I normally raise money with EDIM for human charities and all of you have helped me raise absolutely thousands over this past 6 years - thank you.

As you know, I have Scout and Scout has brought great love and joy to life but could just as well have ended up in the wrong home with people who are not attuned to the special needs of collies. They're highly intelligent dogs and can have lots of anxieties (Scout is afraid of bin trucks, feet, high viz, water bottles, blackberries and bird bangers!); they need loads of exercise and play and people generally think "Ooh a lovely collie companion, so obedient." before realising any of this. Hence they soon end up abandoned, neglected and sad. Thousands of them.

After I got Scout I realised I'd been duped into buying a farmed pup. I was stupid and blinkered. Scout's mother would have been kept in appalling conditions and made to have litter after litter and have them taken away before they or she was ready. God only knows what would happen to her eventually. By the time I got him (or so I've worked out now) he would have been taken from his mum across country from Wales to East Anglia and put in an outbuilding with loads of other pups, sold with no homecheck or anything (stupid me). Scout was lucky when Rory and I turned up that day, and we were the luckiest people alive. Others would soon have ended up being given to a rescue centre or just being badly understood and abused.

So yes, I'm raising some money to give the masses of abandoned collies some hope for life, so that they can find homes that let them run free in the fields and who understand their funny and endearing love.

I hope you can donate a few pennies, even though it's not for humans this time, there is so much suffering for these poor, beautiful, bright, dogs.

Thank you so much from both of us xx