CHARITY
When Lady Bathurst found out that service dogs and horses lose all funding for veterinary needs once they retire, she set up a charity to take care of them
Lady Bathurst wasn’t expecting to come home with a puppy. As founder of a charity for retired service animals, she was visiting a police dog section. From a litter of ten, the eight-week-old Labrador was for sale.
As if detecting that this was a countess with plenty of land and a collection of plush dog beds, the pup followed her around. ‘She did rather choose me,’ Lady Bathurst says fondly, watching her new charge play in the driveway.
We are drinking tea in the airy kitchen of Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire, a vast 3,000 acre-estate with a labyrinthine mansion. Lady Bathurst, 58, lives here with her husband, the 9th Earl Bathurst, their four spaniels, and the young Labrador who is getting settled, having only arrived the night before my visit. A name has been thoughtfully chosen: Copper, after her police origins and the fox-red colour she will grow into.
While Copper has charmed her way into the aristocracy, her siblings back in the police force have a different lifestyle in store. They will join the ranks of around 2,500 police dogs that work across the UK. Once allocated to a handler, they will be trained in disciplines such as tracking missing people, hunting down suspects, or sniffing out items including drugs, firearms and explosives. It’s work that can be dangerous and physically demanding. But when they retire, after eight to ten years of service, they will lose all financial support from the state for kennelling, food and, most importantly, veterinary care.
This is unfortunate, says Lady Bathurst, a life long animal lover raised in Dorset who first discovered the injustice when serving as High Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 2016. To look after retired service animals, she founded the National Foundation for Retired Service Animals (NFRSA) in 2022. The charity helps fund the welfare of dogs and horses that have worked in the police, fire and rescue, prison, and border force services. Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is patron, and it boasts a stable of high-profile ambassadors, including actor Minnie Driver, TV ‘dragon’ Deborah Meaden and presenter Carol Vorderman.
‘These animals spend most of their lives keeping us all safe,’ says Lady Bathurst. ‘I feel as though it is our duty to acknowledge what they’ve done and thank them for their service.’ The NFRSA’s mission is to ‘protect our protectors’, as its pithy strapline puts it, by paying for medical needs that might arise in their twilight years.
