Opening of the new PAWS Kennel Facility
Di Butlin from PAWS Opening Speech:
Good evening everyone
Thank you for being here at the opening of the PAWS kennel facility. A special word of welcome to His Worship, the Mayor, Memory Booysen and Councillors Elaine Paulse and Wayne Craig who have fitted this function in between two other meetings.
All of you are here because you have made this building possible and huge thank you’s have to go to everyone who contributed whether in a large or small way. A board has been put up so the public can see what you have done for us.
Thank you’s must be made to the following:
- To the donors of materials, we are so grateful to you for this and for helping to keep our costs down.
- To all who made monetary contributions for kennels, look what you have achieved.
- To Paul Scheepers for the plans, David Friedman for surveying and Shaun McMillan for the original surveying for the land rented from the municipality.
- To the contractors who helped us with cupboards, plumbing, electricity, grassing etc at very good rates or at no cost to us.
- The paws premises project committee who raised the money for this project starting with Len and Mandy Freeman at the helm and ending with Arthur and Toy. Toy and her team raised almost a million rand over the years and I’m sure most of you will remember some of the magnificent functions which they organised.
- Arthur for the use of his land and for the help with the building and Charles Mills who was the project manager.
- To the CXpress, Whats New, Bitou News, Knysna Plett Herald and ShowMe Plett for always allowing us space in their papers or websites.
- To the municipality for fast tracking planning permissions, electrical and water connections and for their support and guidance with problems.
- To the vets from all four practices who have supported us in our endeavours to get to the point we are at for doing work for us at welfare rates.
- To Nuweplaas Kennels for keeping our dogs over the past year, to Shelly Resnik for fostering our cats and to numerous others who have fostered puppies and dogs for us. I see Sue Scheepers and Mandy Hammond here, both fostered newborn puppies for us over the Christmas period.
- To the paws management committee who are all volunteers and a tremendous support team for me. This includes past members of this committee who still help whenever possible.
- To Tracy, our kennel manager, and Robert, our inspector, who are thrilled to be working from the new kennels. And who have done a great deal of work getting the kennels and cattery into shape.
- To Woolworths, The Deli Shop, Picardi, Robberg Seafood Safari and Friends for food etc for this evening.
- And lastly to Jill and Mike Mouat who have been instrumental in overseeing this project.
PAWS was started in 2002 after a few of us who sat on the Knysna animal welfare committee (and also did most of their fundraising) realised that the area KAWS was covering was so huge that it could not be done effectively. We started in a small way doing primary health care, dipping and deworming. We have had many years of trying to get to the point we are at today, with problems of unusable land, threats of violence, theft and destruction of our property etc so we are thrilled to now have somewhere from which to work and for the housing of all our strays.
We would love you to take a paws pamphlet and also to let us have your e-mail addresses so we can keep you all informed of functions, spay clinics etc. We also have a website and Facebook page – see the pamphlet for details.
Thank you all for your contributions to the realisation of a dream for paws.
Cllr Paulse would you please bless this building and then his worship, the mayor will open the building.
Thank you