A COMPUTER hacker has wrecked any chance scores of abandoned pets had of finding a new home over the Christmas holidays.

About 50 of the 70 dogs being cared for by members of Saltburn Animal Rescue Association (Sara) feature on a rehoming page on the charity's website.

But the animals' details have been scrambled and the website, www. s-a-r-a.org.uk, was defaced.

Sara volunteers and members of Save Our Strays, SOS, are holding their annual dog viewing day at the Bandstand, Saltburn, on January 8.

Anne Prosser, Sara chairwoman said: "We hope the viewing day will compensate."

Volunteers were stunned by the damage done to Sara's website. They said they must not allow the hacker to win.

The association has so far raised £230,000 in its campaign to build an animal shelter.

Mrs Prosser said: "I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, I really have not got a clue. But we have so much goodwill and support from people, we can't let some sick individual spoil that.

"The website will just have to be rebuilt, which is a nuisance because this is an important time of the year. We have a lot of dogs needing re-homing in the new year.

Pam Hildreth, who runs the website, said the whole site had been wiped out.

"We are all very upset about it, especially as we had it set up for people to browse at all our puppies over the holiday period," she said.

"We may need to rebuild the whole site, but that could be in the new year. We'll do our best to get it sorted out."