It’s the first Fundraising Friday of the year and we are thrilled to announce that The Duke of Cornwall Benevolent Fund has kindly awarded us a grant to support our work with children and young people’s well-being.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Hugs Helping Hands project and how to make a referral, please contact our Youth Well-Being Manager, Hazel Ashman, on youthservices@hugsfoundation.org.uk or 07948 404986. Anyone can make a referral and thanks to funders like The Duke of Cornwall Benevolent Fund, many sessions are at a charitable rate or fully funded.
Finally, we have fantastic news here at Hugs – we have the all clear from strangles! We have a massive thank you to say to our incredible founder, Andrew Bowden and the wonderful Directors and staff at Carbonxgen Limited, who despite times being incredibly tough on businesses at the moment, made an incredibly generous donation to pay the vets bill that has come from the strangles outbreak. The outbreak has caused Hugs to have a vets bill equivalent to our annual veterinary costs, despite our amazing vets giving us a significant discount!
This extremely kind and vital donation has supported us hugely, we do not know what we would have done without it, given the stretch on finances already due to the cost of living crisis. We are eternally grateful for Andrew and Carbonxgen’s additional support, what amazingly kind and caring human beings and organisation. We are incredibly lucky to have them onboard in our mission for better animal welfare and human well-being.
Every equine on-site has had a guttural pouch endoscopy (scoped) and blood tests. We are pleased to say that every horse, pony and donkey on-site is clear of the disease and none are carriers. 10% of equines who have had the disease can become a carrier and it can lay dormant for a long time with no symptoms. This is why everything on-site had to have a full guttural pouch scope as this is the only way of checking for carriers.
During the investigations we did find the cause of the infection. One of our Shetlands (Georgie) had very large chondroids in his guttural pouch and so he was the carrier! Georgie arrived at Hugs in December 2021. He had been through our isolation period with no issues and been at Hugs for nearly a year. He displayed no symptoms in all that time, including the daily visual and temperature checks, the danger of carriers! For some unknown reason, he had obviously started shedding and hence the start of our strangles outbreak!
After a big heartfelt discussion with the Hugs team, our vets and other charities; the decision was made, in Georgie’s best interest, for him to go to the amazing Horse Trust charity with his best friend Clifford. The Horse Trust has a lot of experience treating strangles infections and strangles carriers. Being a larger charity, they also have fantastic vets who are onsite meaning he could instantly receive cost effective treatment.
Our Crowdfunder ended on the 1st of December and we are thrilled to announce that we have raised an incredible £9,535! 🎉 Sadly, because we didn’t reach our £20,000 target, we weren’t able to secure the £500 ‘Extra Funding’ pledge BUT we will be able to claim back over £1,000 in Gift Aid. Thanks to all our fantastic supporters we can push through and survive this winter! A big big thank you to everyone who kindly donated and shared to help us, lots of celebrations here and happy rescues! 🤗🦄
We have some incredible news to share with you! 🎉This month, we have had some amazing grants awarded from these fantastic funders to support our youth well-being project, Hugs Helping Hands. With funding so difficult to secure for charities at the moment, this really has been much needed and the team are absolutely thrilled that we can carry on the vital work we are doing to support young people. Thank you so much to these organisations:
🦄£30,000 (£15,000 per year over the next 2 years) from the Garfield Weston Foundation – this is the second time they have kindly funded us PLUS it is our first multi-year funding which is just the best news and achievement!
🦄£15,000 from the Postcode Local Trust (People’s Postcode Lottery) – this is the second time they have funded us which is amazing!
For those who missed Dude’s ITV West Country debut, here it is https://youtu.be/tVkkIyVYGp0! Our Crowdfunder has now reached over £9,000! We have 7 days left to reach our target . Please keep spreading the word and donating, if you are able to. This is the link to donate and share https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-hugs-horses. Thank you for believing in Hugs.
Hugs Crowdfunder is now live. Please donate if you can using the link below and share with your friends, families, colleagues and networks to help us reach our £20,000 target and get us through this winter. Any contribution large or small will be hugely appreciated. Thank you for your kindness and support
