She Started Rescuing Dogs Back In 1943, And She Saved Around 500 Or 600 Four-Legged Friends In Her Lifetime
Have you ever wished you could care for as many stray or rescue dogs as possible? As a dog lover, I know that whenever I see a dog needing a home, I wish I could take it into my care.
Well, one woman who lived in England decades ago did precisely that.
If you’re an animal lover, perhaps you’ve heard of Kate Ward, otherwise known as ‘Camberley Kate,’ the English woman who paraded the streets of Camberley with spare dogs she took into her care.
In 1943, Kate Ward moved into a cottage in Yorktown, Camberley. Not long after moving in, she noticed a little dog on the front steps of a vet’s office that was about to be put down because of an injury. She took him into her home and gave him a lovely life.
Little did Kate know that dog would be the first of hundreds of stray and abandoned dogs she would take in.
Word got around that Kate was willing to take in homeless dogs in honor of the first dog she rescued, and before long, people began dropping them off at her house, and she’d continue to rescue them from off the street.
Kate took care of all the dogs herself and received donations for supplies from supportive community members.
In a documentary BBC made on Kate’s life, a local veterinarian who offered her support stated that the dogs Kate took in were extremely well groomed and fed and were very healthy, even more so than the average pet dogs he’d seen.
The dogs needed their exercise, so every day, Kate would walk tons of dogs at once. She had an olive green cart on which she painted the words ‘ward stray dogs.’
Nataliya_Ost – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual dog
Some dogs would ride in the cart, others stayed on leashes, and a few were well-behaved enough to follow behind Kate off-leash.
Although Kate received much support from her community, some residents complained that the dogs off-leash were dangerous and that she messed up local traffic whenever she paraded the dogs through town.
However, she would protest every accusation against her and defend her pups, even against the local city council.
Over the course of her life, Kate took in around 500-600 dogs. They all lived an average of 16 years and had very happy lives. She named each one of them and could tell each of them apart.
Kate received her nickname, ‘Camberley Kate,’ from historian Sir Arthur Bryant when he wrote about her in his book, “The Lion and the Unicorn.”
Kate took care of dogs until her final days in the late 1970s. She had seven dogs left in her care when she fell ill after a series of strokes and health problems.
They were sent to shelters when she went to live out her final days in a care facility and passed away in August of 1979 at 84. A statue of a sleeping dog guards her gravestone, which reads, “devoted friend of animals” under her name.
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