Text 1: Tuesday mornings with the kennel dogs, by Hannah Feltham

An original contemporary blog.

Every Tuesday I swap my office for a pair of wellies and spend the morning at Greenhill Dog Rescue, on the edge of Swindon. There are forty kennels, and most weeks every one is full.

The first job is breakfast. Each dog has a card on its door listing its food, any medicine and whether it gets on with other dogs, so feeding forty takes longer than you’d think. Then the cleaning: every kennel is hosed, scrubbed and given fresh bedding before the dogs come back from their walks.

Walking is the part I love. We take the dogs out one at a time along a field path, partly for exercise and partly so the staff can learn their characters. Rolo, a nervous lurcher who came in last month, wouldn’t leave his bed at first. This week he trotted beside me the whole way and then lay down for a tummy rub in the long grass.

Every new arrival is checked by the vet, vaccinated, neutered and microchipped before it can be rehomed. Strays brought in by the council warden are scanned first, in case an owner can be traced. If no owner comes forward, the team spends weeks matching each dog with the right family. Nobody here is ever put down for lack of space. They wait as long as it takes.

Text 2: A letter about a refuge for dogs, by Eleanor Pitcairn

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1872, a woman describes to her brother a visit to a refuge for stray dogs in Manchester.

My dear Arthur,

I have kept my promise and been to see the Dogs’ Refuge which Mrs Holt is forever begging us to support, and I must confess I came away a convert.

It stands in a narrow street near the canal, and you hear it long before you see it. Within there is a yard divided by iron railings into several pens, the large dogs in one, the small in another, and a separate kennel for any that are sick. The animals are brought in chiefly by the police, who find them wandering in the streets, and many arrive in a pitiable state, half starved and covered with sores.

The keeper, a kindly man named Pollitt, feeds them once a day upon biscuit and boiled horseflesh, and they have clean straw and water. Each dog is kept for five days in case its owner should come to claim it, which, Pollitt says, happens far more often than one would suppose. Those not claimed are sold for a few shillings to anyone who can show they will give them a good home.

The poor creatures that are too old or too savage to be sold are destroyed, painlessly, by a means I did not care to ask about. It seemed a hard end, and yet a kinder one than starving in a gutter.

Your loving sister,

Eleanor

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how the stray dogs were looked after.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.