Pet Service at our Local Church

This afternoon we attended the Pet Service at our church. When it was being planned, my hubby said we must take Lily and Ruby but at first I was reluctant to agree to this, thinking the experience would be too frightening for them and I didn’t want to add stress to their happy little lives, but eventually he persuaded me, and as it turned out, they were pretty relaxed!

They have had lots of visits and are used to people, and are remarkably unfazed at the vet’s. Several people from the church have seen them, but for the others it was a lovely opportunity for them to meet our two girlies for the first time, and they were universally admired!

The service was short, and consisted of a hymn or two, a reading (which I did, from the Book of Genesis, the account of the creation of the animals and mankind on the same day, and how God saw that it was “very good”), some prayers, and a lovely talk by a representative from our local Animals in Distress charity.

Here are our two babies enjoying their first visit to church!

Amelia, who was responsible for inviting us all to the service, and who belongs to one of the churchwardens. We had heard so much about her, and it was lovely to meet her at last. I stroked her through the bars of her basket and she rubbed her ears against my hand and purred and purred!

Cats were outnumbered by dogs.

 

One very special dog was in attendance, helping her owner.

The lady from Animals in Distress giving her talk.

She told us all about the puppies who had been in the local news recently. Someone came to them with a cardboard box that they had found abandoned, containing six tiny puppies, clearly only about 24 hours old. The staff at Animals in Distress fed and cared for these tiny babies around the clock, bottle feeding them. All but one have survived, and they are all now going to their new forever homes. How can anyone be so cruel as to abandon these defenceless creatures in this way? All they had to do was to hand in the box to Animals in Distress or one of the other rescue centres – the staff receive all animals in a totally non-judgemental way, and all they would have asked was the whereabouts and welfare of the mother.

An offering was taken up for the work of this charity.

This young lady had lots of photos of the puppies which were handed around afterwards when we all gathered at the back of the church for tea and cakes.

This was such a lovely celebration of our beloved pets. As we often see when we go out, when dog walkers talk to each other and to other walkers – animals bring people together. Everyone there had such special relationships with their fur babies, and were proud to show them off and introduce them by name for a blessing. Such a happy afternoon!

Our two little darlings survived their first outing to somewhere other than the vet’s very well indeed, and they were very quiet and well-behaved throughout. I am sure it helped that they were both together, keeping each other company. We had a few tears in the car on the way home and they got a bit cold going to and from the car because there was a very cold wind today, but once they were home again, they soon snuggled up together and got nice and warm again before it was time for their supper. We were very proud of them for behaving so well!