I have been wanting to write this for a long while so here we go.
The perception of Tia is that we have lots of staff and lots of money. We have neither.
The reality is that we are hanging on by a thread. We have two members of staff on the yard, it was a very welcome surprise when Joshua who worked for us in Doncaster moved up, the lovely Kaela who frankly should be a super model not shoveling horse poo. Shannon and Ria in the kennels who have been here almost from the beginning who adore the dogs. Karen and our fabulous Emma at Pickering, Emma goes above and beyond running the online shop and Ebay in her own time as well as helping Jess out with the stalls. Josh in Doncaster who runs the office, sponsor scheme, website, web shop and everything else…he is brilliant.
And of course Bob.
Over the past year Bob has had only 4 days off. I don’t mean 37.5 hours a week with days off and holidays, i mean 4 days off.
He has worked 362 last year putting in at least 11 hours every day. He does however only get paid for 37.5 hours a week.
We are dead on our feet and we need help. We can’t afford to pay anymore staff, and with everything set to rise again i honestly don’t know what the future of Tia is. So I’m asking for help. We need people to come and have a free holiday in the Scottish Highlands, we have a cottage that sleeps four, for friends, family & volunteers. The catch? You stay at the farm 2 nights a week and look after the animals once the staff have left for the day. There won’t be a massive amount to do, just suppers for the dogs and check in on the rest of the animals. We won’t be far away if needed, but we seriously need some time off, even a couple of nights a month. We need some rest..