Meet Dogs Trust: Abbie Smith

Having recently joined the Dogs Trust Digital Team, I will be spending my days communicating with all of our great supporters out there - so I thought I would take a moment to introduce myself to you all...

Name: Abbie Smith

Location: Dogs Trust HQ, London

Job: Digital Marketing Officer

You what...? Yes that’s right – I’m the new Digital Marketing Officer! And I’m thrilled. I’ve been working here 7 years in June so I’m no stranger to the brilliance of all things Dogs Trust. However moving to the Digital Team is totally new to me, and just a couple of days in – I love it! So far I’ve been getting to grips with the website content, doing my usual scribbled notes that make little sense… before neatly transferring into my notebook to be highlighted / colour coded - oh yeahhh,  I’m one of ‘those’ people!

I’m surrounded by digital gurus... Literally - Jacqui to my left and Lo to my right. Therefore I’m confident I will be learning lots along the way, and  I’ll most probably ramble in future blogs too –  there’s something to look forward to.

Best thing about my job: The people! Having been here a fair few years I’ve seen  people come and go, but the majority are ‘long timers’ and (hopefully)  aren’t going anywhere anytime soon – you can’t blame them. I was 17 when I started here, my first real job in the ‘big wide world’… so in all honesty – my colleagues could be rubbish…but I have no comparison - so to me they are great! This goes for my new team too; the best thing about working in the Digital Team so far has been instantly feeling comfortable enough to ask questions and being shown the ropes by Jacqui and Lo! Of course, having Twitter and Facebook open on my screen 24/7 will be an added bonus!

Pets: I have a gorgeous little 9 month old Kitten called Kenny. He is mischievous and a little crazy! He’s often casually hanging over my shoulder while I’m walking around the house – I always fail to tell visitors about this trait so they are a little alarmed when he springs up and does his best impression of a parrot.

Favourite websites: I’m a self-confessed Twitter addict, scrolling through the tweets of the rich and semi/not-at-all famous makes my journey to the office in Angel from my home in Essex much more entertaining!

What I'm reading now: I am half way through a book called Before I Go to Sleep written by S J Watson. It's a good read, It takes a bit of brain power to keep up – which is ironic since it’s all about a lady who has lost her mind!

Weekend plans: I will most probably go for drinks after work on Friday with the girls and for a meal of some kind on Saturday with my boyfriend and our friends. I always make time to see my Nan for a cup of tea too!

Can dog lovers be cat lovers too?

According to some of our Twitter followers (naming no names @billhilton), no way no how. We know that dogs and cats can be friends, so why not the people who love them?

It's time to 'fess: I've never had a dog. My parents preferred tortoises, stick insects, canaries, guinea pigs and, finally, cats - mostly because none of them required walking - but we cared for a friend's Cavalier King Charles and I grew up spending half my time at my best friend's house with her soppy Rottweiler and stately Lab Cross. So now that I commute to work and live in a house that only allows cats, there was an obvious choice: cats.

And, if I'm honest, I really love cats in their own right. But I love dogs, too! I think they have individual and marvellous merits. For example:

Dogs: Show complete love and loyalty all the time, even if you haven't asked for it.
Cats: Really don't. But when you get the unexpected snuggle, you do appreciate it more.

Dogs: Can be trained to come when called.
Cats: Can be trained to come when called, and ignore it when visitors are there.

Dogs: Will always great you with enthusiasm.
Cats: Will greet you with enthusiasm and a pointed look at an empty bowl.

Dogs: Can be very exuberant and active, making you fitter and getting you out of the house.
Cats: Save all the exuberant and active for the middle of the night.

It's really a win-win situation. If I had the appropriate lifestyle, I'd have both, and get the benefits of the enormous loyalty and enthusiasm of the dog alongside the elegant beauty and simmering megalomania of the typical cat (there are exceptions, of course). Surely an animal lover is an animal lover no matter what that animal might be? I draw the line at cockroaches, spiders and anything that stings or whose bite can kill, but other than that all companion animals seem like good news to me.

You just have to check out today's Twitter feed on the topic to find out that not everyone agrees, but that there are many examples of people who love and live with both cats and dogs. Are you one of them?

By the way, the image is my husband's Opie-esque rendering of our younger kitten, seven-month-old Casper. Not that we're cat bores or anything.

Oh, and, of course, a quick reminder. If you are thinking of getting a pet for your household, cat or dog, please consider rehoming. There are thousands of animals out there just looking for the perfect home.

How a Twitter joke can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on...*

Several interesting things have been happening in the Twitterverse during the course of the day. No, I don't mean the persistent crashing under the sheer weight of tweets about Obama's phenomenal inauguration. I mean the speed with which information - and mis-information - can spread when you're not completely Twitter-savvy and there's a recession knocking at the door.

While @dogstrust was happily gathering daft pictures of business cards, ice scrapers and, erm, lobsters to prove that people really are who they say they are, one busy Twitterer was cracking a joke. In two separate updates, they posted:

Have you heard that Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is going into administration?

They're calling in the Retrievers

Boom boom! Unfortunately, well-meaning supporters quickly copied the first sentence and spread it around their followers, missing the punchline. Seeing a potentially worrying case of Chinese whispers developing, we gave the Battersea communications department and ring, and they confirmed that big name journalists, publications and even their own staff are flooding them with concerned calls and emails.

So, just to make sure the message is completely clear, this is from a member of the Comms team at Battersea:

This is an online joke – Battersea has NOT gone into administration, or called in the RETRIEVERS (a breed of dog!), and has not gone bankCRUFT (the famous dog show!)…

So there you have it!

*borrowed from Terry Pratchett

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!

Man saves dog from shark attack

I've heard plenty of stories about a dog saving a person from a scary situation, but when our Twitter friend @pigsonthewing pointed me at this story I had to write about the role reversal.

This time it was man saves dog - more accurately man saves 14lb Rat Terrier from five foot shark...

The Floridian sea monster managed to get almost the entire dog in its mouth but Greg LeNoir wasn't giving up on man's best friend. He yelled, balled up his fists and jumped into the water, hitting the shark in the back until it let go of little Jake.

Thankfully, although he suffered some bite wounds, Jake was not critically injured and is recovering well. Brave Greg escaped back to shore safely too.

You can watch a video (from which the screenshot is taken) about it on Eyewitness News.

Dogs Trust goes blogging...

Hello, and welcome to the first Dogs Trust blog post at Blogger!

We've been busy little social bees of late, networking furiously on behalf of our wonderful dogs and Centre staff on Facebook, MySpace, bebo, Twitter and Flickr. In fact, you can see our Flickr feed in the Slideshow right here.

We'd love you to come and visit us on any of those sites or add this blog to your RSS feeds. We'll be discussing the latest doggy news as well as Dogs Trust updates and appeals, information about particular breeds and more.

If you've just found us while looking to sponsor a dog or make a donation, follow those links to do so. Now you can even give the gift of Dogs Trust support to a friend through our Facebook application, which gives them a virtual badge for their profile for a whole month.

As editor of our social networking world, I look forward to hearing from you.