Right, goodbye and good riddance to 2009. With the new year STAR is officially reopening (as opposed to unofficially as we have been the last few weeks!). We have, as planned, scaled down a bit to enable us to continue to recover from our rotten year and so that we can concentrate more on quality than quantity so space is still limited but we're back and determined to do as much as we can :)

Some of you might already be aware that, as a teenager, Dave had and was treated for cancer. He has had to go for regular check ups since then and, at his most recent, was given a CT scan. This revealed a growth and today it has been confirmed as a cancerous lymph gland related to his original cancer.

As you can imagine a second diagnosis of cancer is a pretty scary thing for us both. The good news is that it appears to be slow growing and contained in this one gland. The doctors seem confident that surgery alone will be enough to remove it and Dave won't have to go through more chemotherapy. However, the operation is fairly major and will require a weeks stay in hospital as well as a recovery time of around 6 weeks.

I'm sure you all know by now how important STAR is to us but at the moment our first priority has to be Dave. Without Dave there is no STAR so we must take time away for him to get better.

So we must now be absolutely closed to new admissions with no exceptions. This does NOT include animals homed by STAR who need to be returned, we will absolutely always be there for them no matter what but we cannot take on any new animals for now. There are still about 60 animals here so they are more than enough to keep us busy in the meantime.

This is a temporary thing but I suspect it's likely to last for the rest of 2009 realistically. I'll try to keep you updated on humans and animals here in the meantime via the blog.

Much love

Sarah & Dave