Ouch!

This does look sore, although I imagine they selected the most dramatic case they could find to get a good photo. Having seen it, I have a better understanding of the drama surrounding a clinic client whose dog has the condition, and which I hope and trust will very soon be sorted out.

Vaginal prolapse looks very dramatic (which is why the owner's neighbours kept making complaints to us about it in spite of the fact that she had taken the dog to our clinic).

It resolves itself spontaneously between heats (so there's a bit of a tendency for an owner who is very pushed for cash to give a sigh of relief and hope it's gone away naturally).

It can't easily be surgically treated while the bitch is still in heat (the safest treatment is to spay her between seasons and put in some stitches to make sure the remaining vaginal tissue stays put where it ought to be).

Taxi drivers recoil in horror and won't have the bitch in their vehicles (so it's very difficult for a very low-income owner to actually get her to a vet for diagnosis and treatment).

Hardly any vets will do home-visits nowadays. We are extremely lucky that Clarendon St vets in Cambridge and Royston Veterinary Centre will do call-outs in their local area.

Collar injuries again

Just as Grace and Madison were having their re-checks at the clinic, there was a frantic phone-call from a clinic client who had just found her cat in a shed, caught by her collar, after being missing for three weeks. Amazingly the cat was still alive, but her frantic struggles to free herself had embedded the collar in the flesh under her foreleg. The vet on duty sent her straight over to the hospital, where they'll probably have the cat on a drip over the weekend to rehydrate her and do the surgery to remove the remains of the collar and stitch the wound on Monday.

Apologies to anyone with one of our collecting boxes

I've been dilatory about getting the boxes in Cambridge emptied and counted because of the number of cats I'm currently fostering and needing to take to and from the vet on Saturdays. I hope normal service will be resumed (as they say) as soon as possible.

Peter is doing sterling work overseeing collecting boxes in the Newmarket area. If you have a shop or other suitable location for an RSPCA collecting box in that area, please email Lorna (newmarket@rspcabookshop.co.uk) and she'll pass on the message.

Back to Square One

Bother! It turns out that I do not possess any identification which NatWest will accept as proof of identity for the purpose of opening an interest-bearing deposit account to run alongside the branch's current account. 

This is not a complete disaster as they are prepared to open an account with three other branch trustees as signatories. I could operate this by filling in the transfer slips and getting the others to sign to authorise them. Fortunately there seems to be no question of withdrawing my ability to sign cheques for payment from the current account — which must be a relief to the 20-odd veterinary practices we deal with. It's aggravating, though, as it means we are back to square one with the multi-page form to open the deposit account. 

The conversation with the NatWest employee was pure farce, as the poor woman grew progressively more desperate with suggestions about possible suitable sources of ID: firearms certificate? Wait fifteen years until I have a pension book? Certificate of naturalisation? Learn to drive (provisional license won't do)?

At least our funds are in a bank that shows no signs of dying on us, although I would be happier if I could speed up the process of splitting them up into £50,000 chunks in separate organisations so that all the money was covered by the savings guarantee.

Website Statistics

According to Google Analytics, our main site www.rspca-cambridge.org.uk is averaging just over a thousand unique visitors per month, mostly roughly evenly split between searchers interested in the rehoming pages and ones looking for information on help with the cost of veterinary treatment. 

So... it looks as though the web is serving us well in terms of animal welfare and improvements to our rehoming rate, but is possibly less useful as a tool for recruiting new volunteers. 

This diary gets roughly a hundred unique visitors per month — with a smaller percentage of completely new visitors than the main site, which suggests it's serving a useful purpose as a way of keeping in touch with our regular supporters.

Rehoming Figures for September

Fortunately adoptions seem to be moving again, after a scary drop during July and August. Eight cats, two dogs, one cockatiel, five guinea-pigs and a hamster out, two dogs booked (awaiting home-visit). 

No signs so far of any increase in animals being handed over because of evictions, but it looks as if more people are feeling the pinch and asking for help with veterinary treatment.

Internet Resource on Animal Shelter Management

The University of California Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program site is mainly intended for their own veterinary students, but is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in learning more about proper animal care in rescue conditions.

The site includes downloadable copies of their class lecture notes and links to videos and "webinars" where animal shelter professionals can discuss shared problems and solutions online. UK readers do need to bear in mind that US conditions are sometimes different from ours — some diseases found here don't occur over there and vice versa, for example. However many of the issues (trapping and neutering feral cats; behaviour assessment and temperament tests; assessing prospective animal adopters and so on) are relevant to both sides of the Atlantic.

Some interesting comparisons of the organisational structure of the RSPCA in this country compared to the US in one of the introductory lectures:

Questions from Shelter Medicine Overview Lecture, 04/04/2008
Kate F. Hurley
UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program
Questions generally about shelter standards and regulation:

"I didn't realize that local SPCAs were not affiliated with each other. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing--I can see that it would be good to retain some regional individuality, and it probably creates less paperwork/bureaucracy that needs to be worked through. It's probably easier to implement changes, and easier to tailor what the shelter offers to the community. On the other hand, I wonder if it would be easier to get funding, and better for research purposes (easier to access a large amount of "herd health" data) if the shelters were associated."

"Good point about the up and down sides of having all shelters linked. I was recently in England, where the vast majority of shelters are under one of their major charitable umbrella organizations. (Unlike here, all RSPCAs really are part of the same group, for instance.) The power of a large organization gave them broad recognition, seemingly lots of fundraising clout, the opportunity to collect and compare data between numerous shelters, and the ability to implement a set of standards that were generally impressively high in terms of animal housing, health and adoptions. On the down side, chatting with people it sounded like the organizations can be unwieldy to change, there are layers of bureaucracy, and it could be that it’s harder to respond to specific regional issues – likely more of an issue in the U.S. since we are such a large and varied country. Just as we’ve seen many individual veterinary practices absorbed into corporate chains or groups, it does seem possible that we will eventual see something like a large non-profit group operating multiple shelters on a franchise-type model – there are a few groups, such as the Massachusetts SPCA that do operate multiple shelters within a single state. However, I think it’s unlikely that we will ever see the kind of cohesive arrangement that exists in the United Kingdom, just because of the fractured and independent way that shelters sprang up on this side of the ocean. "

Continuing the ringworm theme from yesterday, there's an online presentation on ringworm control in animal shelters with useful pictures of infections (and other conditions which can look similar). It's interesting to see that the cat cages in the shelter they show wouldn't be acceptable in our units except for cats needing to be closely confined for medical reasons, such as fractures or heart problems.

The really striking difference between us and the States is cats — we don't declaw and we do expect they'll normally have more or less free access to the outdoors. Most US animal welfare agencies deprecate declawing, but are absolutely vehemently opposed to letting cats roam freely outside.

Madison's test results are back!

Madison is a very pretty long-haired black cat who was picked up as an injured stray on 14th September after being hit by a car. She had a lot of soreness and bruising which has almost healed, except that she still can't hold her tail completely upright, but she also had dreadful skin trouble, with bald patches which we originally thought were grazes from the accident. After initial first aid at Vet24 and admission to the Vet School hospital it became obvious that the sores were skin disease, rather than injuries. She was infested with fleas, so the most probable underlying source of the problem was flea allergy, but (especially in a long-haired cat) another possibility would have been ringworm.

Ringworm is very bad news indeed for any animal rescue. University of California Davis' Shelter Medicine Program has some detailed information which explains just why we are so paranoid about it. A rescue facility which has had an outbreak will be out of action for a minimum of four months while all animals are treated (twice weekly medicated baths for all cats!).

Anyway, Madison's culture results came back today and she has NOT got ringworm — just very nasty flea allergy, which is responding nicely to treatment. Relief all round.

Training day

The Cambridgeshire branches (Cambridge, Peterborough and Hunts & March) are planning to hold a training day for new volunteer home visitors within the next few months. If you might be interested in this, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Home visitors play an essential part in helping to achieve a successful match between our animals and prospective new homes. They're not trying to catch people out, or pry into their domestic circumstances, but they make simple checks to ensure new owners have suitable conditions to keep the type of animal they want to adopt (as an example we do insist on a secure fenced exercise area for dogs). They also have a general informal chat to satisfy themselves that the new adopters appreciate the work and responsibility involved in caring for a pet and answer any questions about the process of adopting from the RSPCA.

Vomiting dogs again

Yet another owner with two young, recently-acquired puppies with vomiting and diarrhoea with blood in it. It is enormously expensive to treat puppies like this effectively, because the vets have to set up barrier nursing if they admit them as inpatients. She's been quoted £300 per day, which in fact isn't unreasonable of the vet when you consider the cost of a veterinary nurse's salary; vet's salary and of completely disinfecting their isolation facilities (plus the initial costs of building an isolation unit at the practice).

These two puppies aren't insured or vaccinated and they're not registered either with the PDSA (for help with treatment at a local private vet) or with our own clinic in Cambridge — and in fact we wouldn't be able to have them admitted to the University Vet School who provide our hospital facilities because of the risk to their private patients.

I've agreed that we could help with the cost of giving the puppies intravenous fluids at the private vet, followed by home nursing by the owner, which will at least give them a chance.

Sadly, this is the situation we see over and over again. If you buy a puppy, ask for proof that the mother's vaccinations were up to date, and ensure that the puppy is vaccinated at 8 weeks (preferably by the breeder before leaving the mother) with a follow-up booster according to your vet's advice. Never, ever buy from an establishment where puppies are brought in from multiple sources — mixing different groups of puppies means spreading any infection. Make sure any adult dogs who will be in contact with the new puppy are up to date with their vaccinations. Take out pet insurance to cover vet bills, (or register the puppy with the PDSA, RSPCA or Blue Cross if you are on benefits and can't afford insurance).

Rescued: Life-changing Stories of Saving Animals from Disaster

Rescued is the story of the individuals and organisations who took part in the evacuation of pets and livestock in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

It may be a little over-sentimental for British tastes, but the practical "lessons learned" and sections on what individual pet owners can do in the way of preparation to give their animals the best possible chance of surviving an emergency situation are of real importance.

We're fortunate in this country that large-scale disasters like Katrina are very unlikely, and we're also lucky not to have rabies (so we can handle animals of unknown health status with a degree of confidence the Katrina rescuers didn't enjoy). That doesn't mean we can't learn from this very large-scale animal emergency — for example the importance of micro-chipping to enable pets to be reunited with their owners; the value of having pre-existing teams of trained volunteers for essential roles such as assessing emergency foster homes (and what went wrong for groups who weren't able to do these checks).

Just to get the weekend off to a good start...

Thirteen dogs signed over from an address in Newmarket. RSPCA West Suffolk have kindly offered to take the mother staffie bitch and her puppies as they have a suitable foster home where the pups will get proper socialisation rather than being in kennel conditions. We're taking four adult dogs (all friendly, young adult females) — a Belgian Shepherd, Husky cross, Rhodesian Ridgeback and an Akita.

If you might be interested in adopting any of these dogs, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Cat saga continues

The ACO's managed to find the tortie's owner, but it's now a probable neglect case as the owner was aware the cat was ill, but hadn't tried to get any treatment for her (in fact hadn't even tried any over the counter treatment to get rid of her fleas).

Lack of money is not an acceptable excuse for neglecting to seek treatment for a sick or injured animal. Anyone who is genuinely on a very low income can get help with the cost of treatment by contacting the RSPCA on 0300 1234 999 or the PDSA on 0800 731 2502 or the Blue Cross on 0300 123 9933

Anyone on means-tested state benefits in the Cambridge area can bring their animals to our clinic on Whitehill Road (next to the Abbey Swimming Pool).

Another stray cat

She's an elderly tortoiseshell and was collected by one of our ACOs from Milton road, Cambridge, after a caller reported that she'd been hanging around for several days and looked ill. She's been admitted to Cambridge Veterinary Group for assessment and treatment and at this stage it looks as though she's got heart failure and dehydration (plus loads of fleas!).

We always need more foster homes to provide more TLC for animals like this than is possible in boarding kennels. If you might be able to help, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Cocoa is back!

This is not another microchip success story, as she's returned under her own steam and I've no idea where she's been for the past two days or what she's been up to. I'm hugely relieved however as she's on medication for epilepsy and I was begining to fear that she'd gone off to die somewhere.

Cocoa's history illustrates why some perfectly responsible owners end up having to give up pets after trying everything they can to solve the problem. Her epilepsy means that her house-training is sometimes erratic — this was something her previous owners could deal with until they had small children and the resulting hygiene worries became too much.

We always need caring homes willing to take "imperfect" animals who either have ongoing medical problems or are simply getting on in life. Where we know a medical condition will need continuing treatment we can usually help with the cost of this. If you might be able to offer a home to an animal like this; or if you might be able to help with temporary foster care for a recovering animal, please email rspcacambridge@aol.com

Working on it

Still trying to open a deposit account. Latest hurdle is that all the people listed as signatories for the current account need to prove who they are again by providing photo-identification and a recent utility bill showing their name and address. This in spite of the fact that the current account's been open since at least the 1950s and all the signatories have been on the account for the past three years.

Also working on the lease of 61 Burleigh street - the shop premises we hope to move into so we can expand our charity shop. Landlord is reluctant to accept that we're willing to pay either a premium or consider a rent rise, but not both (and certainly not in the current economic climate when they should think themselves lucky to have a potential tenant at all).

Animal Clinic figures for September

In September, our Animal Clinic treated 209 dogs, 129 cats, five rabbits and three miscellaneous other animals.

Dog Flea Treatments and Cats again

Yet another owner with a £300+ bill from the emergency vet after treating her two cats with over the counter anti-flea "spot-on" insecticide intended for dogs. She's on income support, so we're helping with £100 towards the total and she's borrowed £200 from her family.

Never give a cat any kind of medication intended for another species except on specific advice from a vet. Because they are specialist carnivores, cats are much less able to detoxify chemicals than most other animals.

Living with a House Rabbit

Living with a House Rabbit is written by Linda Dykes and Helen Flack, respectively the former and current chairmen of the Rabbit Welfare Association, and is an excellent introduction to keeping rabbits as indoor domestic pets. It provides realistic advice about the amount of potential damage event the best-behaved rabbits are likely to do, and ways to "bunny-proof" your home to strike a successful balance between freedom for the rabbits and preservation of reasonable domestic standards.

When successful, house-rabbits probably have better quality of life than pet rabbits kept under any other system, but all too often owners either become disillusioned and give their pets up for rehoming, or they end up condemning them to long periods confined to indoor cages which are very little better than outdoor hutches. If everyone thinking of having a rabbit as an indoor pet read this book before acquiring a rabbit we would have fewer requests to rehome the relationship failures and more rabbits would have better-quality lives.

Just one example of the kind of inspired tip the authors include is the suggestion that solid plastic dog beds make splendid litter trays for rabbits (particularly older ones whose joints may be getting a little stiff). The raised back and sides help prevent hay and litter scattering around, while the low front is easy for the rabbit to step over.

Update on Fenella

Took Fenella to the clinic for a re-check yesterday and was delighted to find she's gained a kilo - up from 2.1 kg to 3.1 kg - which is probably now about the right weight for her general build and age. She's still got her third eyelids partially up and the vets think this is probably permanent and due to having had untreated cat flu when she was tiny, but we're trying a course of eye ointment to see if there's any improvement.