The Small Animal Ark
      
 
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Welcome to the home of The Small Animal
Ark. We are a dedicated animal rescue service officially launched on 13th June
2008 for small animals helping people to find homes for pets that they are no
longer able to care for in and around the Lichfield area. It's completely free
and funded completely by donations and sponsorship. I set this up as I have seen a lot of animal rescue centres supporting cats and dogs, but nothing really supporting smaller animals making it hard to help these, often neglected pets find new loving homes. Every animal that comes to us will be cared for, receive any medical treatment they need (including neutering/castration if we have funds available to do it), before we find them suitable new homes. In fact, two of my own family of rabbits came to me in this way! If you have a pet you need to rehome, or are interested in any of the animals we have at the moment who are in need of a new loving home, or if you want to help out as a volunteer or sponsor, please feel free to get in touch. We also have a free discussion forum for all things related to small animals and everyone is welcome! For those of you who want to help promote our work, we have just put a copy of our latest flyer up on the site and you can download a copy here in PDF format so please feel free to print copies off and put them up in any local shop windows, pet stores, vets or anywhere else you can think of! Also, if you would like to donate anything to us directly, please feel free to click on the PayPal donate button on the bottom of any of the pages on the site to make a secure online donation. 28-08-2009 - New Holiday Home Service Launched! Some of you may have already used this with us, but we have now formally launched our new pet holiday home service. If you are planning a short weekend break, or a longer holiday, and you need someone to look after your small animal while you are away then get in touch with us! We will be able to look after your bunnies, piggies, rats, mice and any other small animals for you for a small charge and all proceeds will go directly towards funding the work of the Small Animal Ark! 28-08-2009 - Closure Concerns And Rehoming Plans We have had some financial issues recently that have meant that we have been very close to closing the rescue on a number of instances over the last couple of months. While we have had support in terms of covering costs for food and bedding thanks to Betta Pets in Lichfield, this has only been part of the story. Many animals that come into the rescue need vet treatment before they can be rehomed and this costs money. We have also found that many potential new owners are many times more likely to take on a new pet if they have been neutered than if an animal hasn't been so whenever funds do come in to us, they disappear almost immediately. Naturally, we would love to be able to get every animal neutered as quickly as possible to ensure that they all find new loving homes as quickly as they can but this needs money and our fundraising efforts and donations from those who adopt animals only goes so far. Because of this, we have been pushed to our capacity to take in new animals - financially and physically and we have had to think twice about taking more in. We don't want animals to be long-term residents and we feel that we are now left with no alternative but to ask people for a contribution now when they bring animals to us for rehoming which we can put towards having them neutered or other vets bills as needed. Without this, we may need to consider closing the rescue on a short term basis while we gather funds and that is the last thing we want to do. 14-06-2009 - JUMBLE SALE SUCCESS! We'd like to say a massive thankyou to everyone who came along and supported us with our jumble sale and who helped us raise a fantastic £194.50 for the Ark. We'd like to say a big thankyou to everyone who helped out on the day and made it a big success. 13-06-2009 - JUMBLE SALE IS TODAY!!! If anyone is in Lichfield later today, don't forget to pop into the Halfpenny Hall on George Lane in the City Centre from 2:00 pm and join us for our jumble sale. There will be load of bargains on offer including loads of top branded womens clothes at fantastic prices, books, computer games, videos and DVDs, a cake stall and more! Come along and help us raise valueable funds for the Ark. It's free admission so come along! 01-06-2009 - New Flyer / Poster For Fete/Jumble Sale With just a couple of weeks to go before our first anniversary jumble sale / fete, we thought it would be time to give things a big push! We're starting to get posters and flyers out and about in and around the Lichfield area, but if any of you can help and know anywhere that might be able to put a flyer up in a window for us, please feel free to download it here and print one off! 29-04-2009 - Betta Pets Sponsors The Small Animal Ark Betta Pets, one of Lichfield's top pet stores run by Gwen Duckhouse located on Lombard Street in the city centre, has come on board to support The Small Animal Ark and is now a major sponsor of the rescue. They have been supporting the Ark for some time, but are now helping us out every month with a very generous and regular donation of much needed food and bedding. 16-04-2009 - Small Animal Ark Featured In Lichfield Mercury! The Lichfield Mercury ran a feature on us in the edition published today. They spoke to Trish at length about the Ark and the paper has Trish on the cover with one of the rabbits in the rescue and a full page feature inside the paper talking to Trish about the work of the Ark, and the struggle the Ark faces on a day-to-day basis covering it's running costs, and talks about some of the animals that are in at the moment as well. 01-04-2009 - Summer Fete Update The Fete has been relocated and is now being held at Halfpenny Hall, George Lane, Lichfield, WS13 6DX right in the heart of the city centre! It's easy to find and while it doesn't have parking, there are a couple of car parks just over a minute's walk away at the top of the road! 15-03-2009 - First Anniversary Summer Fete / Jumble Sale! To celebrate the first anniversary of the Small Animal Ark, we're going to be holding another fundraising event! It's going to be held at the same venue our last one, the Scout Hall at the Leasowe, Lichfield and will be held on Saturday 13th June, 2009. We will have plenty of stalls selling toys, games, clothes, books, CDs, videos and all sorts of other stuff. Refreshments will be available, face painting and more! We're obviously after any donations so if you can help, please email us. We'll have some flyers available for downloading soon from the site so once they are feel free to spread the word! We hope you can all make it! 18-01-2009 - Getting Connected To help promote the Ark more, if you don't already know, we've now got pages set up on Facebook and MySpace! Feel free to pop over and join! 31-12-2008 - Holiday Home Service! We're now running a new service for anyone who is looking for somewhere to board your pets while you go on holiday. We will take in your small animals and look after them for a small charge for anything from a few days up to a few weeks to help us raise funds for the Ark. We will take in any pet as long as it is one that we usually cater for here at the Ark - rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rats, and mice. If you want to know more, just email us here. 31-12-2008 - Website Update The site has been quiet for a little while so we thought it was time for a bit of an update to see in the New Year! 19-10-2008 - Shop Update We've given the shop a bit of an update today adding a great selection of fabulous hand made jewellery that has been donated to help raise funds the Ark. Obviously all of these are one-off pieces so hurry if there are any items that you are interested in. These would make great Christmas gifts so why not treat someone special... 18-10-2008 - Sick People It's astonishing how sick some people can be. To help raise funds for the Ark, I had a collection box in Betta Pets in Lichfield for some time and today (18th October) I had a phone call from them to say that someone went into the shop and stole it off the counter. I don't know how much money was in there but there was a fair amount as I hadn't been in and emptied it. Obviously it's been reported to the police but how can someone be so heartless to steal something that is so clearly intended to help animals in need? I just hope that whoever has done this can live with themselves for sinking so low as to do such a thing and that the police catches them before they do this to anyone else. 11-09-2008 - New Arrivals I'm managing to rehome animals all the time now with no less than seven bunnies and a hamster finding new homes over the last couple of weeks and but more still need to find loving new owners. We've just taken in two more rabbits and two guinea pigs and you can find photos and details of most of the animals waiting for new homes in the updated Adopt Us section. Rehoming Open Week - 13th-20th September 2008 Anyone that is interested in giving a rescue animal a home for life tell them about my open week that I'm holding later this monith - you can come look at the animals, hold them (the ones that are ready to be held), ask questions... Tell your neighbours, chat with your friends - maybe someone you know is thinking about getting a pet? All I ask is that you email me to let me know when you are interested in coming along as I will need a rough time so I don't get too many people in in one go. Homes will be checked if anyone wants to home an animal and a minimum donation of £5 is required if you decide to adopt one of the animals we have in, which goes towards food/bedding and running costs of the Ark. Hope to see lots of people during the week! To go with the rehoming, we have also produced a poster that you can download here as a PDF file promoting some of the animals that we have ready for rehoming, If you have the time to download one of these and get them displayed near where you live, we'd be eternally grateful. Small Animal Ark in the Lichfield Gazette For those of you who live in the Lichfield area, look out for the first issue of the Lichfield Gazette - a new local magazine that's being distributed free to around 15,000 homes in the city. They've done an article on the Ark and a feature on me and what I'm doing and why. Check it out if you get a chance! Summer Fete! Thanks to everyone who came along and supported us on Saturday 16th August with our Summer Fete / Jumble Sale. We managed to raise a massive £274.55 in just two hours towards the Ark and it's going to make a massive difference to keep things going and towards a few operations as well. I can't thank all of you enough and everyone who came along and helped out on the day and everyone who donated things for the stalls. Shop Update Finally, we have just produced a new range of Small Animal Ark keyings that we now have available for sale! These are just £1 each from us in person or £2 inclusive of postage and packing and you can buy these directly from our new online shop! For something a little different, you can also order personalised keyrings if you want any made of your own pets or anything else! Get In Touch If you want to get in touch with me about the work of the Ark or if you have an animal that needs rehoming or if you are interested in adopting one of the animals that is currently in our care, email me here or you can phone me on 0784 7675572 or Rachael on 0790 6136888. Trish x x x Update: If any of you experience problems with the PayPal donations link you may need to adjust your browser cookie settings as they may be preventing the PayPal donation link from working. If it still doesn't work after adjusting the security level of your browser, go to PayPal normally and you can just send any donations directly to our email address - smallanimalark@aol.com |
Site Launched: 13th June 2008 - Updated: 28th August 2009