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About Collie Rescue Network


Our mission is to find homes for all Collies who find themselves, for whatever reason, homeless and in need of assistance.  We take Collies into our rescue program from shelters all over Canada as well as from owners who can no longer care for their beloved dogs.

Collie Rescue Network has NO kennel facilities and instead relies on the foster care system. Collies in our care stay with a foster family, living indoors as part of the family, until their furever adoptive families are found.

All “staff” at CRN are volunteers. All money raised by CRN goes directly into the rescue fund which in turn helps to pay the bills incurred by the Collies while in the care of the rescue.  Currently, the adoption fee for any dog adopted through Collie Rescue Network is $500, while our average cost per dog while in our care is over $700. The adoption fee helps to off-set some of the costs incurred but we also reply heavily on funds donated by the general public, as well as funds raised at various fundraisers held throughout the year.

All dogs adopted through Collie Rescue Network will have, at minimum, the following vetting done prior to being adopted by your family and all vet records will be provided to you at the time of adoption:



Our Mission Statement:

Collie Rescue Network is a national not-for-profit organization established to provide for the rescue and care of Rough and Smooth Collies in Canada that have been abandoned, surrendered, lost, neglected or abused. Our goal is to place each and every Collie that enters our rescue program into a carefully screened, approved home where they will be loved and cherished as a member of the family for the rescue of their lives.


We cannot do this without YOU!

Find out how you can help on our Volunteer page!


How Collie Rescue Network came to be:

The Collie in the CRN logo!

The Collie in CRN’s logo is Jake and he is why Collie Rescue Network exists today. I adopted Jake from the Kitchener-Waterloo Humane Society in 1996. My husband had always had Collies but I'd always had mixed breeds, adopted from shelters. Shortly after we moved to Waterloo I talked my husband into going to the local Humane Society to check if there was a good match for us. Imagine our surprise when we found a 7-year-old Blue Merle Rough Collie sitting there!

He had been seriously neglected; much too thin with his coat in terrible shape and his skin so bad it smelled like it was rotting in places. He had obviously been abused as he would duck and flinch when you would do things like move the broom or raise your arms. Jake, however, was the sweetest, most gentle soul I've ever met and no matter what his past, he just loved people and wanted nothing more in life than a soft place to lay his head, a butt scratch and to follow me from room to room all day long.

Jake had never been indoors but lots of hotdog chunks later he’d mastered the stairs. I will admit, Jake never fully figured out the housetraining end of things no matter what we tried. He had number-two potty accidents in the house multiple times a week and I don’t really know why other than he had odd potty habits all-around (he would not poop unless he was under a large tree, preferably with low-hanging branches, with his back end pushed up as close as possible to the trunk, with no one looking – if you were watching he’d try to move to the other side of the tree). But he was the most loving, most noble dog I had ever known and he had those sweet, gentle eyes that would just radiate love and acceptance when he looked at us and that alone eclipsed his quirks and faults (he forgave us ours, we certainly could forgive him his).


Jake taught me a lot, about Collies and about how fiercely you can love a dog, and because of him I fell in love with the breed. Jake was My Boy and he blessed us by sharing seven years of our lives together. Jake passed away just three days after my father-in-law and it was a numbing, terrible week of loss. My father-in-law was a wonderful man and it was because of him that my husband loved the Collie breed and it was thanks to Jake that my love for Collies was found. We were heartbroken.

Murdo MacDonald

1937 - 2003

A few weeks later I approached my husband with the thought that we might do some kind of volunteer work in memory of Murdo (my father-in-law) and Jake. John’s only caveat that was we volunteered with animals; he often half-jokingly says he likes animals far better than most people as a rule. I’d only recently learned about the rescue world and so I went online to find the Collie Club of Canada where I found the email of Karen Fairbairn, the then CCC president. I sent her a note saying we’d like to foster Collies but very shortly afterwards received a note back from Karen saying that while Collie rescue was happening in Canada, there was no organized national rescue group per se....but wouldn’t it be lovely if there were? And I, being naive and ever the optimist, thought, yes, yes there should be and really, how hard could it possibly be to start and run a rescue? Yes, I know. I did say I was naive!

In late 2003 I started doing research and in June of 2004, Collie Rescue Network was born! To say Collie Rescue Network has grown since that day would be such an understatement. Because of Jake, the Collie in the CRN logo, that dirty, matted, sad, old boy sitting in the Kitchener-Waterloo Humane Society back in 1996, there have now been hundreds of Collies who have found loving families to spend their new furever lives with.

As each new volunteer arrives at Collie Rescue Network and as each rescued Collie finds his or her new family to help complete, I’m always so grateful that Jake was there that day, waiting for us to find him and bring him home so he could teach me what I needed to know and to lead me to where I needed to be in order to create CRN and to meet all of you that enable it to be where we are today!As each new volunteer arrives at Collie Rescue Network and as each rescued Collie finds his or her new family to help complete, I’m always so grateful that Jake was there that day, waiting for us to find him and bring him home so he could teach me what I needed to know and to lead me to where I needed to be in order to create CRN and to meet all of you that enable it to be where we are today!


Heartfelt Thanks to the hundreds and hundreds of people who have turned Collie Rescue Network into the family we have become.