Seeking one special reader with a love of animals

All creatures great and small come to Forever Friends – from dogs and cats to battery hens and former racehorses.

Today’s column seeks to find one special reader – someone with a few bob and a love of animals. And it is written on behalf of another special person – a remarkable young woman who happens to be my third daughter, Saskia.

Sassy gave up a career in publishing, working for Penguin, initially to fight the cruel racket of puppy farming, but soon widened her focus to defend all sorts of animals. “For the past 13 years I’ve been working 80-100 hours a week and I’m very tired,” she says.

Forever Friends is Saskia’s animal rescue venture, run out of her 100-acre sanctuary in the Yarra Valley. It has grown into one of the largest such organisations in Australia, with she and her 1500 registered volunteers rescuing more than 11,000 of the most vulnerable animals: the homeless, the neglected, the abused, the ill and the old. All creatures great and small – from dogs and cats to battery hens and former racehorses.

Sassy and the team have won honours for their efforts, and being a registered charity with tax deductibility for donors and over 65,000 online friends you’d expect funding to be easy. “But we know times are tough for people and we run on the smell of a tin of dog food, and every dollar is critically stretched.

“Our amazing team works as hard as humanly possible but while we need help from the entire community, we dream of a hands-on philanthropist to help us take FFAR (Forever Friends Animal Rescue) to the next level.

“Hence this campaign to find a paragon who could provide transformational funding to extend FFAR’s lifesaving work.”

Hence this column. I’m shuffling through a pile of FFAR records – horror stories of abused, neglected animals. So many sad stories. Here’s one of a blinded cat. Another of a dog trapped and wounded in wire mesh. And here’s one of a photogenic alpaca FFAR’s rescuers called Alice. A refugee from a Gippsland farm, her owner refused to take her back, only offering to “come over an shoot her”. Contact was made via a friend and Saskia borrowed a horse float.

Alice arrived at the sanctuary a nervous wreck. She was released into a paddock with a few goats and sheep but kept a suspicious distance. For months.

“One day I was in the paddock with two volunteers when suddenly, astonishingly, the shy, untrusting Alice simply trotted over to us and cuddled into Marg, who had never met an alpaca before. From that day on, Alice was a different animal and started welcoming every new visitor. She seemed to love having her photo taken. When Alice recently died, a large group of volunteers gathered to say goodbye.”

As you can see, it’s not your usual sanctuary.

Yes, times are tough. Wars are raging. The drought is back. Ditto bushfires. Cost-of-living pressures are increasing. The Reserve Bank keeps upping interest rates. There is so much competing for your attention – and donation.

But perhaps this column has touched your heart. And perhaps you might be the philanthropist Saskia is looking for – or you’d like to donate? Please contact Richard Dent, chair of Forever Friends, on 0488 756 702 or email [e-mail]

Or me at [e-mail]

The website? www.foreverfriends.org.au