The veterinary treatment crisis goes on...

Wood Green Animal Shelters are trying to publicise the dire situation of animals whose owners have no means of paying for necessary treatment:

Wood Green, The Animals Charity is being forced to turn away more than 14 pets in need of veterinary care every week because their owners have neglected to insure them.

The Charity is receiving daily requests to treat issues including broken legs, jaws, ear infections, skin disorders and dental problems of dogs, cats and rabbits because pet owners cannot afford the treatment.

We had a call this morning from someone in Sawtry (sadly well outside our clinic catchment area) who'd been given our details by Wood Green in the desperate hope that we could do something to help them, and another request via the shelter for help with neutering.

A collie was abandoned at another vet, almost certainly because her owners knew they couldn't possibly pay the cost of her treatment.

Personally I am haunted by some of the calls I've received where owners beg and plead for us to help their pets.

The bottom line is that we can't put the existence of our clinic at risk to help people who could have saved their pets by taking the minimal action of getting them registered and therefore making them eligible for low-cost out of hours treatment from our own veterinary provider.

Our of hours emergency treatment at private vets is now hugely expensive and we simply cannot currently afford even the comparatively small (£100-£150!) cost of emergency euthanasia if we're going to end up paying it two or three times each week.

Before we can consider reinstating help of any kind at private vets we have to raise enough funds to be certain of the clinic's long-term viability, and that means we have to build a proper fundraising team.

If you can help, please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

We're now gearing up for RSPCA week, which is our single biggest fundraising event of the year, when we have permission to collect outside all 7 major Tesco stores in our branch area. Every extra person willing to give a couple of hours to collect means £20-£40 raised to help suffering animals.

Please consider whether you can spare those hours this year.