Podcasts about Dogs Trust

Leading charity Dogs Trust says too many renters in Ireland are being forced to make an impossible choice between losing their dog or losing their home because of a lack of dog friendly rentals. To tackle the issue, they've launched a petition to urge the government to change the law and stop allowing blanket bans on pets in tenancy agreements. The number of people contacting Dogs Trust needing to give up their dog because their move to a new home won't allow their four-legged family member has increased by 112% in the last five years. To discuss this further, Alan Morrissey was joined by Communications Manager, Dogs Trust Ireland Phone, Paulina Padlo and Stiofán McGabhann from Clare Animal Welfare. Photo(C): https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=550620869764509&set=a.550620849764511

In this episode Jane Ostler talks to Nick Daniel, former CMO of Dogs Trust and Director of Flying Foxes Consultancy, to explore the unique challenges and strategies in charity marketing. They discuss the importance of brand identity, the competitive landscape of the nonprofit sector, and the growing role of partnerships and influencer marketing. Nick also highlights the challenge charities face in standing out as commercial brands increasingly align themselves with social causes, blurring the lines between corporate and nonprofit impact. As donor behaviours shift and dog ownership trends evolve, he shares insights on how charities can adapt and innovate to stay relevant, offering valuable perspectives for anyone interested in the intersection of marketing, social impact, and the future of charitable giving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we're chatting to Dom Burke, Behaviour Officer at Dogs Trust about the Charity's  advice for dog owners wanting to travel safely and responsibly on trains with their dogs. New research, from Trainline, has found 11% of people in the UK now travel to work with their four-legged friend, rising to 20% among Gen Z. Reasons for this include relaxed attitudes towards dogs in workplaces, the high cost of dog care, and the rise of hybrid working.Two-thirds of people say their dog dictates their travel habits. Almost a quarter (24%) of people now make daily journeys with their dog, with almost half (48%) doing so several times a week.Despite this, many owners admit they don't feel completely confident about how to travel by train with their pets due to a lack of clear guidance. The report has found 55% of dog owners would travel more if they had better advice on how to keep their pets safe and comfortable on a train, with the safety of their dog, fear of annoying other passengers and worries about dog mess among their top concerns.Dogs Trust, in partnership with trainline.com, is offering advice on the key skills to train your dog to make for smooth train travel,  and highlighting why teaching your dog to enjoy the experience covers all the basics for socialising your dog. From polite meeting and greeting  of lots of  different people, settling for the journey, walking to heel, toileting on a cue,  leaving bits of food that might be on the platform, coping with the sights, sounds and smells and much more. Follow Anna on:https://annawebb.co.uk We encourage you to feed your dog raw and believe Paleo Ridge is the best place to start!Produced by Mike Hanson for Pod People Productionshttps://podpeopleproductions.co.uk/ Music by Mike Hanson Cover photo by Rhian Ap Gruffydd @gruffpawtraits Art work by https://jaijo.com

Pete Wicks, host of “For Dogs' Sake” joins Jack, Seann and Producer Sara to discuss his passion for dogs. Pete has Frenchies, Eric & Peggy, and his new TV show is centred around a Dogs Trust rehoming centre, he's a true activist. This is one episode you don't want to miss. Mildred's had a groom, find out how Dolly's avoiding getting muddy in the cold weather and Juniper caught up with her bestie, Daisy the Bassett. We also hear about Jack on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin FM, it turns out Chris is quite the OMD fan. For extra content, including show videos and the best dog reels, make sure you follow us on Instagram; @omdpod, @juniperomd, and subscribe to our YouTube channel: HERE Watch For Dogs' Sake HERE A 'Keep It Light Media' Production Sales, advertising, and general enquiries: hello@keepitlightmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When we're exploring why the New Year triggers thoughts of new interiors and maximising space.We're joined by Gemma Glover, Business Development Director at The Pet Carpenter, talking about the family business that specialises in creating bespoke pet furniture that is tailored to the unique needs of any pet - dogs, cats, rabbits , even tortoises!As a family business the team prides itself on taking an idea and turning it into a reality. Specialising in a new concept of the crate that delivers all the practicality in space saving solutions, perfected with craftsmanship and a love of dogs.We discuss the myth of the crate as being restrictive and being the cause of much anxiety. We chat about a study conduced by Dogs Trust and The Royal Vet College that not only dispels such misconception, but also highlights that crate trained dogs are less likely to show symptoms of separation anxiety.The Pet Carpenter offers uber stylish ,and integrated options that transform a crate into a bedroom concept that's space saving, and designed just for your dog's comfort and well-being.For more information go to their website thepetcarpenter.co.uk or follow on InstagramFor more about Anna go to annawebb.co.ukMusic and production by Mike Hanson for Pod People ProductionsCover art by JaijoCover photo by Rhian Ap Gruffydd at Gruff PawtraitsTo advertise on or sponsor A Dog's Life email: info@theloniouspunkproductions.com

If you've got a dog who is also your bestie, then you've probably already started thinking about how you can include them in your Big Day! There are a few things to consider before making this decision… and then, if you decide to go for it, then we've got some logistics and things to help make this experience really special for your pup. This week's guest - Paula from Dogs Trust: https://www.weddingsonline.ie/suppliers/wedding-favours-dogs-trust-ireland Episode 36, How To Plan A Wedding That's Accessible and Disability-Friendly: https://www.weddingsonline.ie/blog/wedding-wednesdays-how-to-make-your-wedding-accessible-and-disability-friendly-episode-36/ Dog-Friendly Wedding Venues in Ireland: https://www.weddingsonline.ie/blog/our-favourite-dog-friendly-wedding-venues-in-ireland/

Ian and Hannah review the biggest new films and bingeable shows on UK streaming services for the week beginning Friday 10th Jan 2025, including:A talented autistic archivist enters an unpredictable world when detective Bea spots her unique crime-solving skills. Intriguing crime drama Patience stars Laura Fraser and Ella Maisy Purvis on Channel 4.Reality star turned podcaster Pete Wicks meets the four-legged friends that call the UK's leading dog welfare charity, Dogs Trust, home in Pete Wicks: For Dogs' Sake on U.A rookie and a veteran officer patrol duo in Long Beach, California, face the morality of protecting and serving a community in Prime Video series On Call.Featuring behind-the-scenes footage of America's most controversial talk show to expose its scandals, both on and off-camera in Netflix documentary Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, ActionFollow Bingewatch on all major podcast players for your weekly rundown of the best binge-worthy shows across Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and more.Remember to leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser and Goodpods AND you can now show your support and leave a tip for Ian and Hannah.You can also stay in touch with the team via Twitter AND if you like Bingewatch but you're looking for a specific review, check out BITESIZE BINGEWATCH, our sister show making it easier to get the bits you want!If you're a brand interested in sponsorship or collabs, email hello@podcastsbyliam.com and chat to us now!

In this episode, Chantal and Angelique chat to the amazing Chirag Patel. Chirag Patel runs Domesticated Manners and first started by helping dogs and their people in 2004 but has since evolved to now offering assistance to both domestic and wild animals in a wide range of setting internationally. This includes a range of pets in the home, laboratories, zoos, organisations such as The Police, Dogs Trust, Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, British Columbia SPCA and Kong amongst others.  Domesticated Manners has its home base in the London / Essex border although he has consulted with clients and taught workshop/ seminars all over UK, Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Chirag has also started DogStoryTV where he shares free tips, tricks and stories to better your bond with your dog.

Welcome to Your Partner In Success Radio. I'm your host, Denise Griffitts, and today I'm excited to speak with Dogs Trust USA, led by Owen Sharp. Since becoming President in July 2019, Owen has played a crucial role in expanding the organization's efforts and initiatives.The organization continues to work closely with local partners to address pressing issues related to dog welfare both domestically and internationally.Dogs Trust is a prominent dog welfare charity based in the United Kingdom, established over 130 years ago. It is recognized as the largest dog welfare organization in the UK, focusing on improving the lives of dogs through various initiatives, including rehoming, education, and veterinary care.The mission of Dogs Trust is to ensure that every dog can live a happy and healthy life in a loving home. They aim to prevent the suffering of dogs through proactive measures, such as:Rehoming: Finding loving homes for dogs in need.Education: Promoting responsible dog ownership and educating the public about dog welfare.Veterinary Care: Providing medical assistance to dogs, especially those in underprivileged situations.Dogs Trust has also expanded its reach beyond the UK, establishing Dogs Trust USA as an affiliate organization in 2018. This branch focuses on similar goals within the United States, tackling issues such as poorly managed dog populations, poor physical welfare, and deaths caused by rabies. Since its inception, Dogs Trust USA has provided over $1 million in grants to support various rescue organizations and shelters across the country. We appreciate you tuning in to this episode of Your Partner In Success Radio with Host Denise Griffitts. If you enjoyed what you heard, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us reach more listeners and create even better content!Stay ConnectedWebsite: Your Partner In Success RadioEmail: mail@yourofficeontheweb.com

Did you miss out on #IFC2024? Tune in to this week's podcast episode, where we will share some reflections and learnings from attendees and speakers at IFC2024. With Sabrina Nixon, Senior Partnerships Manager at Dogs Trust, Elsbeth De Ridder, Head of Mass Fundraising/ Individual Giving at Save The Children Switzerland, Damian Chapman, Director of Income Generation at Money Advice Trust & Simon Scriver, Co-Founder of Fundraising Everywhere.   Join our list and get your free copy of the L&D Research Report here If you enjoyed this episode, hit follow and turn on notifications to be the first to know when new episodes drop. We can't wait to have you back! And thank you to our friends at JustGiving who make the Fundraising Everywhere Podcast possible.

Dogstrustusa.org Saving Dogs and Fighting Rabies with Dogs Trust USA's Owen Sharp About the Guest(s): Owen Sharp is the Director and President of Dogs Trust USA, appointed in July 2019. With a rich history in leadership roles within the non-profit and healthcare sectors, Sharp previously served as the Global CEO and Executive Director of the Movember Foundation in Culver City, California, and has had an impactful tenure as the CEO of Prostate Cancer UK. A trained nurse from Glasgow, Scotland, Owen is also honored with a doctorate from Glasgow Caledonian University. His passion for animal welfare, particularly dogs, is matched by his personal commitment to animal rescue and advocacy. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages with Owen Sharp, President of Dogs Trust USA, for an insightful discussion about the critical issues facing dog welfare today. Sharp, with his extensive background in leadership and dog welfare, sheds light on the staggering challenges animal shelters face, from overpopulation and economic pressures to the rising abandonment rates following the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation traverses the importance of education and responsible dog ownership as a means to alleviate these issues. Sharp discusses the ambitious goals set by Dogs Trust USA to tackle poorly managed dog populations, improve physical welfare, and address the deaths caused by rabies internationally. Emphasizing the necessity for affordable spay and neuter programs and veterinary care, he urges for a committed community effort to support shelters in the US. By understanding the intricacies of training and matching the right dog to the owner, as well as creating awareness around rabies prevention, these measures promise to enhance dog welfare significantly and save countless lives. Key Takeaways: Dogs Trust USA focuses on the crucial areas of population management, low-cost veterinary care, and rabies prevention to improve dog welfare globally. COVID-19 has significantly increased dog abandonment rates, as many people adopted pets during lockdowns without fully understanding the responsibilities, leading to crowded shelters. Achieving responsible pet ownership starts with selecting the right dog for one's lifestyle and ensuring proper training and socialization. Rabies is a major global health problem, with one person dying from it approximately every 8-9 minutes worldwide. Dogs Trust strives for the total elimination of canine-mediated rabies. Supporting local shelters can be done through donations, volunteering, and fostering dogs, contributing to sustainable solutions in the welfare community. Notable Quotes: "If you have the right knowledge, if you have the right skills, nearly all of those behavioral issues can be avoided." – Owen Sharp "Our ambition is to halve the number of human deaths from rabies in the next five years." – Owen Sharp "It's not just saying, 'I want a dog,' and I want that one that I've seen for whatever reason, be it fashion, or a TV show." – Owen Sharp "We need to educate people about the type of dog that they get." – Owen Sharp "Rabies is 100% preventable—there is a vaccine that exists that you can give to animals." – Owen Sharp

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast. Special Clips from our previous guests:Understanding Sustainability Reporting https://skipthequeue.fm/episodes/polly-bucklandPolly Buckland sat on the client side in a marketing manager role at BMW (UK) Ltd before co-founding The Typeface Group in 2010. She's an ideas person, blending creativity and commercial awareness to get the best outcomes for our clients.The Typeface Group is a B Corp Communications Agency + Design Studio based in North Hampshire. Their mission is to counteract digital chatter by championing authentic and strategic communication. Team TFG work with brilliant minds in business to extract, optimise and amplify their expertise, cutting through content clutter and stimulating saleswhile reducing digital waste at all costs.  The Typeface Group have been B Corp certified since October 2021 and is currently going through recertification. Digital Sustainability and the Elephant in the Room https://skipthequeue.fm/episodes/james-hobbsJames Hobbs is a people-focused technologist with over 15 years experience working in a range of senior software engineering roles with a particular focus on digital sustainability.He is Head of Technology at creative technology studio, aer studios, leading the technology team delivering outstanding work for clients including Dogs Trust, BBC, Historic Royal Palaces, and many others. Prior to joining aer studios, James was Head of Engineering at digital agency Great State, where he led a multi-award-winning software engineering team working with clients including the Royal Navy, Ministry of Defence, Honda Europe, the Scouts, and others.He also has many years experience building and running high-traffic, global e-commerce systems while working at Dyson, where he headed up the global digital technical team. Making Holkham the UK's most pioneering and sustainable rural estatehttps://skipthequeue.fm/episodes/lucy-downing-and-sue-penlingtonLucy Downing - Head of Marketing and Sue Penlington - Sustainability Manager at Holkham Estates.  Transcription:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with visitor attractions. Paul Marden: When consumers are asked if they care about buying environmentally and ethically sustainable products, they overwhelmingly answer yes. A recent study by Nielsen IQ found that 78% of us consumers say that a sustainable lifestyle is important to them. And while attractions have been great at a wide range of initiatives to improve their sustainability, this year's Visitor Attraction Website Survey will show that as a sector, we're lagging behind on digital sustainability. Paul Marden: So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about the learning journey I've been on personally, along with my colleagues at Rubber Cheese, to understand digital sustainability and how to affect real change. Paul Marden: I'll talk about what I've learned from hosting this podcast and how we've started to make real changes to our processes and our client sites to make them more sustainable. Welcome to Skip the queue. I'm your host, Paul Marden. Paul Marden: Back in April, I spoke to Polly Buckland from The Typeface Group about the importance of sustainability reporting. Polly Buckland: There's buckets of research out there as to the relationship between consumer behaviour and sustainability. So McKinsey did a study. “60% of customers actively prioritise purchasing from sustainable businesses.” Capgemini, “77% of customers buy from and remain loyal to brands that show their social responsibility.” I could literally keep quoting stats as to why businesses should take their sustainability goals very seriously and the communication of their sustainability initiatives very seriously, because it's becoming clearer. There was another stat about primarily women making the decisions based on sustainability of a business, and Millennials and Gen Z being sort of high up the list of people that are taking sustainability creds into consideration when they're making a purchase. So, I mean, it's a barrel load of stats that suggest if you don't have your eye on sustainability reporting and communicating your sustainability goals, you perhaps should have. Paul Marden: Of course, many attractions have been blazing a trail on the subject of sustainability for years. Going back in the archives of Skip the Queue to 2021, Kelly spoke to Lucy Downing, the Head of Marketing, and Sue Penlington, the Sustainability Manager for the Holkham Estate. First, let's hear from Kelly and Lucy. Kelly Molson: Lucy, I wondered if you could just give us an overview of Holkham Estates for our listeners that might not be aware of you or visited there themselves. Lucy Downing: So if you sort of picture it, most of the time when you think about stately homes, you picture a stately home with a garden. At Holkham, we are very much a landscape with a stately home. So 25,000 acres. We have a national nature reserve. A beach, b eautiful beach. It's been in Shakespeare in love. If you know the final scenes of Gwyneth Paltrow walking across the sands, that's Holkham, a bsolutely stunning. We're a farm, but at the centre of that, we've also got our 18th century palladian style mansion and that's home to Lord Lady Leicester and their family. They live in the halls. It's a lived in family home. But then we also have all of our visitor facing businesses. Lucy Downing: So we've got the hall, our Holkham stories experience, which is an attraction museum telling us all history and the now and the future of Holkham. Lucy Downing: We've got a high ropes course, cycle hire, boat hire, normally a really buzzing events calendar. We have accommodations. We've got Victoria Inn, which is near the beach. We've also got Pine Woods, which is a holiday park with caravans and lodgers. We have our self catering lodges, which within the park. And then we've got farming, conservation, gamekeeping, land and properties. We've got nearly 300 properties on the estate that are tenanted. A lot of those people work for Holkham, or if not, they work in the local community. We've got forestry and then we've also officiated and it's won lovely awards for the best place to work in the UK. It's a stunning landscape that surrounds it and we've got. I don't know if you've heard of her, but Monica Binnedo, which is global jewellery brand, she's based at Longlands at the offices. Lucy Downing: She decided a few years back to base her whole business there. She got all of her shops around the world, but that's where her business is. And I think she's ahead of the times, ahead of this year. She sort of knew how wonderful it would be to be working, I suppose, and not in a city centre, so I hope that gives you a flavour. But, yeah, I think it's 25,000 acres of beauty, landscapes with a house in the middle and lots of wildlife. Kelly Molson: I mean, it really is one of the most beautiful places and that stretch of the world holds a really special place in our hearts. It's somewhere that we visit very frequently and it's stunningly beautiful. Paul Marden: Later in that episode, Sue shared her insights on their sustainability strategies. Sue Penlington: So we've got three main themes. One is pioneering environmental gain I, which is all about connecting ecosystems and biodiversity and habitats. One is champion low carbon living, which is all about carbon emissions, our impact on construction and housing, our leisure operations. That sort of thing, and farming. And then the last one is the one that we always talk about. Tread lightly, stamp out waste. So that's all about recycling, reducing single use plastics and that sort of thing. So those three themes are what we're running with for 2021. We've got three goals, which are quite ambitious as well. And for me, I just see 2021 as that year of change where we'll make an impact. So we've done quite a lot of talking, and rightly so, and we want to take our visitors on that journey and really start to chip away at those goals. Paul Marden:  Now, let's talk a little bit about the fears around talking about sustainability. I think one of the things that is getting in the way of an open discourse around digital sustainability is fear. We're afraid of being judged by our actions and our intentions. In a recent survey by Unilever of social media influencers, 38% were afraid to openly discuss sustainability for fear of being accused of greenwashing. Again, let's hear from Polly, which is. Polly Buckland: Why, again, that storytelling part of the impact reporting is really important for me, because I will say we are not perfect. These are the things that we know we need to work on, but these are the things we've done better. And that's what I really like. The BCorp BIA assessment and their framework is because it takes you across five categories of measurement, and no one's perfect in any of them, but what it does do is it provides a framework for you to better. Paul Marden: Yes, absolutely. Polly Buckland: And measure yourself against. Yeah, I think if. I think the messaging behind your sustainability is really important. If you're professing to be perfect and you're not, you will get stung, because I think people can see through that. But if you are showing that you're trying to better, I don't think many people could argue with that. Paul Marden: Now, let's rewind a little and talk about my interest in digital sustainability. When I spoke to James Hobbs of the aer studios about digital sustainability back in July, we talked about my ignorance. So my background was at British Airways and I was there for ten years. It really wasn't that hard to spot the fact that environmentally, that we have a challenging problem, because when you stood on the end of Heathrow Runway, you can see what's coming out the back end of a 747 as it takes off. But I don't think I ever quite understood the impact of what I do now and how that's contributing more to CO2 emissions than what I was doing previously, which, yeah, I just don't think there's an awareness of that more broadly. James Hobbs: No, yeah, I'd agree. And it's complicated. Paul Marden: In what way? James Hobbs: I guess it's complicated to quantify the carbon impact of the type of work that we do in the digital industry because I guess there's what we're shipping to end users, which is one thing, but most modern websites and applications and stuff are built on a big tower of cloud services providers and all of their equipment has to be manufactured which has a carbon impact and rare earth metals need to be mined out of the grid. All of that stuff. Theres a big supply chain backing all this stuff and we can influence some of that directly, but a large chunk of it, we cant. So it makes choosing your suppliers quite important. Paul Marden: But in a presentation by my friend Andy Eva-Dale, now CTO of the agency Tangent, he opened my eyes to the impact that the digital sector has on the environment. The Internet consumes 1021 terawatt hours of electricity per year. That's more than the entire United Kingdom. Globally, the average webpage consumes approximately 0.8 grammes of CO2 per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that's 102 kilos of CO2 per year. And as we'll see in a bit, the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey shows this year that the websites in our sector are anything but average. But let's talk about my learning journey. I've used this podcast as a way to learn about the sector and to drill down into sustainability itself. My interviews with Polly and James taught me a lot. It's one of the real benefits of running a podcast. Paul Marden: I can sit and ask people questions that in real life they may not want to talk about. Beginning from absolute first principles. Following the advice from James in the podcast, I've gone and studied the online materials published by the Green Software foundation, including their green software practitioners certificate. Some of that is quite technical, but a lot of what's in there is a real interest to a lot of people. Now let's talk a little bit about what I've learned along that journey. In an interesting conversation with Andy Povey the other day, he talked about people's innate reaction to digital sustainability and that for many people, the move to digital feels sustainable. I'm not printing things out anymore, so it must be sustainable. Of course, all that computation and networking has a massive global impact on greenhouse gas emissions, so not every website is sustainable. Paul Marden: In another conversation I had recently, someone said to me, why does all of this digital sustainability stuff matter? If I host my site on a green hosting server, there's no harmful emissions from the server. But that's only one part of a complex web. The power needed to connect up all the servers in the world and to all of the endpoint devices is immense. Of course, the carbon emitted to generate power varies country by country as well as by time. And that's not really in our control. But we can definitely control the impact our website has on all of that infrastructure. As the web page is in flight over the Internet to somebody's mobile device, the power it uses and consequently the carbon emitted along the way is therefore something that's definitely in our control. Paul Marden: The other source of learning for us this year has been the sustainability elements of the rubber cheese survey of visitor attraction websites. We made sustainability a core theme of this year's survey and we found some really interesting things. 80% of attractions in our survey have got some sort of sustainability policy, which is an amazing achievement and sets a benchmark for the sector. Also, a number of attractions are taking active steps to improve the sustainability of their website. But we found that this isn't necessarily being done in a framework of measuring and monitoring the sustainability of their website. So the changes that people are making could be making improvements to the sustainability of their site, but at worst, some of the techniques being used could actually harm the performance and sustainability of the website. Paul Marden: The thing is, if you're not testing and measuring, you can't ever know whether the changes that you're making are effective. The Green Business Bureau talk about how benchmarks provide a reference point to assess trends and measure progress and baseline global data. They say, "Companies have begun measuring sustainability performance, which allows them to make continuous assessments, evaluate where they lie on the sustainability agenda and make data driven decisions and policies. Measuring sustainability requires proper selection of key sustainability metrics and a means of making effective process improvements. These measures provide real time data and much needed quantitative basis for organisations to strategise and mitigate environmental and social and economic risks." I'll come back to making process improvements later, but for now let's just stick with measures. Back to James Hobbs, who talked about the ways in which you can measure the CO2 emissions on our website. James Hobbs: There are some tools out there that you can use to help you quantify the carbon impact of what you've got out there in the wild now. So the big one that most people talk about is websitecarbon.com, which is the website carbon calculator that was built by, I think a combination of an agency and some other organisations come up with an algorithm, it's obviously not going to be 100% accurate because every single website app is slightly different and so on, and as a consistent benchmark for where you are and a starting point for improvement. Tools like that are really good. Ecograder is another one. Those offer non technical routes to using them. Paul Marden: Now, both of these websites use similar technologies and methodologies to understand the CO2 emissions of a website. But the survey shows more than half of attractions have never tested the CO2 emissions of their site. This got me thinking. If it's that easy to test the sustainability of a single webpage and you can run them on any website, but most attractions aren't doing it, then what can we as Rubber Cheese do to help? So in this year's survey, we've run the largest audit of visitor attraction sustainability scores that we're aware of. So working with our lovely podcast producer Wenalyn, who also supports me with the survey, firstly, I run a proof of concept gathering and comparing data for a small number of attractions in our database this year. Paul Marden: Once we began to better understand the data, Wenalyn went and ran this against all of the sites that were in our database. With this, we hope to support the sector with a benchmark of webpage sustainability that can be used by anyone in the sector. And what this has shown us is that 58% of attraction websites are rated f by Website Carbon. That's 8% worse than the general population of all websites. But the sobering thing for me as an agency owner is that the sites that we build were in that 58%. The work that we've been doing recently isn't good enough from a sustainability perspective. So this triggered a number of projects internally for us to improve the sustainability posture of the sites that we design and build. Paul Marden: So I'm going to dig into one of those sites and the journey we've been on to remediate the sustainability of their site, because I think it can give a really nice understanding of the journey that you have to go on, the changes that you can make, and what the impact of those changes could be. Now, we started by benchmarking the scores for the site in question from Website Carbon and Ecograder. And this site was a grade F and marked 51 out of 100 by Ecograder. From there, we drove our improvements off of the feedback that Ecograder gave us. We worked as a team to estimate the work involved in the feedback from Ecograder to identify the tasks with the lowest estimated effort and the highest potential impact. Paul Marden: Essentially going for the quick wins, we implemented a number of really simple measures, we implemented lazy loading of images. This is making the browser only download images when they're just about to show on screen. If you don't lazy load an image on a page, then when the webpage opens, the browser will go and grab the image, calculate the size, and redraw the webpage with that image in it, even though the image is off screen. If the user then clicks something in the top part of the screen, maybe in the top navigation, and they never scroll down, they will never see that image. So all that network traffic that was used, all the computation in the browser to be able to figure out the size and paint the screen, was completely wasted because the user never got to see the image. Paul Marden: So by lazy loading, it means that if a person doesn't scroll all the way down the page, then an image near the bottom of the page will never get loaded. And it's an incredibly simple code change that you can write in now. This used to be something that you had to write custom code to implement, but most browsers now support lazy loading, so it should be really easy for people to implement that. Paul Marden: Another thing that we did was to correctly size images. We found that, but with best rule in the world, our editors were uploading images that were very high resolution, very big images, even though on screen we might only show a thumbnail. By resizing the images inside WordPress, we've made it easy for our editors to upload whatever size image that they like. But we only share the smaller image when somebody views the webpage, again, cutting down network traffic as a result of that. One other thing that we made a change on was to make the website serve more modern image formats. Paul Marden: Again, we used a WordPress package to do this, called imagify, and it means that our editors can upload images using the file formats that they're familiar with, like JPEG, GIF and PNG, but that we convert them to more modern formats like WebP inside WordPress. And that has better compression, making the images smaller without any discernible loss of quality, and making the whole webpage smaller, lighter, faster as a result of it, which has the impact of reducing the CO2 emissions that are needed to be able to use that webpage just as a guide. We measure everything that we do in the business in terms of the time it takes us to do things. So we're real sticklers for time tracking, but it was really important in this project for sustainability to work out what the differences were that were making. Paul Marden: So these changes, those three that I just outlined there cost us about a day and a half of development effort and much of that was done by one of our junior developers. So it wasn't hugely complex work that was done by an expensive, experienced developer. But in return for those changes, that one and a half days of effort, we've seen an improvement in rating by website carbon from F  to B and on eco grader from 54 out of 100 to 83 out of 100. This puts the site well into the realm of better than most websites on the Internet and better than 84% of attractions in this year's survey. Is it enough? No, of course not. We can do more and in fact, there are still technical improvements that we can make that don't impinge at all on the user's experience. Paul Marden: We can and we will make more changes to move the site from B to A or even to A+. But there's no doubt that following the old 80-20 rule, these marginal gains will be progressively harder and more costly to achieve. And there may be changes that are needed that will impinge on the user experience. Some things you cannot improve from a sustainability perspective without changing what the user is going to experience. If you've got an auto playing video on your website that consumes bandwidth, it generates network traffic. You cannot remove that video without removing the video entirely and changing it to be something that isn't autoplay but plays w hen a button presses that will have an impact on the user experience. Not everyone will click that button. Paul Marden: Not everyone will watch that video and say not everyone will necessarily have the same feeling about the attraction that they got when there was an autoplay video in place. But there are undoubtedly lots of things that can be done that don't impact the user experience of the site. One of the changes that we still haven't made, which is a little bit more effort, it's a little bit more complexity, and adds a little bit of costs to the hosting of the website is the introduction of a Content Delivery Network or CDN. Here's James Hobbs again from aer. James Hobbs: From a technical angle, I think one of the most impactful things you can do, beyond making sure that your code is optimised and is running at the right times, at the right place, is simply to consider using a content delivery network. And for your listeners who aren't familiar with a content delivery network, a CDN is something that all of us have interacted with at one point or another, probably without realising. In the traditional way of serving or having a website, you've got some service somewhere in a data centre somewhere. When someone types your website address in, it goes and fetches that information from the web server and back comes a web page in the simplest sense. James Hobbs: Now, if your website servers live in Amsterdam and your users on the west coast of America, that's a big old trip for that information to come back and forth, and it's got to go through lots of different hops, uses up lots of energy. A Content Delivery Network is basically lots and lots of servers dotted all over the planet in all of the major cities and things like that can keep a copy of your website. So that if someone from the West Coast of America says, "Oh, I'm really interested in looking at this w ebsite.", types the address in, they get the copy from a server that might be 10,20, 50 miles away from them, instead of several thousand across an ocean. James Hobbs: So it loads quicker for the user, which is great from a user experience, SEO, but it's also great from an energy point of view, because it's coming from somewhere nearby and it's not having to bounce around the planet. That's one thing that you could do that will make a massive and immediate impact commercially and from a sustainability point of view. Paul Marden: So there's another example of something that you can do that has very little impact on the experience of the website. In fact, it massively improves the user experience of the website, takes relatively little effort, but offers a huge improvement. Those are all things that we've done to one individual website. Let's talk a little bit about how we bake that into our process. In a 2022 article in the Harvard Business Review about how sustainability efforts fall apart, they recommend embedding sustainability by design into every process and trade off decision making. I found that language really interesting. It's similar to the language used widely in technology and security that was popularised during the launch of the EU General Data Protection Legislation, which talks a lot about having a security by design approach. Paul Marden: So taking this idea of designing sustainability into every process and trading off the decision making, we've incorporated it into our sales proposal, writing, designing and testing processes. Our people responsible for selling need to bake sustainability into the contract. We want to hold ourselves and our clients accountable for the sometimes difficult decisions around meeting a sustainability target. So we'll discuss that target at the beginning of the project and then hold ourselves to that throughout the design and build process, thereby not needing to do all the remediations that we've just done on the other website, because it's typically much easier, quicker, cheaper for us to implement a lot of those things. The first time through the project, as opposed to as a remediation at the end. We've also baked sustainability testing into our process. Paul Marden: No site goes live without having been tested by both website carbon and eco grader to make sure that the site meets the criteria that we set out at the beginning of the work. So we've thought a lot about how we can improve what we do and we've started to go back and remediate over some of the work that we've done more recently to make improvements. But my learning journey hasn't been entirely smooth. There are challenges that I've hit along the way. I think there's a few interesting challenges that are to be expected as you're going about learning things that I wanted to share. For example, we've done work to remediate the scores of one of our sites and been super excited with the impact score. Paul Marden: I mean, went from bottom of the Fs to A+, only to deploy those changes into production and it didn't move the dial at all on the production website. And that was heartbreaking. Once we looked into that in more detail, thinking that we've done loads of changes, move the dial such a dramatic amount, only to launch it into the wild and it barely touched things. What we realised that in the test environment that we used, we had password protection in place and the website carbon and Ecograder were testing the password screen, not the actual homepage underneath it. So there was a lesson learned for us. The other area where we've made lots of learnings is during the survey when we created our sustainability benchmark. We've seen test results so good that they can't be explained. We've seen somebody hitting 100 on Ecograder. Paul Marden: We've also seen scores that were contradictory on Ecograder and Website Carbon, and also scores that have dropped dramatically. When we first tested in August and did a validation test checked last week, we're still working our way through these wrinkles and I think some of it is because we're looking at many hundreds of websites rather than trying to learn by testing and improving just one site. But beyond the kind of technical challenges, there remain some things that I simply don't understand. And my mission going forward is to fill those gaps. Firstly, while both Ecograder and Website Carbon use the same underlying principles and tools to calculate CO2 emissions, they often can and do give different results. Paul Marden: Not just in the fact that one is A+, a F score and the other is out of 100, but that the basic page sizing in kilobytes and consequently the CO2 can and often is different depending on which tool you look at. And I don't understand why that is, and I need to look into that. And I'm sure we'll come back to the podcast and talk more about that once I do understand it better. But the other problem is that I'm struggling with the size of the problem and the size of the prize. There's no doubt in my mind that making these improvements is the morally right thing to do, and commercially it's right as well, because it improves your outcomes on the website as well as the sustainability. Paul Marden: I'm just struggling with the business case, because if I had an unlimited budget, I do make every change in business that improves the sustainability posture of the business. But most marketers, most people that listen to this podcast don't have an infinite budget. They have a very finite budget, and so they have to put their budget to work where it's going to have the most impact. And what's the return on investment of spending 5k on improving the website versus changing light bulbs to leds, or moving away from gas powered water heaters in the outside toilets by the penguins? It's really difficult at the moment for me to be able to understand where this is the right and sensible investment of sustainability funding within an organisation. So I've shared my learning journey over the year. What about you? What can you do next? Paul Marden: For one last thought, let's head back to the conversation between Kelly and Lucy and Sue from Holkham. Kelly Molson: Are there any advice that you could share with our listeners in terms of how they start or begin to look at sustainability? Lucy Downing: Interesting. I was chatting with Lord Leicester yesterday about the subject and were sort of agreeing that I think you definitely need to know where you are, particularly as a business. You know where you are, because then you can set your goals in a realistic fashion. And I think the one thing to remember is that it has to be realistic, because you need to set goals that you can financially deliver, because if they're not financially viable, then you're not going to be here as a business to deliver them. And what we're also finding and talking to other businesses that actually quite a lot of the sustainability gains that you can make are actually in financial ones too, because you probably cut down on some of your resources that you're using, you'll think better, you'll work smarter. Lucy Downing: So it's just, I think that's something to definitely remember, that it has to be sustainable in all ways, socially, financially and environmentally. That's definitely some key advice. And I think be authentic. There's a lot of talk around greenwashing. Don't be guilty of thinking, wow, this is something we really should do and we're going to do it and just talk about it. It has to be authentic. So really think about where you can make the biggest changes environmentally for sustainability and focus on those and just make sure. Yeah, it's like us really. We're saying we're launching our sustainability strategy, but actually for the past ten years, we've now we've got 100 acre solar farm, we've got anaerobic digester, we heat the hall and all of our businesses with woodchip, so we've got our biomass boilers. Lucy Downing: So we've been doing it for quite a long time without telling anyone. But what we're now doing is saying, actually, that's not even enough, we need to up it further. So, yeah, that's the thing. I think it just has to be authentic and realistic. Sue Penlington: Yeah. And from my point of view, I'm a bit of a doer do and not a talker, so don't get bogged down. It could be absolutely overwhelming. And I think when I was first approached by my boss here, I was just like, wow. Because it isn't just rubbish, it's every single business. Sue Penlington: It's huge. But from my point of view, small differences can make a really big impact and keep chipping away at it because solutions are out there. There's loads of people doing really cool things. And, you know, every night I'm on Google looking up something else or going down another rabbit hole because I've seen something on Twitter. So for me, every day is a school day. But, yeah, get stuck in and collaborate with other like minded people. You know, nowadays you're not considered swampy because you're talking about sustainability. Sue Penlington: Well, you know, it's totally on brand, isn't it? And let's not reinvent the wheel. If we can learn from other people, then let's do that. I mean, go for it. Literally, every single individual can make a difference. Kelly Molson: Oh, Sue, that's. Yeah, you've just got me right there, sue. And I think what you said about collaborating and learning from people, that has been something that's so key this year. People are so willing to share their plans, they're so willing to share what they're doing and how they're doing things. Especially within this sector, there's always somebody that's doing or, you know, a couple of steps ahead of you that you can learn from. And people are so willing to kind of give up that advice and their time at the moment as well. So definitely that's a key one for me. Ask people. Ask people for help. Ask people how to do things. Paul Marden: I'd like to thank everyone that contributed to this episode, including Kelly, Lucy and Sue at Holkham, Polly at TFG and James at aer. Thanks to everyone that's helped me with this journey in the last year, the lovely clients we've talked to, the survey respondents, and my team at Rubber Cheese, Steve, Ben, Tom, Sinead, Wenalyn, and Oz, who've all worked really hard to benchmark the sector and to make continuous improvements to our client's sustainability. As you know, we're really experimenting with the podcast format at the moment, and if you like this or any of the other changes, I'd love to hear. And if you don't, then tough, go make your own podcast. Only joking. I'd love to hear. If you think we can make improvements, you can find me on X, @paulmarden and also on LinkedIn. Paul Marden: If you're at VAC this week, the Visitor Attraction Conference, then I'll be there with Oz and Andy. So come and say hi to us and I'll see you again in a couple of weeks time. Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm. The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Help the entire sector:Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsFill in your data now (opens in new tab)

Did you know there are many reasons why a dog could be wearing a muzzle?  I like to think that the presence of a muzzle isn't the sign of a bad dog – but of a good pet parent! While working with some of the UK's most challenging dogs in rescue at Dogs Trust, Clara Hewson spent years advising pet parents on the benefits of training their dog to wear a muzzle. But Clara had never experienced one of her own dogs needing to be muzzled in public – until she adopted Tolly.  And Clara became shocked by the stigma she & Tolly began to experience. So Clara took to social media with the goal to change public perception of dogs wearing a “face fence.” She created The Muzzle Movement, a community where pet parents are supported, encouraged and receive education (from one of the UK's top dog trainers!). When Clara found that she couldn't find the “perfect” muzzle design – one that gave Tolly enough room to pant and receive treats – she decided she would create it herself.  Now you can shop at The Muzzle Movement to find muzzles that are safe, secure and fun to accessorize. Clara shares with us the exact steps to start muzzle training your dog.  And it starts way before you even think about placing the muzzle on your dog!  We also learn about a recent breed-specific law impacting the UK's XL Bully dogs (aka pit  bull dogs). Find links & show notes at: https://believeindogpodcast.com/episodes-1/episode99   Leave a review: Leave a rating & review on Apple Podcasts or your podcast player. Screenshot your review. Email the screenshot to me at erin@believeindogpodcast.com and I'll be sending you a free gift.   Teef: The easiest way to improve your dog's dental health is with a spoonful of Teef powder in their water.  Save 20% on your Teef orders when you use the code: ADM.

There's shock today at the sudden closure of Folkestone Sports Centre.Trustees have released a statement saying the facility can “no longer afford to remain operational”. We've got reaction from Folkestone Swimming Club which uses the pool. A petition has also been set up in a bid to save the facility.Also in today's podcast, a mum from Faversham has written a book to try and raise awareness after being diagnosed with a mostly symptomless condition that can cause infertility.Fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb and can be extremely painful.An urgent search is underway for more dog and cat foster carers in Kent to help victims of domestic abuse.Charities that run the service have seen a rise in demand from people who are fleeing violence.Lucy's been chatting to Becci Philpott from the Dogs Trust's Freedom project.In sport, Kent's Nathan Hales has won gold for Team GB in the men's trap shooting final at the Olympics in Paris.He set a Games record by hitting 48 out of 50 targets in Paris.Meantime, Kent rower Emily Craig has been back in action at the Games.She was in the semi-finals of the women's lightweight double sculls with partner Imogen Grant.

¿Sabías que puedes calcular cuánto vivirá un perro, según el tamaño de su hocico? Dogs Trust, la organización benéfica para perros más grande del Reino Unido, publicó un estudio al respecto en la revista científica Nature.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.Fill in the Rubber Cheese 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 17th July 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://aerstudios.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesliweb/ Tools for Sustainability:https://ecograder.com/https://www.websitecarbon.com/ James Hobss is a people-focused technologist with over 15 years experience working in a range of senior software engineering roles with a particular focus on digital sustainability.He is Head of Technology at creative technology studio, aer studios, leading the technology team delivering outstanding work for clients including Dogs Trust, BBC, Historic Royal Palaces, and many others. Prior to joining aer studios, James was Head of Engineering at digital agency Great State, where he led a multi-award-winning software engineering team working with clients including the Royal Navy, Ministry of Defence, Honda Europe, the Scouts, and others.He also has many years experience building and running high-traffic, global e-commerce systems while working at Dyson, where he headed up the global digital technical team. Transcription:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with Mister attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. The last twelve months have been the warmest of any twelve month period since records began. And while over 70% of attractions have a sustainability policy, only 12% have actually tested the CO2 emissions of their website. In today's episode, we're joined by James Hobbs, Head of Technology at Air Studios and a member of the Umbraco Community Sustainability Team. James shares some easily actionable tips to reduce the emissions of your website. Paul Marden: James, welcome to skip the queue. Lovely to have you. James Hobbs: Thanks for having me. Paul Marden: So we always start with some icebreaker questions. So it would be unfair if I didn't inflict the same pain on you. James Hobbs: Go for it. Paul Marden: Let's start with a nice one, I think. What actor would you want to play you in a film about your life? James Hobbs: I mean, instinctively, I'd say someone like Jack Black. Just think he's really funny. A lot more funny than me. I'm not sure how much of a resemblance there is. He's got a much better beard than I do someone. Yeah. If there's gonna be an adaptation, I'd like it to be funny. Paul Marden: I like the idea of that one. I think I'd struggle with that one. I'd struggle to pick. Yeah, you know, it's gotta be an archetypal geek that would play me in the story of my life. I'm not sure who that would be. James Hobbs: Not John Cena or something like that. Paul Marden: So the next one, I'd say this one I found really hard, actually. What was your dream job when you were growing up? James Hobbs: Oh, okay. So I can answer that one easily because my parents still take the Mickey out of me for it. So when I was quite young, I told them very kind of certified. When I grow up, I want to be part time mechanic, part time librarian. Paul Marden: Well, that's an interesting job, shed. James Hobbs: Yeah, it's really random, I think, because I like, I love books. I love reading. Did back then, still do now. I also like dismantling things. I was never very good at putting them back together and then continuing to work. But, yeah, that was my aspiration when I was a kid. Paul Marden: I remember going to careers advisors and just some of the tosh, they would tell you. So everybody was told they could be an undertaker and you got your typical finance jobs. But I really. I desperately wanted to be a pilot. And I was told by the optician I couldn't because of eyesight, which was nonsense. But actually, I couldn't have done the job because I have a zero sense of direction. So later in life, when I trained for my private pilot's license, I got hopelessly lost a couple of times. The RAF are very helpful, though, when that happens. James Hobbs: They come up, fly alongside you and tell you to get out of their airspace. Paul Marden: They don't like people invading the Heathrow airspace. And I was dangerously close to it at the time. James Hobbs: Nice. Paul Marden: That's another story, though. But no, they sent me from my work experience to work in the local council finance department. Department, which I don't think could be more different than being a pilot if you actually tried. James Hobbs: I mean, it's not the most glamorous, I mean, it's important, but, you know, it's not quite Top Gun, is it? Paul Marden: No, no. Exactly. There you go. Tom Cruise. That can. He can play me in the film of my life. James. So we want to talk a little bit about digital sustainability. So I thought it'd be quite nice for you to tell the listeners a little bit about your background in digital and more specifically the stuff that you've been doing more recently in digital sustainability. James Hobbs: Okay, I'll give you the most succinct property history I can. So I guess my background 15, 16 years ago started off as a developer, not a very good one. And since then I've worked for a range of different sorts of organisations. So everything from a local council, national charity, global manufacturing company, and then two digital agencies. For the last ten years or so, I've been more in leadership positions, obviously have to stay close to the technology. And in more recent years, one of the big passions of mine, I suppose, or something I'm really interested is the sustainability side of digital, because I think it's interesting and that we can make a massive impact, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point. James Hobbs: But my current role is I'm Head of Technology at a creative technology studio called Air Studios, who also share my enthusiasm for sustainability. So I'm excited to do some work there. Paul Marden: Yeah. And my background stalking of you told me that air does some work in the attraction sector as well, doesn't it? So you work with a few attractions? James Hobbs: Yes, that's right. Yeah, we've got a few. Paul Marden: So there's some form here. James Hobbs: Yeah, I would say so. Paul Marden: Cool. One of the things that I know that you've been working with is so we're both. We've spent a lot of time in the Umbraco community, and Embraco is a content management system that a few attractions use not many, but some tend to be larger organisations that use Umbraco typically. But we've both spent time in the Umbraco community going to lots of events and talking to a lot of people. But one of the contributions you've made over the recent period is joining the Umbraco Sustainability Team. What is it, what does it do and who's involved in it? James Hobbs: Okay, so the Umbraco has this concept of community teams, which I think is a, Umbraco is a very unique organisation. Anyway, you know this because you're part of community as well, but they have a very strong connection and link with the community of developers. And not just developers, anyone who has anything to do with Umbraco and works with it. And the sustainability team is one of the several community teams that exist. The idea is that it brings together people from Umbraco's and people from the community who have a shared passion in something relevant to Umbraco to help steer it, share knowledge, and ultimately achieve a goal. And for the sustainability community team, the goal is to, I guess it's multifaceted. Firstly to make Umbraco as a product more sustainable, which is brilliant. James Hobbs: Secondly, to raise awareness of what organisations or individuals need to do to be able to improve the sustainability posture of whatever they're up to, which is brilliant as well. So there's a very umbraco focused side to it, but there's also a wider kind of awareness raising, educational side of it too, because this is a very, its a quite a new, say, it's a relatively new thing. I think digital sustainability as a concept completely hasn't really existed for that long, unfortunately. But now it does. Paul Marden: Yeah, exactly. And theres been some impact as well that the team has had on the product and the direction of the product isn't there. James Hobbs: Yeah. So and again, this is, there's several of us in this community team and I want to make it really clear that like a lot of work's gone on. It's not just me doing it. So we've managed to achieved a few things. So first of all, the Umbraco website, they launched a new website a little while ago. Its sustainability posture wasn't great. So we've worked with them, people that internally built that to improve it, and that's made a massive difference. Paul Marden: Excellent. James Hobbs: It's gone from being dirtier than a large majority of websites to being cleaner than most, which is great. We've pulled together some documentation for covering all sorts of areas from front end, back end development, content editing and so on, to educate people on how to build more sustainable websites. And some of the team members as well have built an Umbraco package, an open source package that you can install into Umbraco, and it will advise you in terms of the pages that you're making, whether they are good from a carbon footprint point of view or not. And we'll give you a rating, which is superb because it brings that whole thing in much closer to the end users who'll be making the pages. So that was a really nice piece of work. And on top of that, we do appear on things like this. Do webinars and talk at conferences and stuff. Paul Marden: Yeah, and I think Andy Evadale from Tangent is one of the members of the team. And honestly it was Andy who totally opened my eyes to this whole subject when I first started seeing him talk about it and giving some stats, and we'll talk a little more about those later on. There's definitely an impact that the team is having and it's really weird, isn't it? I mean, I don't want to geek out too much about Umbraco and the community, but there is something quite special about this commercial organisation that has open source software that gets given away for free, that collaborates with the community to build a product which is easy to use, pretty cool, really effective, but also sustainable as well. There's not many organisations that work in that way. James Hobbs: Yeah, it's unique and I love it. I think it's great. It just shows you it's possible to run a business and make money, but also have a really engaged community of passionate people and work together. I think it's brilliant. Paul Marden: Look, let's just take a step back from geeking out about Umbraco. Then I want to set the scene. Longtime listeners will know that Rubber Cheese run a visitor attraction website survey. We've done it for two years in a row. This year we simplified the survey down to make space for some more questions. And one of the key questions we've talked about is Sustainability. We are still just over the halfway point of the survey period, so there are still lots of responses coming in. But based on the data that we've got so far, we know that 72% of attractions in the current survey have got a sustainability policy, but only 12% of attractions have ever tested the CO2 emissions of their website. And we'll come to in a minute why we think the measurement and focusing on CO2 emissions in digital is important. Paul Marden: But whilst very few are actually testing their site, nearly half of all of the respondents so far have attempted something to reduce the CO2 emissions of their website. So there's clearly action going on, but it's not necessarily driving in a coherent direction because there's no clear benchmarking and target setting and retesting. So I think what I'd like to cover today is for us to understand that a little bit more, get under the skin of it a little bit, and then talk a little bit about how we can actually reduce the CO2 emissions, how can we actually make things different and why we might want to do it. Because it's more than just kind of the ethical, we all should be doing something. There were some real business benefits to it as well. My next question, without stating the bleeding obvious. Paul Marden: Okay, why do you think digital sustainability matters? I mean, the obvious answer is just because it does. But it's important, isn't it, as a contributor to global warming? James Hobbs: Yeah. So, I mean, there's lots of statistics knocking around, one of which I think it shows you the scale of the impact of the digital industry is. I think the total carbon footprint emissions of the digital industry is greater than global air traffic. And if you go and look on something like Flightradar or Skyscanner or whatever, and look at how many planes are in the air at any given moment in time, that's a pretty sobering statistic. There's lots of other ones as well, in terms of the amount of electricity that's being used, and water compared to even small countries like New Zealand. So we are generating a hell of a lot of carbon directly and indirectly, by doing all the things that we do. James Hobbs: And every time you hold up your phone and you load up Instagram or TikTok or download something, there's a massive disconnect cognitively, because it's just there and it just works and it doesn't feel like it's using up electricity and so on, but it is. There's a whole massive supply chain behind all of the lovely things we like to do on our devices that is hungry for electricity and generates pollution and that kind of thing. Paul Marden: Yeah. So my background was at British Airways and I was there for ten years. It really wasn't that hard to spot the fact that environmentally, that we have a challenging problem. Because when you stood on the end of Heathrow Runway, you can see what's coming out the back end of a 747 as it takes off. But I don't think I ever quite understood the impact of what I do now and how that's contributing more to CO2 emissions than what I was doing previously, which. Yeah, I just don't think there's an awareness of that more broadly. James Hobbs: No, yeah, I'd agree. And it's complicated. Paul Marden: In what way? James Hobbs: I guess it's complicated to quantify the carbon impact of the type of work that we do in the digital industry, because I guess there's what we're shipping to end users, which is one thing. But most modern websites and applications and stuff are built on a big tower of cloud services providers, and all of their equipment has to be manufactured which has a carbon impact. And rare earth metals need to be mined out of the grid. All of that stuff. There's a big supply chain backing all this stuff and we can influence some of that directly, but a large chunk of it we can't. So it makes choosing your suppliers quite important. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're going down the road, if you accept the premise that this is a big contributor and making small gains on any of the stuff that is of interest to us and marketers who are owning websites attractions, I think for me, probably the first step is testing and trying to figure out where you are. Do you think that's a useful first step? Is that important as far as you're concerned, James? James Hobbs: I think it's important because with any sort of improvement, whether it's related to sustainability or not, I think quantifying where you are at the start and having a benchmark allows you to see whether you're going in the right direction or not. And improvement doesn't always go in one direction the whole time. There might be a two steps forward, one step back, depending on what you're doing. But I think without measuring where you are, and ideally regularly measuring your progress, it's hard to say what impact you've had and you might be going in the wrong direction and bumping up the wrong tree or whatever. So I think it's important. Paul Marden: Yeah, it's super important. And is it something that marketers themselves can do, or is this something that only a sustainability consultant can do, or is there somewhere in between? Is it the techy geeks that run the website that do this? Or is it a little bit of all of those things? James Hobbs: Well, that's a really good question. So I think this is still quite a new kind of industry. There are some tools out there that you can use to help you quantify the carbon impact of what you've got out there in the wild now. So the big one that most people talk about is websitecarbon.com, which is the website carbon calculator that was built by, I think a combination of an agency and some other organisations come up with an algorithm. It's obviously not going to be 100% accurate because every single website app, it's slightly different and so on. But as a consistent benchmark for where you are and a starting point for improvement, tools like that are really good. Ecograder is another one. Those offer non technical routes to using them. James Hobbs: So for the website carbon calculator, you just plunk a website address in hit go and it'll run off and tell you that's not very scalable. If you've got a 10,000 page website, or if you've got a large digital estate, there are also API level services that are provided that might make that easier to automate. But again, you then need someone who knows how to do that sort of thing, which raises the barrier to entry. I think what I would like to see is more and more vendors building carbon dashboards into their products and services so that the rest of us don't have to run around and build this stuff from scratch. Azure, for example, Microsoft's cloud platform, has a carbon dashboard that is scoped to your resources. That's really interesting and useful to see. James Hobbs: The stuff I mentioned about what we're doing with Umbraco and building a sustainability package, we're hoping to get that built into the core product. And again, the idea being that if you're a content editor or a marketer, you shouldn't have to know how to wire up APIs and do all this stuff, you should be able to see at a glance. Okay, well, that page I've just built actually is a little bit on the heavy side. Maybe I need to look at that. So I think the way to democratize it is to make it easier to do the right thing. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So these tools are giving you, they're giving you a grading? Yeah. So some of them are like a to f. I think it is for Website Carbon, Ecograder gives you a score out of 100. I think it is. Are there any advantages to one or the other? Or is it a good idea for people to use both of them and see the differences that the two different tools can give you? James Hobbs: I think it will come down to, well, for me anyway, I think using a tool in the first place is a step forward from what the vast majority of people are doing currently, which are not even thinking about it. So in many ways it doesnt really matter. I think it will depend on what people find easier to use. I think when people start to integrate this sort of sustainability measurements into their build pipelines, for example, release pipelines. That's where you will need to maybe think more carefully about the kind of data that you're interested in and what criteria you want to look at. Because, for example, at the moment, a lot of organisations who write software, hopefully their developers, will be writing some unit tests. And if the tests fail, then you don't deploy the website that should fail the build. James Hobbs: I think it would be good to move to a world where if your sustainability posture regresses and gets worse than similar things. There are other tools outside of those websites that we've been talking about, though. So there's an organisation called the Green Web Foundation, a nonprofit who do a lot of work in this space. And they've created a couple of tools. One's called CO2.js, which you can integrate directly into your website that can actually be a bit more accurate than the carbon stuff. And they've also built a tool called the Grid Intensity CLI. And without going into loads of horrible detail, what that is, essentially it knows when the electricity grid is at its most, what's the right word? At its most pollutant. When it's generating the most carbon. James Hobbs: So you can use that to figure out when to run background jobs or do lots of processing. You can do it when the grid is at its most renewable. So there's things like that as well. There's lots of options out there. You can go deep as you want. Paul Marden: Amazing. One thing that you just mentioned that I thought, oh, that's really interesting. I've never thought of that before, is the idea that you can drop a URL into Website Carbon or Ecograder and it will give you the score of that page. But actually, if you've got lots of pages on your website, you need to be testing across multiple pages. That should never occur to me before. James Hobbs: Yeah, because I think a lot of people plunk the homepage in and go, cool. It's a. I guess it's effort versus reward thing. No one's going, well, hopefully no one's going to spend time manually entering 10,000 website URL's into a tool like that. Not least because it would probably take the tool down. There are probably better ways of doing it than that. And also, homepages are typically quite different to the rest of a website. It serves a different purpose. So I think testing a representative portion of your digital services is probably the way to go. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. I've been wondering recently whether buyers should be thinking about this as something that's part of the requirements of a new website. So if you're going out to tender and buying a new website, oftentimes you and I will both see requests for proposal that have accessibility requirements in them. But I genuinely don't remember a time that I've ever seen an RFP say, “You must achieve grade c or above on website carbon across the majority of the pages on the site.” And I think when buyers start to do that you'll begin to see agencies doing more of this sort of stuff. I think baking it into contracts will make a big difference. James Hobbs: Yeah, yeah and it's that kind of selective pressure isn't it? Clients start requiring this stuff, then agencies will have to step up. And it's unfortunate that might well be the catalyst but actually I don't care what the catalyst is as long as we're going in the right direction. Its the main thing really, which is lessening our impact. Yeah absolutely. But yeah that whole supply chain thing is huge. That's one way we can make a big impact is by mandating certain things. And there's actually a certification, a green software engineering certification. It's offered for free that developers or technical architects can go through to educate them a bit on green software engineering techniques and things like that. James Hobbs: And that's the kind of thing that hopefully in the future companies who are putting RFPs out might say, “We want your engineering team to be aware of green computing techniques” and so on and be able to prove it. Paul Marden: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised as well that it gets legislated for as well. So in the same way as you know, public sector bodies have got to meet certain accessibility requirements. I would not be surprised if we enter a world soon where there's a statutory obligation for these things to be done in a sustainable way as well. James Hobbs: Yeah. Paul Marden: So getting your act together now is a really good thing to do because there's going to be less work later on when you've got no choice but to do it. James Hobbs: Exactly. Get ahead of the game now. Paul Marden: So we've made the case, people have bought into it, they're going to go and do some testing and they realise that they've got a smelly, polluting, rich website. What can they do next? How can your average head of marketing, head of digital influence their website to get better? James Hobbs: Yeah. Okay, so this is where I think there's a really nice angle here. We did talk about this earlier on, but there is a fairly close link between the things that will make doing the things that will make your website, your digital services more sustainable and kind of KPI's and metrics that will probably make it more commercially successful as well, depending on what you're doing, with a bunch of caveats that I won't go into. So, for example, sustainable websites are typically lightweight, they're fast, they're optimised for getting the right things in front of the user as quickly as possible, which can include everything from content delivery networks to optimising images to a whole host of stuff. Doing all of those things will also typically positively impact your search engine optimisation, positively impact your conversion. James Hobbs: Because if you look at Google's guidance, Lighthouse guidance, the different things it looks at and so on, it's very clear that fast, relevant websites are what get prioritised and what Google's looking for. Fast, relevant websites that are served from locations close to the user are also likely to be sustainable. So there is a link there. And what that means is there's a built in business case for doing the sustainability stuff. James Hobbs: So if you've got a hard nosed suite of executives who couldn't care less about the planet, not that I'm saying that's what everyone's like, but, you know, the commercial world that we live in, it's a hell of a lot easier to sell this stuff in by saying, “You know what as well, like we can do an MVP or a pilot and we're confident that we might be able to improve conversion by 0.1%, 0.5%”, whatever it might be. It's also typically a good way to save money by being smarter about what you're computing and where and when and using some of those tools that I've talked about, you can save yourself potentially a bunch of money as a business, which again, is a commercial win. James Hobbs: So I think whilst the ethical side of it is really important, and, you know, none of us want to be boiling to death in 50 years time because we've ruined the planet. Making small changes in digital can have a massive impact because the amount of people that are using them. And I think it's easier to sell in because of the commercial. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm guessing there's stuff that you can do at key stages in the design and development of a site. So what are the things that people should be thinking about during the design of the site that could make it more sustainable? James Hobbs: So, okay, so that's a really good question. So this is a huge topic. So I can give you some examples of the kind of things you should be thinking about. So. And I guess we could divide them up into two sections. So when we're designing a website. There's how it looks and how the user experience work. There's also the technical design. As with anything, the further, the earlier you start thinking about this kind of stuff, the easier it is. Crowbarring in. It's a bit like accessibility, you know this, try and crowbar it in the last week of the project, it's not going to work. So from a design point of view, and some of this stuff is difficult to quantify its impact in detail, but things like not having massive 4k full bleed videos at the top of your webpage. James Hobbs: So being very careful and intelligent use of things like that, because they are large, they have to be transferred from wherever you're serving them from to the user. There's a big energy cost associated with that, not using loads and loads of external dependencies on your web pages. And that could be anything from fonts to JavaScript libraries to the vast myriad of tools that are being used. The more things you're throwing down the pipe to your end user, especially if your hosting infrastructure is not set up in a distributed way, the more energy intensive that thing is. You can even go as far as looking at the color choices that you're using. So certain darker themes are typically less energy intensive. Yeah, because of how OLED screens and modern screens work. Again, very hard to quantify. James Hobbs: And then we go down the rabbit hole of yeah, but where does the electricity that charges my phone come from? And you try and quantify all that stuff, it gets very head explodey. But there are things you can do in that sense. Some of them are easier to quantify than others. The weight of the page is a very easy thing to measure. If you keep that low, it will be easier to cache, it will load quicker for users, it will better for SEO, and faster pages tend to have better conversion. James Hobbs: And that works whether you're selling things from an e commerce point of view or you're trying to register interest, whatever it might be, from a technical angle, I think one of the most impactful things you can do, beyond making sure that your code is optimised and is running at the right times, at the right place, is simply to consider using a Content Delivery Network. And for your listeners who aren't familiar with a content delivery network, a CDN is something that all of us have interacted with at one point or another, probably without realising in the traditional way of serving or having a website, you've got some service somewhere, in a data centre somewhere. When someone types your website address in, it goes and fetches that information from the web server and back comes a web page in the simplest sense. James Hobbs: Now, if your website servers live in Amsterdam and your users on the west coast of America, that's a big old trip for that information to come back and forth. And it's got to go through lots of different hops, uses up lots of energy. A content delivery network is basically lots and lots of servers dotted all over the planet, in all of the major cities and things like that can keep a copy of your website. So that if someone from the west coast of America says, “Oh, I'm really interested in looking at this website,” types the address in, they get the copy from a server that might be 1020, 50 miles away from them, instead of several thousand across an ocean. James Hobbs: So it loads quicker for the user, which is great from a user experience, SEO, all that stuff I talked about, but it's also great from an energy point of view, because it's coming from somewhere nearby and it's not having to bounce around the planet. That's one thing that you could do that will make a massive and immediate impact commercially and from a sustainability point of view. Paul Marden: So you get those kind of performance improvement for the people all the way around the world accessing the site, but it's going to take load off of the server itself, so you might need less powerful servers running. One of the big issues that attraction websites have got is that it's such a cyclical market. The people that, you know,James Hobbs: Spiky.Paul Marden: Exactly when the Christmas meet Santa train is released at an attraction, or the traffic to the website is going to peak. If you can keep some of that traffic off of the web server by using that Content Delivery Network instead, you're going to be able to withstand those really peak times on the website without having to spend lots and lots of money on improving the resilience of the service. So it really is a win win win, isn't it? James Hobbs: I think so. And also it can help potentially avoid things like the dreaded queue where you log on to a website that's busy and it sticks you in a queue and you're 41,317th queue or whatever. Exactly like you say. If you can leverage this tech to take the load off your back end systems and I, you'll be delivering a better user experience. Paul Marden: One of the measures that I know a lot of the algorithms that are assessing CO2 emissions look at is the type of hosting that you use. So they talk about green hosting. What is green hosting? And is all green hosting the same? James Hobbs: No. So yeah, again, this is a big topic. So I guess hosting generally runs the spectrum all the way from kind of one boutique sort of providers who can set up VMS or private servers or whatever all the way through to the big goliaths of the Internet, the AWS and Azure and so on and everything in between. So green hosting is broadly hosting that is carbon neutral, powered by renewables, that sort of thing. So in theory shouldn't be pumping more pollutants into our atmosphere than it's saving. So if we look at the big cloud providers initially, so they've all made some commitments in terms of improving their sustainability posture. And this is really good because when one does it, the other one has to do it too. And obviously there's Google Cloud platform as well and they're doing similar sorts of things. James Hobbs: But it's almost this, I like the competitive angle of this because all it means is the sustainability posture of all of them will get better quicker. So it's good. So for example, I'll try and do this off the top of my head, you should check yourselves. But Azure and AWS and Google all have some pages that talk about their commitments and primarily they're focused on carbon neutrality and using renewable electricity. Aws have done a good job of that. So in certain AWS regions the year before last, they were completely 100% renewable powered, which is brilliant. Paul Marden: Really. James Hobbs: Yes. Not everywhere. Azure are going down a similar path and they've made the same commitment in terms of the year when they're going to hit renewable powered everything. They've also made commitments to water positivity. Enormous amounts of water are used during the operation of data centers and there are a lot of these data centres. So they've made commitments I think by 2035 or 2040 please double check to be net water positive, which is great. And the other thing that people don't think about, and this is I guess the supply chain thing I was talking about earlier, all those servers got rare metals in them. They've got all kinds of stuff in them thats been dug out of the ground, often in areas where there's a lot going on from a human point of view. James Hobbs: So Amazon, AWS, Google, et cetera, they're looking at that angle too. How can they keep servers in commission for longer so they don't need to be replaced as often? Where are they getting their materials from, et cetera, all that kind of stuff, because they're not just a computing company know they're invested in the hardware and getting this stuff out of the ground and manufacturing it and all the rest of it's a very big operation. So that's something we can't influence beyond pressuring them as consumers, but it is something that they're doing something about, which is great. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. And if we go back to that point I made earlier on, buyers are in control of this. If they are choosing to include that in their contracts to buy new web services, that it needs to be green by offsetting or green by using 100% renewable power, then that drives change, doesn't it? Procurement managers drive change through that kind of thing. James Hobbs: Yeah, absolutely. And just one final point on the greenhosting the Green Web foundation, who I mentioned earlier, the nonprofit who work in this space, they maintain a list of green web hosts. So hosts that are known to be green that you can use without having to worry too much. So it's worth looking at that as well. And it's a kind of impartial list. Paul Marden: Excellent. Do you think this is a story that attraction should be telling? So they're going to be, we're hoping that people are going to become energised by this and they're going to want to go on a digital sustainability journey. Do you think that is that something that they could be shouting about? James Hobbs: I think so, if done in the right way. Obviously, you've got to be careful of the sort of, we planted some trees and now everything's fine, because I don't think that's necessarily the case. But I think talking about it in the right way, which is we know we're not perfect, but we're doing something about it, and this is our plan, and being transparent about it, I think, is a good thing. I think it will also foster competition between different attractions, and everyone's a winner, really, because it will make everyone more sustainable. Paul Marden:  Yeah. James Hobbs: And yeah, I don't see why you shouldn't talk about it. I think its something thats important. And to your point earlier about consumers being able to influence some of this stuff, I really, truly hope that the generation of youngsters that are coming up now are going to be more hyper aware of this sort of thing, and they're going to care a lot more because it's likely to affect them more than it will us. So I would like to think that they will be selecting products, services, attractions, whatever it might be that can demonstrate that they're actually doing something to lessen the impact of their operations. James Hobbs: I've got two relatively young children, and I can already see them asking questions and being interested in this kind of stuff in a way that wouldn't have occurred to me when I was a kid, just didn't think about it. I cant change that. But what we can do is try and improve the world that were going to be leaving to the the youngs.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So, one last question for you. Is there anything. Is there anything happening in this space that you think is really cool and interesting to think about? James Hobbs: That's a good question. I mean, like, I hope this isn't a non answer. I think the thing. The thing that is exciting me most is that more and more people are talking about this stuff. More and more people are asking questions about this stuff and I've done a lot of talks and webinars and things on this topic and the thing that really makes me feel positive and excited about it is that nearly all of them afterwards, people come up to you, they message you and say, “I just didn't realise.” The fact that we're able to raise awareness is brilliant because we can start to build up a bit of momentum. I think the thing that. I think I mentioned it earlier, products and services, building this sort of stuff into their platforms in terms of helping users use their services more efficiently, I think that's the area that I'm most excited about, because otherwise it's people kind of hacking stuff together. I think it should be a first class part of any solution, really is like, carbon impact of what I'm doing. That's what I'm probably most keen to see more of. Paul Marden: James, thank you. One last thing. We always ask our guests for a book recommendation and you've already said you're an avid reader, so no pressure, but I'm quite excited to hear about this one. James Hobbs: Well, there's two and I thought I'd just make the decision when you asked me the question about which one to recommend. So I'm going to go with my legitimately favourite book, which is the Player of Games by Iain M Banks. It's part of the culture series of novels and I'm a bit upset because Elon Musk has been talking about it. I feel like he's tarnished it slightly. A magnificent series of novels. I remember finishing the 10th one and sadly, the author died a while ago and I genuinely felt slightly bereft that there weren't going to be any more of them. It's a brilliant book. It's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting. It's so creative and inventive. It makes you think differently about things. It's definitely not one for children. James Hobbs: You know, there's a lot of violence and all kinds of other things in there. But it's a fascinating book. All of his books are fascinating. My favourite author. So if you're going to, if you think about getting into his books and specifically the culture novels, that's a great point to jump in at. It's accessible and it's absolutely brilliant. I love it. Paul Marden: That's quite the recommendation. So, listeners, if you want to get into this culture series of books, then when we post the show notice on X, get over there and retweet the message and say, “I want James's book.” And the first person to do that will get that sent to them. James, this has been brilliant. There's a couple of takeaways I want people to go and think about, one from me, which is go and test your site and then jump into the Rubber Cheese website survey. Paul Marden: Go to rubbercheese.com/survey, tell us all about your attractions website and one of those questions will be about have you tested the CO2 emissions of your site and have you done anything about it? The more we understand what the sector is doing, then the more we can understand how we can all help and improve things. Paul Marden: James, you had one idea of a place where people could go and find out more about this sort of stuff. James Hobbs: Yeah, I mean, there's some organisations that I mentioned. So the Green Web Foundation is one that's got lots of interesting material on there, both tools that they've made, but also they fund research in this space, which is really important. It should be treated like a specific discipline. I suppose they're doing some great stuff there. There's the Green Software foundation, which confusingly similar name, doing some good work in this space. There's also lots of interesting groups on discord forums that are out there. I guess my main message would be we're all learning more about this field. No one has all the answers, but there are organisations out there that you can come and speak to that can help you understand where you are currently. James Hobbs: And I definitely encourage you guys to fill in the surveys, Paul said, because the more information that we've got, you know, the better we can understand where things are. Paul Marden: James, this has been a lot of fun and really interesting. Thank you ever so much. Thank you for joining the podcast. James Hobbs: Thanks for having me on. Thanks a lot. Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm. The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Help the entire sector:Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsFill in your data now (opens in new tab)

A Sittingbourne teacher who had a cocaine addiction and posted about his drug use on socials has been banned from the profession.Austin Whiting was the head of Year 13 at Borden Grammar School and taught geography.As election campaigning continues, Nigel Farage has been in Dover to announce the town's Reform candidate.We've also been finding out what people in the town want from the next government.And, a farmer from Maidstone has been telling the podcast what he would like to see from whoever is leading the country.A Kent dog welfare charity have revealed some of the cruel techniques owners are using to get their dogs to behave.  A study from the Dogs Trust shows people are pinning their pets to the ground and growling, pinching their ears or rolling them onto their backs.Rag 'n' Bone Man's been on our sister radio station, kmfm, to tell us all about his new single.And in sport, Gillingham have launched a commemorative away kit to mark the 25th anniversary of a famous victory at Wembley.They've recreated the yellow strip worn by players in their 3-2 Division 2 play-off final win over Wigan in 2000.

Jerry presented today’s show from The Demesne in Killarney National Park, near Deenagh Lodge to mark the inaugural Killarney National Bark event – an initiative by the National Parks and Wildlife Service to promote responsible dog ownership in the park and of course, to celebrate the pets that enrich so many of our lives. Jerry spoke to Danny O’Keeffe, regional manager with the NPWS, county vet Paddy Fenton who’s also with the Kerry Dog Pound, Danny O’Sullivan the TalkAbout vet and of All Care Veterinary Hospital in Killarney, Lisa O’Donovan of Dogs Trust, Deirdre Horgan of My Canine Companion, Irene McCarthy from Kerry Dog Training, and Jake Shirtliff from Muddy Paws Training.

In this emotionally charged episode, Niall delves into the heart-wrenching dilemma faced by a listener: whether to abandon their beloved dog in exchange for council housing. The listener, who has been on the housing list for seven years, finally received an offer for a new home, but pets are not allowed in the area. With three young children and a cherished Staffie named Mazie, the decision weighs heavily on their conscience.Many callers sympathize with the listener's predicament, acknowledging the difficult choice between housing stability and pet companionship. While the emotional bond with Mazie is undeniable, callers stress the importance of prioritizing the well-being of the children and seizing the opportunity for a safer and happier home environment. Organizations like Dogs Trust and RSPCA offer reassurance that Mazie can find a loving new family, alleviating concerns about her welfare.However, other callers advocate for exploring alternative solutions that allow the family to keep Mazie. They suggest discussing exceptions with the council or seeking pet-friendly accommodations to avoid parting ways with the beloved dog. The emotional toll on the family, especially the children, is a crucial factor to consider in making this difficult decision.Throughout the episode, Niall navigates the complexities of the situation with empathy and understanding, acknowledging the listener's anguish and offering support in navigating this heart-wrenching decision.Niall wraps up the discussion, emphasizing the importance of considering all options and prioritizing the well-being of both the family and their cherished pet.

In episode 74, Marissa Martino interviews Tom Candy about shelter dogs that experience frustration. They discuss the 3 R's - Risk assessment, Reduce (management strategies), and Resolve (behavior modification and teaching skills). Tom provides examples of interventions that he and his team implement to reduce a dog's stress level in the shelter environment.   A passion for animal welfare and training led Tom to undertake a Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree in bio-veterinary science and a Master of Science degree in clinical animal behavior from the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom. Since graduating, Tom has been working at Dogs Trust as a training and behavior advisor, eventually working in seven rehoming centers before being promoted to senior training and behavior advisor, where he supports the training and behavior teams across the southwest United Kingdom. Tom is responsible for supporting and advising managers and training and behavior advisors on matters relating to behavioral concerns, and for helping to promote higher levels of welfare for dogs. Tom is a Certified clinical animal behaviorist with the Animal Behaviour and Training Council in the United Kingdom, and a Certified canine behavior consultant and Certified shelter behavior specialist with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. 

HEY, HEY, HEY BOOKSHELVERS! You're going to want to get this episode in your eardrums like a man trailing Bloodhound vacuums scent into their nostrils!Not only is Tamsin Durston... 1. A returning guest... 2. An all round wonderful human being... 3. An excellent writer who has authored an excellent book we all need in our lives... But on top of ALL this Tamsin is a confirmed speaker at this years DOGX conference! Tamsin talks all things well-being in this in depth and fascinating episode which is a must for all dog professionals and anyone looking to be kind to themselves and those around them.As well as all the usual segments we use to delve into Tam's book, Nat, Corrin and Steve also spend far too long discussing whether the eye is a part of the brain, Jay's best joke ever, the etymology of the phrase "your toast" and other standard "Barks from" madness.  So pull up a chair, rub a dog and submerge your earholes. Tamsin Facts:Tam is a Registered Veterinary Nurse, Clinical Animal Behaviourist, and accredited Dog Training Instructor with 27 years experience working predominantly for Blue Cross and Dogs Trust. She has also undertaken an MSc in Human Behaviour Change, in order to underpin animal welfare activity with evidenced behavioural science, and is currently studying for an MSc in Human-Animal Interaction and Wellbeing. Employed full-time as Dogs Trust's Veterinary Intervention Development Manager, Tam leads a team working to embed canine behavioural principles within veterinary practice. This commitment includes steering the Dog Friendly Clinic initiative to optimise veterinary care provision for dogs, owners, and veterinary teams alike. As well as providing emotional support for animals, Tam is keen to optimise human workplace mental and emotional health and has researched and authored a book, ‘Emotional Well-being for the Animal Welfare Professional'.     Link to Tamsin's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Well-being-Welfare-Professionals-Concise/dp/1789247799 Link to register interest in DOGX 2024: https://www.pact-dogs.com/dogx2024/

Representative from Dogs Trust Ireland, Corina Fitzsimons

Share Your Food With Your Dog The "Dog Food Dude," Rick Woodford is back. He says you should share your food with your dog. But doesn't that go against everything we've been taught about proper nutrition? No, not if you're doing it right. Listen Now New York May Be First State to Ban De-clawing If Linda Rosenthal has her way; New York will be the first state to make it illegal to declaw a cat. The Manhattan assemblywoman has introduced a bill to ban the controversial procedure sometimes called de-knuckling because it's actually the entire knuckle, which is the last bone in the cat's toe that is removed. Declawing of cats is already banned in many countries, including Australia, India, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as seven cities in California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Listen Now The Comeback of the Doghouse Ask most pet owners and they'll tell you their dog sleeps in bed with them. The days of the doghouse seem to have all but disappeared. But Larry Hobbs has a booming business making high-end Eco-friendly doghouses. He'll explain why. Listen Now UK's Dogs Must Be Microchipped Beginning in April, all dogs in England, Scotland & Wales will have to be microchipped with their owners' details registered and kept up to date in huge database to encourage "responsible pet ownership." To help people get it done, Dogs Trust, the UK's largest dog welfare charity, is offering free microchipping. It's hoped that "Compulsory microchipping will help reduce the number of lost and abandoned dogs and it will allow authorities to directly identify dog owners and hold them accountable for their dogs' behavior and welfare. Listen Now Dog Loses 100-pounds At the beginning of a new year, everyone makes a resolution to lose weight. Well, Buddy the dog has a jump on all of us after losing more than 100 pounds. Buddy the 180-pound, 6-year-old, morbidly obese Australian Shepherd spent the last 9 months dieting and now weighs 71 lbs. He lost so much weight that he underwent skin removal surgery. Listen Now Read more about this week's show.

Clare people are being reminded that puppies are forever, not just for Christmas. A Kilrush vet is reminding people interested in getting a pet this festive season to do their homework and be aware of the investment needed. Dogs Trust recieved 394 requests from members of the public, from Christmas Day to the end of January this year, asking to surrender their dogs. Shannon Treaty Veterinary Clinic's John Garrahy says people need to realise they are making a commitment before they jump in.

1 in 7 Irish children are living in poverty. We talk to Susanne Rogers from Social Justice Ireland.A record number of dogs have been surrendered to shelters this year. Corina Fitzsimmons from Dogs Trust has advice on getting a rescue dog.Mervyn Taylor the CEO of Sage Advocacy wants to open a debate on how home help for the elderly should be funded.The annual Shoe Box Appeal with Team Hope is underway, we talk to Appeals Manager, Jonathan Douglas.Advice on how to be assertive from Joe Heffernan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We chat with Kosi (completing his hattrick of appearances on DNSYE) from the “And he takes that chance” podcast about all things Huddersfield. From the Neil Warnock inspired survival last season we hear a cautionary tale of ownership and football management misalignment, Donld Trump style ownership and a new manager already under pressure from a disenfranchised fanbase which saw around 1,000 fans leave at half time at their last away match.The Prediction league carries on its chaotic journey despite record levels of public apathy and even the cleaner in Kosi's office refuses to take any notice of the whole farce – frankly who can blame her!This week John takes a trip to the Dogs Trust and Jarvis and Ben recall everything they can remember about Huddersfield and Jarvis leaves us singing along to the other Jarvis Cocker!! Carl feels (not very) guilty about pushing for a points deduction for Jarvis from last week!Finally, Kosi reveals he's off to Portugal for a football weekend and we work out just how much we collectively don't know Liga Nos!COYH!This Podcast has been created and uploaded by Do Not Scratch Your Eyes. The views in this Podcast are not necessarily the views of talkSPORT.Huge thanks to all our Patreons:Chris Giannone,RichWFC2,Steve Holliman,Ian Ball,Paul Fiander Turner,Sean Gourley,Lee Anselmo,John Parslow,Mark von Herkomer,Neil Silverstein,Steve Brown,Dave Lavender,Kasey Brown,Nipper Harrison,Boyd Mayover,Colin Payne,Paul Riley,Gary Wood,Karl Campion,Kevin Kremen,The Big Le – Bofski,Greg Theaker,Malcolm Williams,Bryan Edwards,Peter Ryan,Jack Foster,Jason Rose,Michael Abrahams,Ian Bacon,Ken Green,Nick Nieuwland,Colin SmithAnt!!!!!& PDF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a very special Vet Times podcast - our 100th episode. The episode's host, Vet Times editor James Westgate, said: “I'd like to take this chance to thank you guys for listening over the years and helping us to reach this magnificent milestone . “To mark the occasion, we decided to do something a little bit different and a little bit special, so we're delving into the world of contextualised veterinary care – and to help us do that, we have assembled a panel of some of the leading vets in the charity sector.” Joining us in this episode are Alison Thomas, head of veterinary services at Blue Cross; RSPCA chief veterinary office Caroline Allen; Steve Howard, head of clinical services at PDSA; Dogs Trust deputy director Runa Hanaghan; and Maggie Roberts, director of feline welfare at Cats Protection. Image © pixstocker / Depositphotos.com

Vonna Nolan, Dog School Head Coach with Dogs Trust

Kathleen Murray, dog behavioral expert and Corina Fitzsimons, from Dogs Trust.

Stephanie Zikmann is a multi-award-winning holistic dog groomer and best selling author. Having founded The Holistic Grooming Academy in 2020, Stephanie spends most of her time tutoring professional groomers under her recognised accreditation in Holistic Grooming & Behaviour. With over 100 active students and 400 members, Stephanie is passionate about raising the bar of industry standards and is proud to be affiliated with various organisations including iPET, Dogs Trust, Welfare for Animals and The Groomers' Spotlight. Stephanie is also passionate about helping dog parents implement holistic grooming methods at home, and has helped over 500 dogs overcome their fear of grooming using her holistic approach.Resources and InformationThe Holistic Grooming Academy, https://courses.holisticgroomingacademy.com/Stephanie Zikmann, The Holistic Dog Groomer, https://www.stephaniezikmann.com/FaceBook and Instagram: @theholisticgroomingacademyStephanie Zikmann's booksThe Magic of Holistic Grooming - https://amzn.to/45Qdpjo (https://amzn.to/45Qdpjo)A Teacher's Guide to Low-Stress Grooming -  https://amzn.to/3sx7Rw2 (https://amzn.to/3sx7Rw2)'I Can Be A Dog Detective!' - https://amzn.to/3R2vero (https://amzn.to/3R2vero)Other ResourcesInternational School of Canine Psychology: https://www.theiscp.com/Sue Williamson, Taking the Grrr out of Grooming Dogs: https://www.takingthegrrr.co.uk/Barks & Bubbles, Staffordshire: https://www.barksandbubblesdoggroomingspa.com/CPDUK: https://cpduk.co.uk/Complimentary Medical Association: https://the-cma.org.uk/UK Rural Skills: https://ukruralskills.co.uk/iPET Network: https://www.ipetnetwork.co.uk/

A survey about dog breeds done by Dogs Trust has found that labradors are regarded as the most friendly dog and rottweilers are the most scary. Is this true or just good PR?Henry McKean went to find out...

Jack Horgan Jones, Political Reporter, The Irish Times and Corina Fitzsimons, PR & Communications Manager, Dogs Trust

Corina Fitzsimons, Communications Manager at Dogs Trust, discusses the huge rise in the number of dogs being euthanised and going stray.

According to Dogs Trust, the number of dogs being put to sleep has doubled in a year. Dogs Trust said the number of dogs entering pounds is also on the rise, from 4,165 in 2021 to 7,352 in 2022. Kieran Cuddihy was joined by PR & Communications Manager at Dogs Trust Ireland, Corina Fitzsimons to discuss...

Dogs Trust in the UK are warning parents of the risks when leaving young children alone with dogs. Last year in the UK 91% of dog bites to children under 14 years are from dogs known to the children in the home. Would you would leave your children alone unsupervised with your dog? Andrea was joined by Samantha Rawson Dog Trainer and Behaviourist, Elizabeth, a vet and other listeners to discuss...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by Nick Daniel, marketing director at Dogs Trust, and Denholm Scotford, sector head for technology, media, telecoms and entertainment at the market research agency Harris Interactive.Den breaks down the different aspects of a successful brand measured in Third Sector's recently released Charity Brand Index, from public awareness and familiarity with individual charities to perceptions of their distinctiveness and relevance.Nick explains how Dogs Trust has strengthened its brand in recent years, placing a heavy emphasis on positive messaging and cultivating a sense of uniqueness through its switch from blue to yellow to drive up public awareness for the charity.Later in the episode, Lucinda and Andy discuss the finding in Enthuse's latest Donor Pulse report that a sizeable proportion of donors are motivated to give in reaction to charities being criticised in the media.Do you have stories of people whose lives have been transformed for the better thanks to your charity? If so, we'd like to hear them! All it takes is a short voice message to be featured on this podcast. Email lucinda.rouse@haymarket.com for further information.Tell us what you think of the Third Sector Podcast! Please take five minutes to let us know how we can bring you the most relevant, useful content. To fill in the survey, click here.Read the transcript. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Victoria is a Veterinary Surgeon and Certified Coach experienced at resolving personal and professional challenges. Manager within Dogs Trust's veterinary team to provide the best possible care to dogs within UK-based rehoming centres, outreach and worldwide projects. I first met Victoria in her role as Lead Veterinarian for UKISAR where he is in charge of Coordinating a team of three vets to ensure high welfare standards, health and safety of the canine team during training exercises and international deployment.She is also a Trustee for the international development charity, PENHA, including leading a project to improve working animal welfare and community resilience in the Horn of Africa.Her other voluntary roles include mentoring disadvantaged women through Luminary Bakery. She has travelled to over 65 countries and worked in over 14 as a veterinary project manager, as well as teaching veterinary students and staff in developing countries.She has a wealth of knowledge and is one of my favourite friends to have as a guest on the podcast.You can connect with Victoria on LinkedIn by clicking HEREPlease support the podcast and its future by clicking HERE and joining our Patreon CrewA big thanks to our partners for supporting this episode.GORE-TEX Professional ClothingHAIX Footwear Support the ongoing work of the podcast by clicking HEREPlease subscribe to the podcast on YoutubeEnter our monthly giveaways on the following platformsFacebookInstagramPlease support the podcast and its future by clicking HERE and joining our Patreon Crew

Title:  Dog show called off again in Manchester over ear cropsSource: The BBCDate: 06 April 2023Summary An international dog show run by the American Bully Kennel Club (ABKC) UK has been canceled for the section time due to concerns about animal welfare.Situation:The ABKC UK Bully Festival, an international dog show, was supposed to be held earlier this year in a city called Coventry, northwest of London.After a BBC investigation into animal welfare, which showed American bully-type dogs with cropped ears winning awards, the venue in Coventry terminated its agreement with ABKC UK.The BBC investigation also involved a journalist secretly filming inside the home of an ABKC-qualified judge, in which they found 2 10-week puppies in a cage (“crate??”) with freshly cropped ears. Ear-cropping was a "painful process where a dog's outer ears are removed altogether or are surgically altered, with the tips or huge sections of the outer ear being cut off."The practice has been called "cruel" and "mutilation" by welfare organizations and is illegal in the UK under the Animal Health and Welfare Act.ProblemAs a result of this cancellation, the ABCK UK Bully festival was set to take place in Manchester on Saturday, April 8th.However, the venue, Bowlers Exhibition Centre, ultimately decided to cancel the event "after careful consideration and extensive consultation with local authorities, police, and the RSPCA.” according to a spokesperson.The RSPCA  (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), which has seen incidents of ear-cropping rise in recent years, was pleased about this cancellation after raising their concerns with the venue.Dr. Samantha Gaines, from the charity, remarked, “Sadly, despite [being illegal and cruel], too many people still think this is a desirable cosmetic trait and inflict this on dogs for no other reason than for the look." ActionThe ABKC dog show organizer Sean Main maintains he's done nothing illegal and was quoted as saying, “It is not illegal for a dog with cropped ears to be imported into the country," - but to me, there are plenty of things that are legal and probably shouldn't be…ResultFun fact - The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which is currently going through Westminster, would prohibit the import of dogs with cropped ears.It has received cross-party support and backing from organizations, including the RSPCA, Dogs Trust, and British Veterinary Association.Facts about the RSPCA:The RSPCA is funded primarily by voluntary donations. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest and largest animal welfare organization in the world.Controversy - fundraising in Scotland, political lobbying regarding badger culling, people upset that they allow euthanasia.“The RSPCA is working for a world where no rehome able animal is put to sleep. Currently, the RSPCA accepts, with great reluctance, that in certain circumstances, euthanasia may be necessary when the animal is not rehomed able, because it is sick or injured, for behavioral reasons, or occasionally because there are no appropriate homes available and the animal would therefore endure long-term suffering through deprivation of basic needs.[87]” but euthanized 205 healthy horses in  2014.https://www.unityoffairfax.org/content/tao-te-ching-chapter-38Closing Where you can find us at https://www.facebook.com/peopleswolfpodhttps://www.instagram.com/thepeopleswolfpodcast/peopleswolfpod@gmail.comMusic Produced by: WaresdannyIG: @waresdanny, Website: https://waresdanny.bandzoogle.com/home

Jacqui Honess-Martin's brilliant ITV drama, Maternal, centres on three female doctors going back to work after having children and our Jen bloody loves it. As well as exploring mumhood and female friendship, it's also a warts-and-all look at the NHS, so Jen and Jacqui chat dodgy temperatures, dodgy infrastructure, and why it's not helpful to put the NHS on a pedestal. Hannah's been on the Zoom with Rachel Casey, Director of Canine Behaviour and Research at Dogs Trust, to talk about the cost of living crisis, how it's affecting pet owners and what can be done to keep pets with their owners.In Jenny Off The Blocks, even Alex Morgan doesn't understand FIFA, while in Rated or Dated, Hannah and Mick's forthcoming trip to Rome could be on the rocks following a discussion of who's the real prick in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. And in the Bush Telegraph, there's abhorrent nonsense in America, abhorrent nonsense over here, but some potentially good news from Australia. A heads up that this is a particularly C-bomb heavy episode, but, y'know, with good cause as ever.*If you are struggling to look after your dog and need support, if you're interested in fostering or adopting a dog, or if you want to make a donation, you can find out more at the Dogs Trust website https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Corina Fitzsimons, Dogs Trust on the number of people asking them to take their dogs since Christmas

Bobby stopped into Dogs Trust: Dog Rescue & Rehoming Charity on Ashbourne Road in Finglas to discuss how their rehoming and rescue operations work, welcoming dogs into the workplace, and just how fulfilling having a dog in our lives can be.

Dogs Trust Ireland has taken in 54 puppies in less than three weeks -- including eight 10-day-old puppies who need round the clock care. Ciara Murran, head of communications with Dogs Trust Ireland, spoke with the programme.

Corina Fitzsimons, PR and Communications Manager for Dogs Trust is speaking to Niall about the massive influx of dogs that Dogs Trust are receiving See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Corina Fitzsimons, PR and Communications Manager for Dogs Trust is speaking to Niall about the massive influx of dogs that Dogs Trust are receiving  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this weeks 'How To' slot we're looking at adopting or getting a dog. Sean was joined in studio by Ciara Murran, Head of Communications at Dogs Trust...

The animal charity, Dogs Trust, says it's receiving eight requests a day to take in unwanted dogs, with more than 1,700 surrender requests so far this year. Eimear Cassidy is Regional Rehoming Manager for Dogs Trust.

Dogs Trust have appealed for employers to offer compassionate leave for employees on the death of a pet. The Liveline phonelines lit up over this on Gift Grub this morning and Joe Duffy heard from dog-lover Michael D Higgins and other listeners. Budgies, bees and plants were all up for discussion!

Animal charity, Dogs Trust, has outlined more details regarding its proposal to have employers offer compassionate leave to workers who are grieving the loss of a pet. A campaign is now underway to bring this about, with the charity suggesting a day's paid leave be available for those whose pets die

Should employers be offering paid compassionate leave for the death of a pet? Becky Bristow, executive director of Dogs Trust joined the Last Word to discuss. Catch the full chat by pressing the Play button on this page.

Vonna Nolan from Dogs Trust is speaking to Niall about how we can get our pets through Halloween safely. Click on the link to check out all this advice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.