Meet Fiona: Doggie Travel Agent and Agony Aunt

It all started with a ski holiday!

When Fiona asked her 3 year old son, Ollie, if he’d like to learn to ski, she had no idea this would lead to her co-founding a dog rescue charity and becoming a Doggie Travel Agent and Agony Aunt.

Starlight Barking’s Greek Rescue Dogs

Here are some of the first Greek dogs which Starlight Barking rescued. They have a lot to thank Ollie for!

Starlight Barking – Supporting Rescue Dogs

In the early 90s, Fiona had been our reservations manager for both Snowbizz and Sunbizz, a teletext travel agency specialising in Greece.

Following young Ollie’s success at skiing with Snowbizz in Puy St Vincent, Fiona brought her “proud mum” photos for me to see.

Celebrating over a glass of Prosecco for Ollie – and strangely, but definitely, it was only one – Fiona, (now a fully qualified doggie travel agent) and I sat reminiscing about our teletext days. These were the pre-internet days when travel agents used a clunky old thing called Viewdata, which constantly froze mid-booking.

Ancient Greece – Dog Rescue

This was when I would break into monologues to our Sunbizz reservations team about my days as a young rep in Greece in the 80s. I had some hilarious stories (well I thought so!), about life before direct flights where we all used to pile into Athens to meet the Gatwick night flight and be left to our own devices.  Ferries and storms permitting, we got our guests, the pioneers of package travel, back to their holiday islands in under 24 hours but there were very many mini-disasters too.

This all led on to the very sad stories about unwanted puppies tied up in plastic bags and left on the rubbish dump to die. And the number of us reps, from rival companies, who became friends through our love of the stray dogs and cats which we helped rescue together.

Today you can be door to door from the UK to Mykonos, Santorini or Zante in just over 3 hours, unlike the probable 24 hour journey of the 80s.  But nothing at all has changed for the animals.

There are still some wonderful Greeks, ex-pats and reps doing their utmost, but by the end of our glass of, by now very warm, Prosecco, Fiona and I decided they needed our help.

We set up the Starlight Barking Trust in 2016 and achieved charity status in March 2017. Our aim is to link up all the rescue heroes worldwide to become a fighting force and help animals everywhere have a brighter, cruelty free future. We hope that you will join us.

Together we have the power to make a massive difference!

#dogrescue #warmprosecco #doggietravelagent

Watch out for next week’s post: Day in the Life of a Doggie Travel Agent and Agony Aunt!