Protecting animals from suffering

Call last night from the daughter of an gentleman in great distress because his elderly jack russell was in great pain to the extent that he wasn't able to pick the dog up. These situations always seem to happen at weekends and, quite apart from the increased financial cost of getting out of hours treatment, very few vets are now able to make home visits. Sadly this is a reflection of the times we live in, and the potential liability of their employers if staff members are attacked or injured during a call-out. We were fortunate that Royston Veterinary Centre is one of the few local vets who still do call-outs in their area and that they don't use another veterinary practice for their out of hours cover.

We keep statistics of the numbers of animals which are put to sleep at branch expense and these are reported annually in the combined Annual Report of the society, together with the numbers of animals rehomed or given veterinary treatment. Euthanasia tends to be seen as a situation where the RSPCA has failed to help an animal and I believe we need to challenge this. It certainly is a failure of animal welfare if healthy animals who should have their lives ahead of them are put to sleep. We have not failed when we ensure that animals who have reached the end of their natural lives are released from suffering and indignity instead of dying in pain and fear.

Gratitude

To Haidee Barker of Arbury road vets for very kindly offering to look after the stray with the bad head abscess over the weekend while he still needed daily dressing changes - a really enormous help for us.

Also to Stone Lane vets who took in another stray tom late on Saturday morning, when it would have been virtually impossible to move him anywhere, and helpfully agreed to hold him over until Monday and neuter him before we try to get him into cattery or foster care. It will be much easier for our fosterers to cope with him if he's starting to lose that pungent tom-cat smell.

He's yet another tom who almost certainly had a home originally, but started to wander in search of females, and then was picked up as an injured stray because of a bite abscess. This is one reason why we offer low-cost neutering and neutering vouchers to anyone on state benefits. It not only reduces the production of unwanted kittens, but it also helps to decrease the number of adult males who are handed in to us as injured strays.

Vets!

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The map above shows the full horror of our interaction with local vets. We have dealings with all of those shown; some on a day-to-day basis, others very occasionally. Each surgery will have several vets, nurses and reception staff, and there is no way all of them can remember our standard procedures, or how to contact the right person to ask for financial help for one of their clients.