We have just received some very very exciting news for Greyhound Gap as a rescue. Ground breaking news we are extremely proud of and with it comes many many thank yous.

We have been successful in getting funds, with our community partner, Newcastle Borough Council from the Proceeds of Crime Fund run by the Police and Crime commissioner Matthew Ellis. Many thanks to Robin Wiles Partnerships locality officer who has worked with us to secure this funding.

The money nearly £14,000 will fund Greyhound Gaps work on a project called DAASH-IN (Dog Awareness Agility and Handling) - Improving Social Inclusion project. The money will allow us to purchase state of the art agility and dog rehabilitation equipment for Greyhound Gap; secure the fencing and create a new paddock area and also to replace the rotting roof on the storage lock up. We will also be receiving full staff training for all members of staff from suitably qualified persons.  It will be the first scheme of its kind in the community we believe UK wide that will enable us to enhance our work with the community payback offenders to improve the welfare of the dogs, whilst giving valuable training and skills to our service users. The equipment will ultimately become an integral part of the growing facilities offered by Greyhound Gap to its dogs and the wider community.

Last year we applied and were turned down based on the fact not enough evidence was available to prove that the scheme would be beneficial to those we already welcome into the premises via the community payback scheme. That was because there was simply nothing else like it! Not to be out off we reapplied once the already in place programme started to see results. We whole heartedly believe that through agility we will build a better relationship between the dogs and handlers (community payback service users) and in the longrun this will have a positive impact on their impulse control and confidence through patient handling alongside the dogs. Once in place we aim to look to other ways to expand the scheme over the next 2 years, hopefully by inclusion of younger people in the surrounding areas who would also benefit from these skills.

Greyhound Gap aims to continue to build on community relationships and other exciting projects are already being discussed that we hope to implement in future times. We also need to offer thanks to the probation services for their continued support and input during our application, the local community dog wardens for their support and also our local PCSO who agreed to come on board.

The biggest thanks has to go to Marilyn James who handled the completion of the application on our behalf and for being able to understand and articulate our vision. Thank you Marilyn.

We hope to undertake the necessary work to the premises to allow the scheme to come to fruition throughout August and then order equipment and start staff training throughout September before staring to implement the scheme in stages.  We are pretty damn proud and team Gap really DO rock!  Exciting times ahead!