DOG

[Carruthers]

Animal charity Blue Cross has started to fundraise using dogs that wear coats that handle contactless donations from mobile phones.

The first dogs to join the Tap Dogs team are Smudge the golden Labrador; Maverick the border collie; Cherry the lurcher, Ralph the old English sheepdog cross and Rosie the chocolate Labrador.
They are helping to fundraise at the charity’s public events across the country. Their contactless devices accept donations of £2.

A Blue Cross staff member said:

“Using a dog coat, we’ve sewn a pocket into it that holds the contactless payment device. Each time we tap the donation device it gives a £2 payment to Blue Cross”.

The dogs have worn coats before and the device only makes a small bleep so the charity is confident that the activity will not distress the dogs.

The staff member added:

“We really like the idea of our events dogs that are lucky and loved in their homes to help dogs and other pets that are less fortunate.
So hopefully members of the public will come along and pat our dogs and tap to make a donation to Blue Cross”.

All of the Tap Dogs are behaviour-assessed Blue Cross event dogs, owned by volunteers.
They regularly visit events and schools to raise awareness of many different aspects of pet welfare but they have never before had the chance to play such a direct role in helping the charity raise funds.

Blue Cross claims that its Tap Dogs are “the world’s first canine fundraisers”.

The technology used to take contactless payment is PayPal Here. The device can only be activated by the volunteers and will only work when the chosen payment card is pressed up against the card reader; chip and pin, and swipe options are available, and volunteers can also provide receipts and issue refunds if required.

Link.

BBC Report

Charities in the UK have taken a bit of a battering in recent years as a number seem to have lost their way.
Many seem to be big businesses rather than charitable institutions and Chief Executives are often paid extremely generous salaries.
Fund raising can be aggressive to say the least and unfortunately good, well run organisations are suffering from public disillusionment with the guilty parties.
Drumming up financial support is a continual battle and I hope that this initiative is successful.
Who can resist a pleading look from a Labrador or Border Collie?

[DanaC]

When I was raising money for the LAA I came across some horror stories of unscrupulous charity activities. I was working for a really good firm that go out of their way to make sure that the good name of the charity on whose behalf they are working is not sullied by shady practice or pushiness. But, I know from colleagues who'd worked elsewhere in the sector that this was quite unusual. Like, for instance, we were always told, not to ask more than three times, and don't pursue thatmany times if you got the impression the potential donor was getting annoyed. We were absolutely not to pursue if we had any suspicion that we were dealing with someone vulnerable. And if we'd made a call and someone had gone for it on a monthly direct debit donation, but we were concerned that there was something off kilter - like maybe that person had some form of mild dementia, then we were to tell our team leader straight away and they'd pull the call and listen to it. I had one like that - the guy was very willing and gave me al his details, but there was definitely something not right, so I told my team leader, and she listened to it, agreed with me and they cancelled the order. They sent details to the charity for them to write to the donor if they wanted to, but it never went through as a direct debit, and we removed the name from out call list.

I had another call where the lady seemed totally fine, really chirpy and friendly and as soon as I said where I was calling from, she said, 'oh yes! yes, love, I'll help' but when it came to her bank details she started to get a little confused about what was or was not a sort code or account number and said her daughter usually deals with all that. That was that - I thanked her and said I'd call some other time when her daughter was about and we took her name off the system

[xoxoxoBruce]

Very clever.

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[classicman]

puppy teeth

[xoxoxoBruce]

There's dog people, then there's DOG people.

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Little Boy Sneaks Into Neighbor's Garage to Hug Their Dog

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Stella knows how to dog:

[Carruthers]

"So God Made A Dog"

God's particular gift to me, my visiting Labradog, is snoring at my side as I type.
He's now thirteen and age has caught up with him over the last year or so.
I hope that he can continue to enjoy life for a good while yet.
You do miss them when they go.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The lick of death.

[BigV]

Yikes, scary. But 13 cases a year don't warrant any kind of panic.

[xoxoxoBruce]

No, it doesn't, but it's flag for vulnerable people to be careful of French kissing dogs and cats. I sent that link to one guy who told me every time he kisses his dogs they get sick.