'Shelter life is hard': Helping dogs find their 'forever homes' fulfilling work

Hundreds of dogs are abandoned or surrendered to the Dogwatch shelter in Christchurch each year. Reporter Emily Moorhouse chats with Bridget Paterson about life in the shelter and why she loves her job.

Bridget Paterson pinches herself everyday going to work and said she is doing her "dream job".

• Deafness not holding Suki back

"My job is basically hanging out with dogs and doing what I do for dogs, we’re all dog lovers so it’s a really, really cool place to be."

That place is Bromley’s Dogwatch Sanctuary Trust, an organisation that rescues, retrains and rehomes the city’s unwanted dogs.

Paterson joined the Dogwatch team at the end of March as the general manger when the organisation underwent restructuring due to staff shortages with Covid.

The trust doesn’t receive any funding so relies heavily on volunteers, the Dogwatch Variety Shop in New Brighton and donations from the public.

Paterson has a background in marketing and fundraising, and previously working for Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust before owning a jewellery store in the central city.

However, she closed the store during Covid due to a lack of tourists, and is now responsible for pulling in funding to keep Dogwatch running.

Like the other staff members and volunteers at Dogwatch, Paterson is a dog lover and admitted to becoming attached to the dogs that come through the trust’s doors.

"Everyone’s nuts about dogs here,” she said.

"Pretty much everyone that works here has a dog from here and they also foster them."

Paterson has a rescue dog and cat, both from the SPCA, and said her mother was also a dog lover, so was surrounded by dogs growing up.

Because the organisation is constantly running at full capacity, they often juggle the dogs between 14 kennels at the trust, various foster homes and month-long adoption trials.

"Shelter life is hard on lots of dogs so if they’re dog nervous or don’t do well with other dogs this is a really hard place for them to be, they can get quite stressed, so we work really hard with them on that," Paterson said.

One dog in particular that struggles with stress and noise from other dogs is Stanley, the two-year-old Staffy cross who became an essential member of the admin team.

Stanley gets stressed from the noise of other dogs barking and tries to escape, often hurting himself in the process, so spends time in the office with staff during the day.

"He’s really relaxed there because he’s around people," Paterson said.

The trust gets most of its dogs from council pounds like Waimakariri, Selwyn, Ashburton and the city.

The majority of them are surrendered by owners who can no longer care for them, or they are abandoned and picked up from the side of the road.

Paterson said the hardest part of the job is coming across dogs that have been mistreated and hearing the stories of their past.

Two months ago the trust had two small dogs dumped on the driveway in a crate during a "freezing" night, while another with a broken tail was dumped on the side of the road.

"People do some pretty awful things," she said.

"They’re sad stories ... it’s just disheartening the way some people treat an animal and when you’re an animal lover that’s hard to handle."

However, staff and volunteers work with these dogs to build up their trust again, giving them the chance to show their true character once comfortable.

In fact, most of the dogs at the trust are named after certain traits or characteristics they have.

One dog in particular New Brighton residents will be familiar with was named Trapper, after multiple attempts at trying to catch him while he was living at New Brighton Beach, causing quite the fuss on a Facebook community group.

Paterson said while staff and volunteers form a bond with each dog, they are stoked to see them get adopted into a loving family who looks after them.

"We couldn’t survive without those volunteers, they’re amazing," Paterson said.

The trust has 120 volunteers, with animal behaviourists and a qualified dog trainer in the mix, retraining dogs with traumatic pasts that can make rehoming difficult.

Paterson said some dogs have experienced being hit by things such as a leash, so have developed a fear of leashes that has to be worked through.

"They each have their own little challenges. When we get a dog, we don’t know their full history so we don’t know what we’re dealing with until we get to know them."

Occasionally, when a dog gets adopted it will be returned to the trust if the owners can’t care for it properly, which Paterson said was quite hard.

"We always try to be really kind to people that need to surrender dogs because often it’s a hard thing to do ... so we need to be supportive."

Three-year-old Boss, a Rottweiler cross rescued from the city council pound, is the trust’s longest-stay dog, having spent more than 600 days in the shelter. He is currently undergoing an adoption trial, which staff hope will be a success.

Staff and volunteers tend to stay in contact with people who adopt the dogs, and get sent photos and updates on how they’re doing, even years after the adoption.

"We do tend to have long-term relationships with people and they’ll adopt a dog but then come back to get a second dog," Paterson said.

This year marks 40 years of the trust operating. To celebrate, staff want to build an adventure park for the dogs on the five-acre patch of land at the trust.

The park will be fit with tunnels, obstacle courses, sprinklers, a paddle pool, a sand pit and everything else a dog needs to play with.

There is currently a Givealittle page with a goal to raise $40,000 by the end of the year.

Paterson said they had “a long way to go” with having only raised a little under $3000, but the trust will soon be approaching funders and launching a separate campaign, which she hopes will bring in more donations.

"Shelter life for dogs is quite hard, they don’t get the one-on-one attention they would if they were in a home so something like that, that enables them to be challenged and do different things and just enable them to play, would be fantastic."

• Donate to the adventure park here.