We are not a rescue organisation, all adoptions respectfully go through the rescues we work with. We are simply a family donating our dog facilities and professional resources (trained staff) to do our bit for canine rescue.
Our very special “support pack” are highly social, highly responsive, purely positive and generally amazing dogs. They volunteer their day to give back to homeless dogs in need of some positive social experiences to learn how to dog best.
Pack therapy is dogs helping dogs, and dogs that haven’t had the social opportunities in early life, learning from dogs that have had every social opportunity with professional guidance.
Because of his unique qualifications at dog handling and canine behaviour, all of our dogs look to him as top dog.
This creates a feeling of trust within the pack as they naturally follow Luke. We don’t just drop a shelter dog into our therapy pack though!
As part of their training and rehabilitation we introduce them to social situations over time. Slowly building trust and obedience. This process can take many months.
We are grateful for the support of our community on YouTube and Facebook. Without them, we could not help in the way we do.
Simply watching our videos on YouTube or Facebook and sitting through an ad or two helps a lot.
Please click ‘like’ and ‘follow’ (for Facebook) or ‘subscribe’ (for YouTube) it’s free but it does help us.
We also have a lovely community of Members on YouTube and Supporters on Facebook who’s monthly subscription fee helps with many of the running costs including food and vet bills.
If you’d like to consider joining the, visit our Members section on YouTube.
Once a week on Wednesday’s a full bus of dogs who were previously a part of the DDFT pack, come up to the farm for a day of fun and also help some shelter dogs with socialisation at the same time.
It looks similar. But it’s not. The focus is now on providing positive social opportunities for the shelter dogs NOT on sticking to a full and inflexible schedule of intense activities. Daycare days were a paid service, Therapy Days are now free for the pack, no charge. It’s our gift to them for helping, our commitment to the shelter dogs AND we feel we had to, so that we could alleviate the expectations of a Daycare Day. The old schedule didn’t give us the ability to provide a social program that would benefit all the shelter dogs.
There are two packs frequenting the farm fortnightly. So each week there will be a different pack coming up on a Wednesday. The Therapy Dogs are dogs selected from the DDFT pack. They were carefully selected for their varying traits and temperament to help the shelter dogs. Not every DDFT dog was suitable to help the shelter dogs.
All the other days of the week we are training the shelter dogs and socialising them with our pack, in preparation for Therapy Day and of course life off the farm in hopefully their forever home one day. However, a larger pack with many dogs of different size, breed, age, personality and energy level, gives us the ability to expand their social experiences, increase their desensitisation and set them up for a better chance of success. The Therapy Pack are no ordinary group of dogs, it’s a pack that has been 6 years in training. They’re highly social, very responsive to our training and rules, they work as a pack and follow our lead. They’re very good role models and can help dogs that haven’t been given the social opportunities or guidance in so many ways.
Yes and No. Therapy Days will be guided by where each shelter dog is in their development. Initially, it will be socialisation sessions like this one. Each shelter dog muzzled or not muzzled, on lead or off lead OR not at the level of taking part at all, like Chance today. He’s not going to benefit from the larger pack at this stage, he is better off doing more intimate social sessions and building up again. Down the track, we imagine there will be days that lure coursing will be re-introduced for shelter dogs to participate who are at that high level, if they make it there. But not beforehand. Just the same as “when will their muzzles come off?” … when and if they’re ready. We will always be over cautious on the time a dog wears a muzzle around other dogs. They need to reach a series of high markers in reliability to be granted that trust. Remember Shadow? She wore one for months and months.
We have a dedicated group of members and supporters in our behind the scenes and training academy who pay a monthly subscription for extra videos (to join there is a button to join on our YouTube homepage only visible supposedly from a desktop computer 🤔). But, really a lot of them simply want to support what we’re doing. Their help is the biggest of all and honestly pays for most of the costs. We are very grateful for their support in allowing us to help these dogs that are in our care now, in the past and those in the future. We also earn money from our YouTube channel from watching our videos and watching some adverts now and then. We want to thank you very much for continuing to view and support us. We couldn’t do this without you all.
We can only help a few dogs at a time, but little by little, a little becomes a lot. And that’s only with the help of you all. So a very big thank you from us to you.
And please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, we’ve not ever asked but we would like to as we need it now more than ever. Thank you 🙏