Friends Of Baxter Animal Care was set up in 2015 with the aim of creating a Rescue & Rehabilitation Centre, a Holistic Therapy Training facility and Veterinary Hospital by 2021. However, an inability to raise funds without Charity status and our refused application and subsequent appeal, by the Charity Commission, created an unsurmountable block. The impact of covid resulted in our planned rescue and fostering project being no longer viable too. By this time, requests for Animal Reiki treatments and training had become our most popular activity by a long way; additionally, my years of work driving professional standards and recognition for Animal Reiki Practitioners and training, led to the realisation that it was time to create a new strategy. 

Our goal ‘to see all animals being given the opportunity to receive natural and holistic complementary therapies’ is unchanged, but the means to achieve it will be streamlined. Friends Of Baxter Animal Care will now focus on the delivery of Animal Reiki training & promotion of Animal Reiki therapy sessions from Practitioners we have trained. Additionally, we will continue to offer free Reiki to animals in local rescue centres, especially in association with our increasingly popular training.

Our new way forward will still help animals directly and enable more Animal Reiki Practitioners to each benefit hundreds of animals themselves. Additionally, our trained Animal Reiki teachers can deliver our high level of training around the UK. This revised direction should enable us to spread Reiki and its calming effects to benefit a greater number of anxious, frightened and otherwise suffering animals. Funding is still very much needed, but it will be directed towards Animal Reiki Research for a longer-term benefit. Perhaps this was our mission all along, we just didn’t realise?

Funds that we have raised to date will go towards our research plans and we will continue to make small donations to selected animals and centres in desperate need of food, safety and basic needs.

Sue Malcolm
Founder of Friends Of Baxter Animal Care