Hi Dave

As I am new to GAL I suppose I have the viewpoint of someone who is looking in from the outside. This is a good place to be if you need to see areas where change can occur.

Obviously we all dream of the day when GAL has its own kennel facility as it will be a lot easier to organise and publicise from a major public base.

In the meantime though I think the main issue is a lack of publicity.
I think unless you actively look for greyhound organisations they aren't top of peoples lists when thinking of animal welfare orgs. such as dogs trust, sspca, rspca, pdsa etc. This in turn leads to a great deal of ignorance about the truth behind the racing industry and the suitability of ex racing greyhound as pets. Since I began thinking of getting involved in greyhound rescue I have been amazed at the number of people who are still unaware of the cruelty that can go on behind racing and people who say 'you can't keep a greyhound as a pet, they need sooo much exercise'.

I briefly attended the xmas gala day (had to leave as friends wee boy was overwhelmed at number of dogs) and if I had not been lurking on the GAL forum I would probably not have known it was happening. I hadn't seen any GAL posters advertising it anywhere that I can remember.

I think maybe that is the main reason for not having much success rehoming any dogs from the show.
Everyone who attended was already a member!

Finance is obviously a major issue where publicity is concerned and perhaps other options could be explored to get some free ad space.

Hope this is useful

Goodness, Dawn - are you a dark horse, or what?

Anyway, I agree with Jenny, that publicity is the key! I know that GAL has had radio coverage in the past. But couldn't local radio, like Radio Clyde, Radio Forth or whatever be used to promote forthcoming GAL events, like the Strathclyde Park Walk, the beach walks, Awareness Days and the like? I don't know what it would cost, though - the money may be better spent on the dogs!

Another interesting point came from Alan (Lulu's and Douglas's Dad) when we were at the can collection in Buchanan St, Glasgow. He said that one of the stands with GAL logo and pictures of some of the dogs and their stories might have drawn even more attention than we got already!

Christine 

LOL! Don't have a bed to speak of, Carole! Vegas has the sofa, Billy and Martin a chair each, so I have to sit here at the computer. Tough life, eh?

Christine

 

Advertising costs just kill us each year, we regularly have an ad in the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times, our smallest ad in there costs £65 for a week and thats at special rates! Usually a couple of times through the year we expand the advertising to the Falkirk Herald, Scotsman and Dundee Courier (these 3 papers also encompass a number of local papers) It's even more expensive to advertise in there..

We did some good work on the GALa and it was widely advertised in the local area plus national radio and press (thanks to a press release we put out) same thing with the Christmas Show, there was ads for that in the Herald and Evening Times plus a big feature in the weekend Hearald entertainement section. I'm kinda sad to hear it may have been missed by a lot of folk, not sure what the answer is to this one...

In terms of more 'local' advertising there's the documents section on this forum where folk can download GAL posters and the like including ones for all our current events, perhaps we should keep reminding folk about that part of the forum??

We also have a large database of 600+ contacts who get emailed about our events and walks, this list includes GAL members and dog owners.

Hmm....any ideas on this or other comments?