Thursday, December 20, 2012

Emergency Christmas Menu Ideas


Alarmed at the thought of entertaining vegetarian friends this Christmas? Some helpful ideas in this Kindle book from amazon.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

"RSPCA Generated"

Lola
“RSPCA Generated” is the concept that RSPCA branches and centres should give priority to animals "generated" by the work of the Society when setting admissions policies. 

This was a huge benefit to branches when it was introduced because it ended a situation whereby HQ run centres would preferentially accept very adoptable dogs, which were simply unwanted by their owners, and branches had to take a higher percentage of inspectors’ animals (because branches are responsible for animals taken in buy their local inspector or found as sick/injured strays in their area and HQ centres don't have formal responsibilities of this nature).
 
Concentrating on the more problematic animals meant higher boarding costs for branches and also made their raw rehoming statistics appear to show that they were very slow and inefficient at rehoming compared with HQ centres, because like was not being compared with like. Injured strays and neglected animals signed over to inspectors will normally take longer before they are fit enough to go to new homes and are also more likely to belong to breeds which are less popular with the general public. Freeing up space at HQ animal centres for animals signed over for welfare reasons took some of this load off branches. 

"RSPCA Generated" is also morally the right thing because if we have made a decision to take an animal out of their current situation it is our responsibility to find a suitable placement.

The downside of this is that sticking to “RSPCA Generated” absolutely strictly means our branch sometimes has to turn away easily adoptable animals whilst still being unable to take on the very expensive traffic accident cases. This probably makes it more difficult to home the animals we do admit because potential adopters who are attracted by photos of cute kittens may go on to adopt an older cat or dog. Healthy kittens and puppies cost us very little because they can usually be placed with foster homes and having them increases interest in and support for the branch.