Rescue Dog Blog

A young man was walking along a beach when he saw a old woman scooping up starfish off the sand and tossing them back into the waves. Curious, he asked what she was doing. The woman replied “When the tide goes out it leaves these starfish stranded on the beach. They will dry up and die before the tide comes back in, so I am throwing them back into the sea where they can live.”

The young man then asked her “But this beach is miles and miles long and there are many thousands of stranded starfish, most will die before you could possibly reach them - do you really think throwing a few back is going to make any difference?”

The woman picked up a starfish and looked at it, then she threw it into the waves. “Made a difference to that one!” she said.

Considering this, the younf guy continued his walk along the beach. After a while he arrived at a place where a river ran into the sea and he turned back inland, walking alongside the bank. He was still pondering the words of the starfish woman when he noticed a group of people wading about in the river trying to catch floating objects and throwing them safely onto the river bank. When he got closer he saw that the people were rescuing puppies which were struggling in the water and floating downstream towards the sea. Though many of the puppies were thrown to safety, many more were being washed out to sea, never to be seen again.

The young man stood there watching for a while, thinking about what the starfish-woman had told him. He knew that the people in the river were making a difference to every siingle puppy they saved, but he thought there might possibly be a way to make a bigger difference. He called out to the people who were fishing out the little dogs. “Have some of you tried to go upstream and maybe stop people tossing them into the river in the first place?”.

The young man had learned an important lesson from the starfish thrower. When you face impossible odds, you do the best you can, however little it seems, even if it means helping just one or two creatures. He had the belief though, that with the help of many people, and a little thought, it may well be possible to make a much bigger difference.
So, this is what Woofy’s Trust is all about. Our ultimate objective is for no healthy dog to be put down, where the only reason is financial. Call us optimistic, but we think that with a half-decent idea, and more importantly a great deal of work by many dedicated people, amazing things can be achieved.

Talking of amazing, I took this picture on the way home from our last visit to Roden before collecting Woofy. An absolutely stunning sunset.