We are taking up the challenge to build on the good work we do at the home, implementing more of the work under the "Open Paw" training program as featured recently on BBC Radio 5 live. Over the course of this year, volunteers, staff and visitors will be playing more of an active role.

Open Paw is a program developed for dogs in rescue centres. It was founded in 2000, Dr Ian Dunbar and his wife, then taken up by rescue shelters in America. In the UK, the National Animal Welfare Trust commenced the program last July in one of its centres, rolling out the program to all four of its locations this year.

The program is to provide shelter dogs with the enrichment, training and social skills they will need to make them more re-homeable and to enable them to successfully settle into life in their new homes

The last of this years dogs to go their forever home is Tiny Tim. Please consider helping the dogs that will arrived with us this year, lost abandoned and affected from their ordeals,

You think it would have stopped.

The first abandoned Christmas puppy was brought into the home by Knowsley Council Dog Wardens at 13:10 today. Collected from Simonswood from the finder who picked her up lost and shivering in the cold.

Paul Dunne the centre manager said the she has not been microchipped and that has been an offence since April this year, especially breeders selling pups with no chip. This means that not only can we not trace the owner but the breeder.

We have already begun to become over run with pups and young dogs with ten dogs under a year old found by the dog wardens and brought to the center in the days before Christmas.

Paul Dunne Manager at the center said "its disappointing that in the days leading up to Christmas we had ten dogs all under a year old abandoned onto the streets of Merseyside".