followers, @jamieriddell, has recently been retweeting a lot of our links to dogs needing homes, and thanks to his kind assistance another member, @robin1966, was prompted to visit his local Dogs Trust Rehoming Centre.

Within days, Dogs Trust Merseyside had matched him up with Yogi, a beautiful Boxer. He's now proudly telling the world about his lovely new addition!

We can't thank Robin enough for giving a dog a second chance, and we're very grateful for Jamie's assistance too.

People have asked us why we spend time having conversations with people online instead of just firing out rehoming updates. But we're actually interested in what our supporters have to say, and furthermore wouldn't expect anyone to pass on a message unless we engaged with them as well. We'll carry on building our community slowly, getting to know the people who want to get to know us and listening to what they have to say. So talk to us here, on Twitter, or at any of the other places you can find us; we like being spoken to!

Photo: Yogi at home, from Robin1966's Flickr stream.

First dog rehoming through Twitter sees Suzie from Ballymena finding a home!

It started with a woolly-haired dog picture, and a mild resemblance to Kevin Keegan's hair heyday. I found it cute enough to put on Twitter, and that's where supporter @emmao414 saw it. It turned out that she lives near Dogs Trust Ballymena, and was quite won over by Gia's good looks. Knowing her mum was in the market for a new pal, she swiftly called the centre to make sure Gia was still available, and headed over the same afternoon for a visit, having very sensibly done some research into Irish Water Spaniels.

Although Gia turned out to be a bit big and exuberant for her family, Emma and her mum found their heads turned by a gorgeous six-year-old Pomeranian cross called Suzie, who's all set to move into her new home at 2:30pm today! This is the first time we have been able to make a match through one of our social network pages, and we're so pleased that this strategy is beginning to work for supporters and dogs alike. To our knowledge, it's the first time any animal charity has used Twitter in this way, and we plan to work hard to make this the first of many.

You can click to enlarge the picture above to see the actual online exhange that took place, but all that really remains is to fervently thank Emma and her family for choosing to adopt a rescue dog. We hope Suzie settles in quickly and has a wonderful life with you!

By the way, Gia is still seeking a home, so if you're interested in the curly haired beauty, please do give Ballymena a call on 028 2565 2977!