A busy week for some of the Education and Training Team!

Carole, Eamonn, Julie and Ace had a busy few days this week.

We were very pleased to be invited to The Grammar School, Junior, on Wednesday and Friday to join each year group’s assembly.

Wednesday and Friday saw us delivering our Be A Tree presentation where we Spoke to the children about staying safe around their own dogs, friends and relatives’ dogs and also dogs they don’t know.  It was amazing how many of the children have at least one dog of their own and so we were able to relate our presentation to the children’s own experiences.  We explained how they can assess how a dog is feeling, by recognising signs a dog may perform which shows his discomfort at being approached or interacted with, how to approach a dog and to know when to walk away.

We went on to talk about kindness to all animals and that positive training and general care methods are important to a dog and that they can be great fun which children, safely supervised, can be involved in. Ace and Carole performed some great and useful tricks and demonstrated how the children could achieve a couple of those moves with their own dogs. Ace was most definitely the star of the show!

The children had some very sensible and important questions and they all listened attentively – possibly because they had been told that Ace only came out for good, quiet children!  Children and teachers alike were so welcoming and we all enjoyed our visits there.  We are also very grateful for the School’s kind donation made to CyDRA.

On Thursday Carole and Julie had been invited to join BARC at an assembly at St John’s School in Episkopi.  The theme of the assembly was how to help stray animals.  We talked about our work and how they children should deal with finding a stray dog, various ideas for fundraising and how they can help to improve the plight of stray animals.

Again the pupils listened very attentively, but we have to admit that again the show was stolen by Chloe, a beautiful stray dog currently living in the BARC shelter waiting for her new home!

We were very grateful for the opportunity to visit St John’s and it is great to know that the pupils are concerned about the welfare of animals, as they picked the subject of the assembly themselves.  We look forward to working together with BARC on other occasions.

On Tuesday Barbara and Carole were invited to the Limassol Ladies’ Club coffee morning to speak about their work for CyDRA.  Barbara spoke about fostering and adopting and all that ensues and Carole spoke about the education program of in house training for dogs and volunteers in rescue and also that aimed at the wider community regarding animal welfare.  This was a very positive morning for us and we are grateful for offers of help from new volunteers and also the kind donation made to CyDRA by the Club members.