It has been another challenging year but, as always, the DiD volunteer Team and our extended Family of Dane lovers made it a successful one!

Brief Recap of 2013 monthly highlights:

• January: We accomplished a successful launch of our totally rewritten web site after the previous one was crippled by hackers in November of 2012.
• February: The legal issue for Scoobie was finalized, and ownership title was transferred to DiD after 3 years of legal/lawyer costs, multiple court hearings and many sleepless nights.
• March: With the ever-increasing number of Danes coming into rescue, we decided to start re-structuring, recruited new volunteers and started their training.
• April: After a 5-month dry spell, our food supply for fostered Danes became available again, eliminating the need to purchase this at retail prices.
• May: Our first Dane-a-Thon was a huge success. We set new records for attendance and donations to help pay vet costs for many of the sick, injured Danes we had taken in.
• June: A busy month, taking in more Danes and processing the 17 we had in foster homes.
• July: The integration of more new Area coordinators and total re-structuring was started. We brought many, new, enthusiastic people on to the Team as Area Coordinators.
• August: The decision was made to make our Fall Dane-a-Thon more interesting by approaching new vendors and groups to participate. BRB K9 Services Inc., owned by Sherri Davis, agreed to come on board as our official training resource and participate in the upcoming event.
• September: Our second annual Dane-a-Thon was another huge success despite 13°C weather, with Morgan, the world’s tallest female dog, in attendance as well as Sherri and the BRB K9 Training team who put on a spectacular obedience show.
• October: November: More new Area Coordinators joined us, lending new perspectives, strengths and enthusiasm to our rescue efforts.
• November: In addition to regular intakes, we took in two Danes which no other rescue would help because of the anticipated vetting costs in each case ($4,000 +), got them the necessary procedures and healthy again.
• December: Tina rejoined us as a Board Member/Vice president, and five new members joined our Board to bring us up to full complement again.

Throughout this whirlwind of a year, we successfully re-homed many Great Danes who can happily spend Christmas in their new, loving homes.

A huge ‘Thank You’ goes to each and every one of the dedicated volunteers who helped give so many Danes another chance and allowed us to continue building DiD into an even stronger organization. We currently have a fantastic group of people working with us for a common goal – helping Great Danes, and look forward to working with all of you over the coming year.

Our different talents are what make us strong, allowing us to overcome challenges and continue saving our favourite breed!!!

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year.