On Sunday (19th June) we packed up Poppi and travelled to hesire for Dogsfest north. Organised by Noel Fitzpatrick (The Supervet) to raise awareness for his charity Humanimal Trust and just a fun day out for all dogs!
We had a great day, Poppi got to meet lots of new friends including a few Bassets! There were lots of great stalls including charities and shopping. We treated Poppi to a new collar and bandana from Ditsy pet, we might get the lead to match aswell from the website! 😀
She also got a free bandana from the Groom Room (groomers part of Vets4pets) so cute!
But more importantly Noel did an amazing talk about his charity and helping humans and animals together. Using the shared information and techniques we can make both animals and our lives better, more info here. He really was amazing and inspiring, (a video of him speaking about his charity is here) and made me think more about the future.
One thing is spoke about was The 3 r’s (Replace, Reduce Refine), which I have learnt about through work. They are kind of ‘guidelines’ regarding animal research
- Replace the use of animals with alternative techniques, or avoid the use of animals altogether.
- Reduce the number of animals used to a minimum, to obtain information from fewer animals or more information from the same number of animals.
- Refine the way experiments are carried out, to make sure animals suffer as little as possible. This includes better housing and improvements to procedures which minimise pain and suffering and/or improve animal welfare.
Noel spoke about his 4th ‘r’ Reciprocity, that animals have never benefited much from animal research and that it is all for us and its time to give that back and work together to create better medicines and treatments for all. It was really really motivating, and its made me want to work with animals even more!
