Meet The Faces Behind The Rescue Series Pt2

Nicola, Our Full Kit Wanker

Next up in our Meet the Faces Behind the Rescue series is Nicola.

Nic to us.

Our Chair of Trustees. The big boss. The boss’s boss. And their boss too.

Basically, if there’s a boss, she’s probably their fucking boss.

She’s also known as the Full Kit Wanker.

And before anyone starts wondering what sort of charity they’ve stumbled across, there’s a story behind that.

Not a particularly dignified one, but a story nonetheless.

The Full Kit Wanker Incident

When we first met Nic, she got absolutely steaming and decided the evening needed a charity running race in the garden.

As you do.

Now, most people would have had a few drinks, cheered everyone on and perhaps made a tit of themselves in a relatively normal way.

Not Nic.

She got herself into her full running gear. Proper full kit wanker attire.

And off she went.

I can’t remember who won the race, but I can tell you who ended up on the floor rolling in dog shit.

Our future Chair of Trustees.

Fucking marvellous.

So that’s how she got her nickname, and unfortunately for Nic, it’s going absolutely nowhere.

Some charities have a Chair who attends formal dinners and makes lovely speeches.

We’ve got one who got pissed, dressed for the Olympics and rolled in dog shit in the garden.

Wouldn’t swap her, mind.

The Big Boss and the Brains Behind the Wheel

Joking aside, Nic is our Chair of Trustees, and she’s at the heart of pretty much everything we do at CWF.

She’s the brains behind the wheel.

Which is handy, because the rest of us are occasionally running on caffeine, bad language and blind fucking hope.

Running a rescue like ours isn’t straightforward. There are difficult decisions, medical emergencies, dogs with complicated needs and about seventeen things going wrong just as you’ve finally sat down with a brew.

Nic is the person you want in your corner when it all kicks off.

Especially when it’s medical.

Got a question about a dog’s health?

Nic.

Something doesn’t look right?

Nic.

Need someone who can get their head around a complicated medical situation while everyone else is wondering what the fuck to do next?

Our Nic.

And don’t get me wrong, she takes her fair share of spice too. She’s not afraid of a dog with a few opinions and a working set of teeth.

But medical?

That’s where this woman really comes into her own.

We all have our strengths at CWF, and Nic’s ability to care for dogs with complex medical needs is something else entirely.

Seven Dogs, a Teenager and Apparently No Need for Sleep

Before we even get into the rescue dogs, can we just discuss what this woman has going on in her own life?

A full-time job.

A teenager to look after.

And seven dogs of her own.

Seven fucking dogs.

And no, they’re not seven straightforward dogs who spend their days quietly snoozing and minding their own business.

Allow me to introduce the household.

Neil a Labrador with cerebellar hypoplasia, which affects his coordination. He’s disabled, and Nic makes sure he gets the care and support he needs. He also bullies Lacey even though he isn’t a cockerpoo..

Jasper who Nic rescued and who is scared of his own bloody shadow. He’s also Mollie’s dad and uncle but that’s for another blog..

Mollie also rescued by Nic. A spaniel who, by all accounts, is the relatively normal one. Which in that house is probably quite an achievement.

Jelly who has a cleft lip and brain damage, we have agreed to enter into the the Paralympics we don’t expect her to win, but she’s a strong contender.. She’s been practising the spin for years.

Morris — who Nic adopted from another rescue, he is also always ready for a hand rear he truly believes he is the father of every puppy who enters Nic’s house, he must owe out a hefty amount in child maintenance and his not even 3 years old!

Clive who has a cleft palate and was hand reared by Nic. We’ll come back to him, because what this woman can do with a vulnerable puppy is something else.

And finally, Teddy a German Shepherd whose two brain cells are currently fighting for first place.

Seven dogs. Seven completely different personalities and sets of needs.

At least three of them wouldn’t cope in your average home environment. They need the right setup, understanding and ongoing care. And Nic gives them that.

These aren’t dogs you can just plonk into any household and hope for the best.

Nic has built her life around making sure they have what they need, while also working full-time, raising a teenager and helping run an entire bloody rescue.

So, to recap: full-time job, teenager, seven dogs with their own individual needs, Chair of Trustees and the rescue’s go-to person for medical cases.

I don’t know what the fuck she’s running on, but I’d quite like some.

Although, thinking about it, it’s probably whatever prescription meds Welly was on when she changed her fucking username.

That would explain a lot about this rescue, actually.

Give Her a Dog Who Needs Hand-Rearing and Just Watch Her Go

You will struggle to find someone who can hand-rear a dog and nurse them back to health like this woman can.

And if you do find someone, send them our way. We’re always bloody looking.

Nic hand-reared Clive, and that’s a story worth telling in its own right.

At CWF, we work with dogs with complex medical needs and physical disabilities, including puppies born with cleft palates. Some need intensive care, specialist veterinary input and a level of commitment that most people never see.

And Nic gets properly stuck into that side of rescue.

The feeds. The monitoring. The constant checking. The worry.

The lack of sleep.

It’s not just cuddling puppies and taking lovely photos for Facebook.

There’s a lot that goes into caring for a vulnerable little dog, and it can be physically and emotionally exhausting.

But once Nic has a dog who needs her, that’s it.

She’s in.

Properly in.

You haven’t seen dedication and determination until you’ve seen this woman twenty cups of tea deep, fag in mouth, running on approximately zero sleep and still cracking on because there’s a dog depending on her.

She’s made of different fucking stuff.

At this point, I’m fairly sure she’s 70% Yorkshire Tea and 30% nicotine.

And somehow, she’s still got the patience to deal with the rest of us.

Which, quite frankly, deserves an award of its own.

Her Bank Account Has Probably Asked for a Restraining Order

And then there’s the money.

Because Nic hasn’t just given this rescue her time, knowledge, home and whatever sleep she might once have enjoyed.

She’s spent a small fucking fortune helping dogs.

Without a doubt.

If a dog needs something and she can help, she’ll find a way. And more often than not, that means putting her own hand in her pocket.

I dread to think what she’s spent over the years.

Actually, no. I don’t want to know. Neither does her bank account.

But we see it.

We see the money, the time, the worry and everything else she puts into these dogs.

And it’s worth saying because people don’t always see what rescue asks of the humans behind it.

It’s not just turning up for a few hours, taking a nice picture with a dog and going home.

It’s the dog you’re still worrying about at two in the morning.

The medical bills.

The difficult decisions.

The feeds that need doing when you’re absolutely knackered.

The dog who needs something, even when you’ve already given everything you’ve got that day.

Nic gives an enormous amount of herself to this rescue.

And we don’t take that lightly.

She’s Got the Biggest Bloody Heart

Now, I appreciate I’ve spent a fair bit of this blog telling you about Nic getting pissed and rolling in dog shit, so this is going to be a bit of a gear change.

But that’s the thing about Nic.

She’s an absolute fucking liability one minute and the person holding everything together the next.

And I mean this when I say it: she’s one of the best humans you could ever hope to meet.

She’s got the biggest heart out of all of us put together.

She’ll put herself last without even thinking about it. She’ll keep going when she’s exhausted. She’ll take on another worry, another problem, another dog who needs help, because if there’s something she can do, she’ll bloody well try.

And she’s there for us too.

Not just as Chair of Trustees.

As Nic.

The person we ring when things go tits up. The person who can make sense of a situation when the rest of us are wondering which fire to put out first.

And the person who’ll tell you straight, whether it’s what you wanted to hear or not.

Which is exactly what we need.

Because the dogs we work with aren’t always straightforward. Some have serious behavioural challenges. Some have complex medical needs or disabilities. Some have very few options left by the time they come to us.

They need people who care, but they also need people who can think clearly, take responsibility and make difficult decisions.

Nic does both.

She’s got the heart, the brains and the sheer bloody determination to back it all up.

Right. I’m Going to Say Something Nice. Don’t Make It Weird.

We take the piss out of Nic.

A lot.

She makes it far too easy, to be fair.

But I hope she knows just how much we all love her.

She’s at the heart of CWF in more ways than I can fit into one blog, and I genuinely don’t know where we’d be without her.

She’s got her own family, her job, her seven dogs and everything else life throws at her, yet she still finds the time and energy to give so much to this rescue.

I don’t know how she does it.

And I don’t think we tell her often enough how much it means.

For every dog she’s hand-reared.

Every medical worry she’s helped us through.

Every hour of sleep she’s sacrificed.

Every penny she’s spent.

Every difficult decision she’s helped make.

And every time she’s kept going when most people would have quite reasonably said, “Fuck this, I’m going to bed.”

Thank you, Nic.

Not just for being our Chair of Trustees, but for being you.

For everything you do for the dogs, for the rescue and for all of us.

You’re one of the best people we know, and the dogs who’ve had you in their corner are bloody lucky.

So are we.

We love you an awful lot, you absolute Full Kit Wanker.

Now please go and have a brew, get some sleep and try not to roll in any more dog shit.

Although let’s be honest, she’ll have the brew and a fag, ignore the sleep and be hand-rearing another puppy before we’ve finished this sentence.