The Greyhound Lifeline Team

Marie Harris has been with Greyhound Lifeline from the start in May 2007. She orchestrated the move to our own premises in January 2008 and then ran the original, smaller scale homing kennel with just a skeleton crew of volunteers until we became better known and managed to recruit more people to help.

Originally Manager of the Fleet kennels, in 2011 she became co-manager with Jane due to the increase in workload though our success over the years. Marie nowadays looks after the waiting list, does the accounting and ordering of goods, web site updates and she is an administrator for Lifeline’s Facebook page, she also does occasional home checks, attends/organises events and is greyhound taxi for some vet trips.

Marie does regular kennel shifts and oversees the other breeds assessment for kennel residents. She works part -time in paid employment and is still raising the youngest of 4 children (currently teenage). Marie has 3 greyhounds of her own at home plus and a selection of foster dogs from time to time.

Marie adopted her first greyhound in 2003, but prior to that she had several years of other breed dog experience.

Jane Pilcher has been with Greyhound Lifeline since March 2008. Jane became co-manager of Greyhound Lifeline in 2011 and she now works with Marie to keep Lifeline running smoothly.

Jane takes homing enquiries, organises home checks and does them herself too, she oversees volunteer recruitment and works to raise good publicity and interest in greyhound adoption.

Jane organises events, publicity and represents us at shows etc. She works kennel shifts and also regularly does veterinary transport for us too. She is an administrator for Lifeline’s Facebook page and was instrumental in the set up of our Facebook page.

Jane is raising her family and looking after her own 4 dogs (2 greyhounds, a Saluki and a Patterdale Terrier) plus on occasion Jane helps with fostering needy greyhounds.

Jane has been a greyhound owner since 2008, but has many years of sighthound and other breed experience prior to that.

Carol Cox joined us in 2007, initially as a home checker and then when we moved to our own premises Carol joined the small, original team, to assist with the running a skeleton staff homing kennel.

Nowadays Carol still does a regular day shift at the kennels, but she has also become more involved over time and is now a great asset to us. She helps with fund raising and events, has recently been busy knitting too to create a new line of greyhound wear (details to follow soon). Carol ventured into fostering greyhounds once, but that didn’t last too long as Zara was adopted very soon after becoming a foster dog.

Carol does many home checks and now shares responsibility for homing enquiries with Jane. Carol deals with viewings, homing’s and new dogs arriving. She adopted her first greyhound in 2001, but prior to that she had many years of general dog experience through owning other breeds.

Carol works part-time in paid employment, she has raised her family and now has 3 greyhounds of her own plus a “part -time” family owned mixed breed dog to care for several days a week. Carol is an administrator for our Facebook page.

Lucy
Lucy joined us as a dog walker in April 2009. From there she became a kennel hand in August of 2009 and not too long after that she ventured into her first foster mother role in January 2010.

Lucy took to fostering greyhounds rather well and has since seen a series of foster dogs going through her home until she finally succumbed and joined our now (almost) famous Club FF. Otherwise knows as the Failed Fostererers Club. There are quite a few of us who now have membership of this club. Lucy however has to have the credit for being able to hold out the longest.

Nowadays Lucy is pivotal to the running of Lifeline, having recently added cat testing to her role as well. She is always willing to go a step further and involves herself in what ever needs doing very willingly.

Saara
Saara joined us in 2011 and she has become a great asset. She currently does a regular day shift, has helped with evening feeds and is one we can generally call on at short notice to cover sickness or holidays. Saara does home checks and runs her own fund-raising events which include bric-a-brac sales and stalls at local fairs.

Saara has owned greyhounds since 2001 and then in 2004 she began more actively supporting and re-homing the breed through helping at a different rescue centre. She currently looks after 5 greyhounds of her own.

Saara is retired and has raised her family, she is now also a proud grandmother and our most recent recruit to Club FF.

Paul
Paul joined us in 2010. He has gone from a greyhound novice to an experienced and much valued member of the team in a very short time. He is a quick learner with a keen interest in our work and a genuine love for the dogs.

Paul works full time in paid employment, but he also manages to do 2-3 kennel shifts a week for us on top of his working week!

Paul is a valued home checker and he basically runs the kennels for us on a Sunday – sometimes that could be just the clean, feed and exercise routines, but at other times be may be in charge of viewings or homing’s, accepting new arrivals in etc.

Anne
Anne joined us in 2009. Originally she was a dog walker, but she soon became a regular for day time kennel shifts too.

More recently Anne has been of great help by taking on a more administrative role as well as those manual kennel shifts. She now records and monitors all our vet bills and gets those payments organised, she updates the information about our greyhounds on the main Retired Greyhound Trust web site and she is in charge of record keeping in respect of all our kennel and foster dogs’ regular vaccination and parasite control.

Anne is a full time mother of a young son. She is a relatively new dog owner, but the proud “mum” of Ted the Cocker Spaniel. Anne did adopt a disabled greyhound puppy named Heather from us, but sadly young Heather’s health deteriorated and she passed to Rainbow Bridge in 2011.

Mo adopted Paddee from us in 2009. Living in Southampton she’s not able to help with day to day kennel shifts, but little stops Mo from helping us.

Mo does home checks, collects donated items in her area and delivers it all to us when there’s enough to make the trip worthwhile. Mo is very active and gets great results in the way of publicity and donations. She organises local area events, fund-raisers and most importantly raises awareness in any way she can think of in her local area.

Mo is a foster carer on occasion and she has managed to find homes for those foster dogs herself. She has become Lifeline’s much valued support for the south coast area as she regularly assists adopters with problem solving, doggy day care and general advice. Mo works full-time, but also cares for her own 2 greyhounds and a lurcher.

Mo has recently started organising Meets and Greets for us in the Southampton area.

Lynn
Lynn joined us as a dog walker in October 2008 then September 2009 she became a member of the kennel staff by doing a regular kennel shift. In addition to her shift Lynn also stands in when she can to cover other’s holidays and she’s recently taken on the role of greyhound chauffeur in that she does the majority of the routine vet runs for us. This saves others a huge amount of time and it is very much appreciated.

Lynn has helped with the shopping and stall manning for our Open days. A soft of heart lady she thinks all the greyhounds are wonderful (and of course they are).

Lynn has many years of dog experience, she used to be involved in dog rescue whilst living abroad. She is also kept busy by raising her teenage daughters and looking after her own 2 very elderly dogs.

Sal
Sal is another “behind the scenes” volunteer. She will probably be very surprised to find herself listed on this page!

Sal has been actively helping Mo in the Southampton area since Spring 2010. She assists with the collection of “goodies” for kennel use (duvets, blankets towels etc), helps Mo at events and she is also the creator of our hand made greetings card line. Sal takes her own photographs of our kennel residents and from those she creates wonderful, unique and professional quality greeting cards.

Sal has generated considerable funds for us by selling her hand made cards and she’s an all round keen supporter of our work. Not being local to the kennels, so she is another member of our unpaid staff who “does her bit” from a distance.

Sian
Sian is a relatively new member of our team, having joined us in 2011. She has however proved to be a real asset. She gives up a huge amount of her free time to help cover whatever shifts need filling on top of her regular day shift and 2 night feeds a week.

Sian takes dogs out and about whenever she can which helps them to socialise with unfamiliar breeds. She has helped at shows and events and she’s another valuable all rounder who is an asset to the team.

Geoff and Sue are one of our husband and wife teams and they have been with us from the beginning. They actually helped transport the dogs from our old premises to our current one on New Years Day 2008!

Geoff is fondly known as “Mr Fix-it” as he seems to have become the kennel DIY person. From building beds, raising fences, unblocking drains to putting up new guttering, brickwork and all sorts.

Geoff happily turns his hand to whatever needs doing and if the weather is atrocious (i,e, really snowy with road closures etc) he has also been known to struggle through on foot to help get the dogs fed and cleaned out too!

Geoff and Sue both help out with home checks and they have even traveled as far as Nottingham in their Lifeline T-shirts to represent us at shows.

Sue does a regular evening kennel feed. Helping out in the snow seems to be a family job as Sue too has managed to struggle in and do what needs doing when the snow is on the ground.

Penny and Adrian are our second husband and wife team. They are our biggest fund-raisers overall as both of them make the home made preserves, pickles and cakes that they sell at shows and events to raise funds for us.

Penny and Adrian also have their own mobile tombola stall another source of fund-raising. Adrian has recently ventured into car boot sales as well.

Penny is a standby homing assistant in that she knows how to do all the appropriate paperwork and is well qualified to advise new adopters about their dogs and any potential teething problems since she has been a sighthound owner for many years.

Ron
Ron joined us as a dog walker in 2008. Technically Ron is still one of our dog walkers, but all of us feel he is part of our extended Lifeline family and so we are honoured to include him on this page as staff.

Ron has a lifetime’s experience of greyhounds. He has worked with them, raced them, bred them and he currently shares his life with Cindy a brindle greyhound girl who he bred. Cindy had an accident and broke a leg, making her unfit for racing so Ron took her home with him and she’s been there ever since curled up next to him at bed time.

Ron had his 82nd birthday in September 2011, he is one of our most dedicated volunteers, he walks our dogs six days a week and he is absolutely amazing for his age.

His ambition – to walk for us until he’s 100!

Kev Jaques
Kev started coming to Greyhound Lifeline during the summer of 2010 to help walk the dogs and to get to know the breed. By September 2010 he, his wife Debbie and daughter Jennifer welcomed the ultimate lazy boy of greyhounds, Clive into their home.

Clive the greyhound has since managed to persuade his family that greyhounds deserve all the help they can get and subsequently “dad” (Kev) has designed the web site you are looking at now!

Kev has been extremely generous, web sites are not cheap to set up and they are very time consuming to create, but Kev has offered all this voluntarily and free of charge to help the dogs that he loves. He is a very skilled web site designer and we recommend him to anyone looking to set up a web site (don’t expect a freebie though, he has to make enough to feed Clive and the human family too).

This new and updated site, with lots of additional features really will help improve awareness of our dogs which in turn will lead to many more home offers for them.

Our staff work for the dogs in a variety of different ways.

Kev’s way is out of the public’s view, but very valuable none the less. Kev has more recently become a foster carer to a second greyhound and all this goes on while Kev also works at his paid sites/projects at home.

Kate
Kate joined us as staff in early 2011. She adopted Marge from us in 2008 as a companion to her existing dog.

Kate is the daughter of one of our regular dog walkers and she approached us to see if there was anything she could do to help out. Naturally we jumped at the opportunity and Kate now tends to work alternate Saturday day shifts. She is a very fit lady being a keen runner.

In October 2011 Kate ran her first half marathon and all funds raised through sponsorship were donated to the Retired Greyhound Trust.

Kate works full-time in paid employment and looks after her own two dogs as well.

Milly Kent
Milly joined us as kennel staff in early 2011. She is at university in Nottingham, but she can be found during university holiday time working Sundays with her uncle, Paul. Initially a greyhound novice, like her uncle she has learned much in a short time and she has proved of great help to us.

Sarah Jane is a very new recruit having only joined us in September 2011. She helps out by doing a regular night feed. Sarah Jane works full time in paid employment, but she’s already recruited a new volunteer – her husband!

Carolynn is a recent addition to our team, having only joined us in September 2011. She does an early morning kennel shift before heading off to her paid job.

Carolyn works full time and also looks after her own Collie and Greyhounds dogs at home. She is raising a teenage family.

Emily
Emily is another recent addition to our team. She first joined us in 2011 on a work experience placement from Merrist Wood College. She is now is a regular team member and does one morning a week for us as a regular shift plus she’ll stand in during college holidays and help out if there are shifts needing cover.