Success stories
Find out more about our success stories.
Steps to adopt a dog
1. Find your dog!
Please have a look at the dogs we have available for adoption on our website. Let us know if one catches your eye and you would like more information.
2. Complete an adoption application
Complete an adoption application for the dog you are interested in. Mention any other dogs you are interested in and we’ll contact you within 1 week to continue the process. Please note we are very busy, please don’t complete another application if you don’t hear from us, we will be in touch soon!
3. Homecheck and telephone assessment
We will arrange a home check and a telephone assessment before we reserve a dog. This is imperative to confirm which dogs would be most suitable for your home environment. Once we receive feedback from the home checker, we can confirm the suitability of the dog you have chosen on our website or alternatively we can help you to choose a different dog.
4. Pay adoption fee and reserve your dog
The adoption fee for one of our dogs is £400 which covers essentials such as the pet passport, neutering, vaccinations, blood tests, worm and flea treatments, chip, passport preparation, and transportation fee. You can pay the adoption fee online via credit or debit card, bank transfer, PayPal or cheque. Once we receive the adoption fee, we will reserve your dog. We arrange the transportation with HOPE4PAWS Pet Transport on your behalf to ensure the process is smooth and as stress-free as possible for you.
5. Contract
We ask that you sign our Adoption Contract. As part of this contract, ROLDA offers a lifetime of back-up and support for your dog. If for any reason the dog needs to be rehomed we must be involved.
7. Resting period then onwards journey or collection
Once the dog arrives in the UK, he or she is brought directly to the adopters home. There is a 48 hour ‘resting’ period where your dog needs to remain at your home, which allows UK inspectors to visit should they decide to.
Baxter
My husband and I drove to Essex, nervous and excited to meet the little boy Baxter whom we had been dreaming about for weeks. The adoption process was very easy (Gemma made sure we were kept updated every step of the way) and now it was time!! We had no idea what to expect or how to behave with him. Suddenly this little black and white scrap came out of the kennels, clearly very frightened and nervous but with a furiously wagging tail. He was lovely. He wasn’t happily going into the car but once I got into the back seat with him, he cuddled in and seemed quite happy with me stroking him. After a long journey, we arrived home and gave him the space he needed as Gemma had advised us to do. To our surprise he settled really quickly, jumping onto the settee to sit next to us and cuddling up. He was clean in the house from day one and within a week he was completely at ease although he did need a lot of reassurance from us and was always checking that we were near. He had to get used to the TV noise and he would freak out and run into the garden terrified when we put down the door of our double oven, but apart from that there were no unusual incidents.
A month on and he is the most adorable, loving well-tempered little dog you could ever imagine. He loves other dogs, cats, and children although sometimes he is a bit tentative initially. He is such a happy friendly little chap and we cannot imagine our lives without him. When you look into his eyes you can see trust loyalty and unconditional love.
If you are considering a rescue, go for it. It was the best and most rewarding thing we have ever done in our lives.
If you are considering a rescue, go for it. It was the best and most rewarding thing we have ever done in our lives.
Raisa
Raisa is very intelligent and learns quickly. She now understands that she doesn’t have to grab at all the food and treats. She knows being number three means she only has to wait in turn to get her share of everything. She will sit, stay and wait until told she can start her dinner. She still often takes the last mouthful of biscuits away to eat somewhere else. She’s also mastered the cat flap so doesn’t have to wait for someone to open the door. I can’t get Isla and Addy to do that eventhough they’re smaller! Her favourite toy is a squeaky tennis ball which she likes to chase and retrieve and will drop the ball at your feet to be thrown again (can’t get the Yorkies to do that!). When she’s had enough of that she likes to sit and squeak it continuously. She is walking very well on a lead and enjoys road walks with another new friend (a Jack Russell) that walks with her owner too. We run a social centre here (Monday – Friday) for a small number of elderly people, they all love Raisa and she gets on very well with all of them especially the ones that come bearing treats! Our oldies have trouble pronouncing her name so she has become Rosa, she doesn’t seem to have noticed!”
Conan
We have had Bertie nearly a year now. We adopted him from Rolda just before Christmas of last year. I admire the work that the organisation is trying to do in the face of adversity. Originally I spotted him on the Rolda website and just loved his face, although he seemed to have a long, short body like a Basset Hound and the head and colourings of a Collie! Anyway. Gemma who looks after Rolda adoptees in the UK arranged for Bertie to come to the UK and the rest is history. He is a calm, laid back dog, that fits in with my other rescue dogs as one of the pack. I got the impression at first that he had been kept outside in Romania as he sat outside the back door and I had to persuade him to come in with a treat. He still waits to be invited in but now trots in quite readily. Quite an endearing little trait! There are so many stray dogs in Romania looking for homes that are just wandering the streets as the tendency there is for them to be abandoned if they are no longer wanted or the owner dies. I would therefore implore people to look at the Rolda website page and find it in their hearts to give one of these poor dogs a try.
Tiggy
“When we first saw Tiggy on the day we collected her, she was quite a bit smaller than we realised; she had to be carried out from the kennel as the collar we had bought for her was miles too big! She was trembling but wagged her tail as we made a fuss of her, and she rested her head against me as I carried her to the car. She became comfortable around us very quickly. While she seemed to settle in fairly quickly at home, and got the hang of doing her business in the garden after only a few days (which I thought was good for a dog that had probably never been inside a house before), there was clearly still some anxiety for the first couple of weeks. She spent a lot of time in her bed (her little ‘safe place’), and didn’t enjoy going for walks at all, perhaps as she worried she wouldn’t be able to come back home again? She was very wary of other people and dogs that we met in the street, either growling defensively or hiding behind our legs, and became very nervous of people who visited the house as well. We started to think we would need to get some professional input, but after a few weeks, she really gained in confidence. She began to get excited at the word ‘walkies!’ and being presented with the leash, and she now loves her walks.
She is much less nervous about meeting new people both in and out of the house, and she will boldly approach most dogs and try to play with them. She has recently started ‘scenting’ whilst out on walks in order to communicate with the local dogs, so she clearly feels at home in the area now. She is a very loving, affectionate dog and such a little character, and we are happy that we have been able to enrich both her life and ours by giving her a home with us. I would recommend to anyone thinking of adopting a dog to do so through ROLDA.”