Weekend worries

Quite a lot of calls from owners with pets registered at our clinic needing urgent treatment, but this is why we're here and these could be passed on to our veterinary provider for (hopefully) a good outcome for the animals concerned.

More worrying were several late-night calls over the weekend from owners outside our area. These have to be referred to our National Control Centre as it would be absolutely impossible for us to take on financial support for the rest of the country on top of our existing load.

One of these involved a cat who had been badly attacked by a pair of dogs her owners had recently acquired. This isn't really the dogs' fault as from their point of view, unless they've been brought up with cats, a cat isn't really any different from a wild rabbit. The owner's own vet wasn't answering their out of hours contact number and they were in dispute with the only other vet in their location (I think again about finance).

The National Control Centre did the absolute best they could within their own financial limits, and offered to pay for an out of hours consultation fee at a third vet. This vet refused (which was within their rights as the cat was not their patient). Last I heard, the owner was going to drive to Colchester to the only vet NCC had managed to persuade to see the cat.

This is all hideously unsatisfactory, to put it mildly, when an animal is seriously injured and in pain.

Another call concerned a puppy who had broken his leg nearly a week ago and only got treatment because one of the owner's neighbours realised how serious the situation was and more or less forced her to bring him to our clinic.

The major welfare problem we see (as a branch) is not really cruel owners, but irresponsible, and sometimes frankly stupid ones. Their animals are probably more likely to have accidents because they don't foresee possible dangers, and they don't make sensible plans to deal with illness or injury when it does happen.

I have no idea what the real solution is, because draconian limits on who can have animals, and how many, would almost certainly just mean healthy animals dying because they don't have homes.

We need to raise more funds so that animals like these can be helped—none of this is their fault—but we also need some degree of sanctions so that help we give doesn't just mean irresponsible people get more animals to the point at which we (and they) are not coping again.

We also need to drive out the breeders who don't care where their "products" go so long as the purchaser is able to pay.

If I ruled the world...

(Or at least had unlimited powers to remodel the RSPCA as I thought fit, and unlimited money to do it.)

This summer has been a grouchy time with lots of complaints on social media on the lines of: "RSPCA, you should do X, that's what we pay you for!" (Occasionally: "RSPCA, you should stop doing X!" but that's life).

Much of this is just lack of realism about what's possible, but what could we do to improve?

First of all, most of the things people demand would need a LOT of extra funds—the RSPCA would need to be 2 or three times larger overall to do everything that's expected of us.

Secondly, people want contradictory things: nothing is going to satisfy both the person who wants no RSPCA prosecutions and the one who wants lots more of them.

If money was no object

1.  Stray Dogs

People expect us to deal with them; local authorities usually don't provide anything approaching a satisfactory service—they usually won't pick up at weekends when more people are about and likely to find strays, for example.

Why don't we do this already?

To some extent we do—several branches have arrangements with their local authority either to take over strays and rehome them after their 7 days in LA care is up or to take in strays directly with the LA paying for the first 7 days care.

Local Authorities are legally obliged to provide a stray dogs service and all strays taken in must, by law, be notified to them. They are not obliged to provide a collection service outside office hours and this is the major practical issue for members of the public who have found a stray dog because of the potential problems involved in having a strange dog loose in your car.

The RSPCA already has a control centre and trained staff with suitable vehicles available 24/7 which could be scaled up to provide a collection service.

That's not the whole solution, though, because the inspector who picks up a dog then has to find somewhere to leave him. Animal home staff would need to be re-organised to make someone available during the night, or kennel units would need to be arranged so that the inspector could get in to drop dogs off and set them up with food and water.

£30 million additional annual spend would probably make it possible to collect strays, provide veterinary treatment where needed and board dogs until rehomed (assuming an average dog stays in kennels 30 days before finding a home).

2.  Injured Wildlife

The RSPCA has an arrangement with the British Veterinary Association (BVA) which theoretically ensures that veterinary surgeries will provide first aid for small injured wildlife free of charge if they are brought in during normal working hours, and the RSPCA will fund treatment of larger wild animals, such as deer, and pay an out of hours fee if an animal needs treatment out of normal working hours. The RSPCA will also collect wildlife if the finder doesn't have transport.

The public don't like this; they expect to be able to phone the RSPCA and have an inspector turning up to collect the animal within  minutes, or, slightly more realistically, to have an RSPCA animal centre capable of treating wildlife within a few minutes drive.

Actually I don't think I'd want to solve this by a huge increase in the numbers of RSPCA drivers going round picking up animals because this is such an inefficient way of providing help—if there is a vet available within a 10 minute journey and the finder is able to move the animal it is much better all round for the finder to transport to the vet rather than for the RSPCA driver to do a 20 minute journey, followed by the same 10 minute one.

A more effective solution would be for the RSPCA to pay vets a realistic amount for all injured wildlife; many vets really don't see why the BVA agreement exists and it makes their reception staff grumpy with the helpful members of the public who do try to transport animals themselves. Vets are businesses after all, and if wildlife was an opportunity for them, instead of a rather grudging duty, it would make things pleasanter all round and stop the ghastly circular phone chases in which we tell the MOP to contact a vet, vet says, "No, I'm not a charity," and the poor MOP is back in our telephone queue once more.

Another £20 million would probably fund that.

3. Stray domestic animals other than dogs

Mostly cats.

Collecting and locking up healthy, uninjured adult cats is not the way to go, and we should resist doing it however much flak this causes. Cats are not funny-looking dogs and living in varying degrees of attachment to human beings is natural for them. Australia and the USA have truly dreadful levels of killing of healthy cats purely because so much of their welfare and animal control organisation is focussed on collecting cats who don't need to be collected.

There is a genuine problem of cat year-on-year over-production (more kittens than there are homes—or more precisely, so many kittens that adult cats struggle to find good homes). 

The best way to solve this is more cat neutering and more people and resources available to catch, neuter and release cats who are living semi-, or entirely-independently of people.

Say another £10 million for more cat neutering, concentrating on the hard-to-get cases. 

Stray animals of other species usually do need collection, as their chances of unaided survival are minimal. This includes various small animals such as ferrets, rabbits, hamsters etc. Most of these do get collected at present and can generally be placed in foster care of some kind.

Injured and sick strays are a much bigger problem — probably around 30,000 cats each year. The majority of those reported to the RSPCA will be taken in and given at least basic treatment. Survival rates could almost certainly be increased if more funds were available to treat severe injuries.

It would need to be around £500 for each badly injured cat, so about another £5 million on top of what the RSPCA and its branches already spend.

4. Veterinary treatment for owned animals

Because I answer the branch helpline at night, I'm painfully aware of the amount of untouched need which exists out there.

The RSPCA is in a cleft stick because helping irresponsible owners has the potential to enable them to acquire more and more animals until they end up with welfare issues that are nothing to do with needing veterinary treatment. However it is the ONLY organisation which is available to be contacted in the small hours when an animal desperately needs treatment and the owner has no funds at all.

I'm leaning more and more towards a view that we should help the animal but impose some sanctions on the owner—possibly require that the animal is signed over for rehoming, or at least make it a condition of help that the owner should subsequently register at an RSPCA clinic  or receive a follow-up visit from an Inspector.

At present, most owners are likely to get at best some financial help to cover a vet's consultation fee, which may in some cases mean the animal won't be seen at all.

So, add another £5 million.

5. Horses

It's difficult to know where to start.

A large and complex equine case can, at worst, result in literally thousands of horses being handed over to welfare charities. Until now, the large equine charities and the RSPCA have managed to share the burden, using private livery stables to accommodate the overspill.

The thought of so many lives at stake must keep equine field officers awake at night.

On top of that are all the hundreds of calls about horses in less than ideal, but not illegal conditions.

Free or low-cost neutering may not be a concept that's normally applied to equines, but providing substantial amounts of free castration for colts would make them more valuable as riding horses and reduce some of the accidental breeding of unwanted foals which are then neglected.

Probably another £5 million

Bear in mind that all of this would have to be EXTRA money, because these are extra things on top of what's already being done—you can't look at the existing funds and say: "Aha! there's plenty of money, we'll just take the amount spent on dogs and that will fund the cats and then take the money spent on cats and use it to fund the dogs".

  

Hot!

The RSPCA is the only animal charity in England and Wales which operates a comprehensive rescue service round the clock with phones answered 24/7 and frontline staff available to go out at any time. 

Summer always brings a surge of extra calls due to a combination of young wild animals getting into trouble; the fact that more people are outside and able to notice animal problems, and incidents due to the heat itself.

Extra phone-line staff are put in to manage this call peak, but there are limits on what is possible (there's no point spending so much money on taking calls that there's none left to pay staff to do the actual rescues). 

In a lot of situations all an inspector would do would be to take the animal to the closest available vet for treatment, which is why we ask people finding animals in distress to do this if they have transport and are able to contain the animal safely. It takes much longer for an inspector to drive to their location and then to a vet than it would to take the animal direct to the vet.

The RSPCA has an agreement with the British Veterinary Association (BVA) which aims to ensure that stray animals and wildlife can receive at least basic treatment to relieve suffering. Vets agree to provide treatment for small wild mammals and birds brought to the practice in normal working hours and the RSPCA agrees to fund treatment of larger animals, treatment outside normal hours, and treatment of domestic stray animals (dogs are legally the responsibility of the local authority but the RSPCA will help if it is impossible to contact the LA).

You can read the current agreement in full on the BVA website and also some information on current negotiations to update the agreement. 

For comparison, you might also like to take a look at the current arrangements between the BVA and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

If you find an injured animal and you can safely transport it to a vet yourself, please phone the surgery in advance to check that they are open. All vets should have details of the number they need to call in order to get an RSPCA log number which will ensure that they are paid by the RSPCA for the treatment they provide.

And, please, don't listen to the people who say the fact that we ask the public to take animals directly to vets means you shouldn't donate to the RSPCA—donations are much more usefully spent on treating animals than on buying petrol.

The real story about the RSPCA?

To make any sense of all this, you first need to get it clear that England and Wales is covered by RSPCA branches, which are independently registered as individual charities but share a single governing document (the branch rules). RSPCA branches (in this sense) are organisations which cover a particular territory (in our case the South of Cambridgeshire and a few extra bits). 

Branches may divide up (if the area is too big to manage) or amalgamate (if the areas are too small to make sense) but they can't take their "pot" of funds and leave the RSPCA and they don't close, although they may become short of volunteers or cash and have to reduce the amount of welfare work they do or fail to recruit enough volunteer trustees and be temporarily held in the trusteeship of the national RSPCA.

Branches may operate facilities such as an animal centre or clinic, and the national RSPCA also runs animal centres and hospitals—for example Putney animal hospital, East Winch Wildlife centre and Block Fen animal centre are all run by the national RSPCA, while our clinic in Cambridge is run by the branch.

Occasionally the individual centres are referred to as "branches" (as you might refer to a branch of WH Smiths), but the distinction is important to get straight because of all the bad temper surrounding claims that donations given to the RSPCA don't go towards running animal homes. 

Centres like Block Fen which are directly run by the national RSPCA are fully funded by them. The independent branches get an annual grant (currently £12,000-£18,000) but are expected to fundraise to raise any money needed over and above this to keep their own local services going.

This inevitably means that centres owned and run by branches have a somewhat more precarious existence than the national centres because they have a smaller cushion of reserves for hard times and because they're more dependent on having a team of voluntary workers which manages to recruit new members when old ones leave or become too old to do as much as they were.

Unfortunately, the branches are also the first casualties of political campaigns to reduce support for the RSPCA in order to make enforcement of the Hunting Act impossible and of the general public perception that the RSPCA doesn't need support because it has huge resources. 

Animal Welfare Statistics for May and June

In May we rehomed 1 dog, 2 cats and 2 miscellaneous "small furries". We provided 215 low-cost treatments for dogs, 72 for cats, 9 for rabbits and 8 for miscellaneous.

In June, we rehomed 1 dog, 9 cats and 18 of the small furries. We provided 195 low cost treatments for dogs, 73 for cats, 5 for rabbits and 6 for miscellaneous.

On average the number of treatments is roughly twice the number of individual animals as most will visit the clinic more than once in any given year.

What can you do to help?

If you are not a member of the RSPCA, do consider joining.

RSPCA members are eligible to vote to elect the committees who run local branches and in the election of the national RSPCA's governing council. They can attend local and national Annual General Meetings and speak and propose resolutions. 

Also consider whether you would have time to join the committee of your local branch. Most branches have a need for extra people and would welcome your help. New committee members can be elected at the branch AGM (they need to have been RSPCA members for at least 3 months at the time the AGM is held) or they can be co-opted by the existing elected committee members during the year. Co-option is often used as a way to give potential new committee members some experience before they decide whether to take the step of standing for election.

Virtually everyone has useful skills that they could bring to the task of running a branch, but please don't go in on the basis that all the existing people are useless idiots and you are going to put them right and save the animals from them. 

First, it probably isn't true and you will be wasting everyone's time and putting people's backs up. 

Secondly, even if there are many things about the branch which are less efficient than they could be, the point isn't to swap your blind spots for those of the current people—the aim should be to improve without creating a state of constant upheaval where nothing ever gets finished.

Most branches need a combination of people with specific "technical" skills, such as animal behaviour, legal, management,  or finance skills and people willing to get involved with organising fundraising events and practical animal care. You may not think you have any special skills to offer, but one of the most urgent needs is for people willing to organise quite small scale events (such as one sponsored dog walk each year) to build up a calendar of regular fundraising.

There's nearly always a need for volunteers able to foster dogs, particularly the larger breeds. Kennel environments are not good for dogs on a long term basis and many dogs behave quite differently in the frightening, noisy atmosphere than in quiet domestic surroundings. There's an ongoing initiative to get more of the "case dogs" (dogs who are the subject of a current prosecution) into foster homes for the period before their case comes to court so that these dogs no longer have to stay in kennels for protracted periods before they can be offered for rehoming.

One of the key qualities that is required by fosterers is the ability to hand the animal back. This is particularly key for case animals where there is the possibility that we lose the case and the animal has to be returned to the owner.

Where do the RSPCA statistics come from?

The RSPCA's welfare statistics are produced as the result of over 200 people (many of them unpaid volunteers like me) each completing a spreadsheet recording animal welfare activity over the past month in an Excel workbook. At the year end, the workbook automatically summarises 12 monthly sheets to generate figures, which are sent in to Horsham and used to generate the final statistics which are published in the Annual Report and Accounts of the Society.

The independent Branches, nationally-run centres (like Block Fen and the large animal hospitals), and the Inspectors all generate spreadsheets to feed in to the final report.

Our own branch return for 2012 is shown below to give you an idea of how one is made up.

Points to note:

• We have an animal clinic, so we provide an unusually large number of welfare treatments for owned animals in comparison with branches who can only offer vouchers to use at private vets.
  
  
• We don't have our own animal home, so any inspectorate "case" animals (animals in care as the result of a prosecution) only come into our care once the case is completed or they have been signed over by their owner.
  
  
• Animals with no chance of survival, for example a cat with a broken back, would normally be put to sleep by a vet during the initial emergency treatment period which is funded by the national RSPCA and would be recorded in the statistics kept by them.
  
  
• Dogs are most likely to come in direct from an owner because of a welfare concern, while cats are relatively more likely to come in as sick/injured strays. This is because stray dogs are legally the responsibility of the Local Authority. Dogs may sometimes be taken in as injured strays if they need immediate help and the Local Authority animal warden can't be contacted.
  
  
• Animals are sometimes in care because their mother was heavily pregnant when she was brought in.
  
  
• The "non RSPCA-Generated" category represents animals taken in because they were unwanted but in the absence of any concern that they would be made to suffer if not taken in. It is RSPCA policy to give priority to "RSPCA-Generated" animals so that they can be kept as long as is necessary to find them a home provided this will not cause them suffering.
  
  Some branches with animal homes who take in stray dogs from their local authority, so they can be rehomed instead of euthanased, will have a lot more non RSPCA-Generated than we do.
  
  
• Feral cats will be trapped, neutered and released if possible but would be put to sleep if the only alternative was to keep them permanently caged and in distress.
  
  
• Reasons for euthanasia are aggregated in the final published totals in the Annual Report so that the distinction is only between homeable and unhomeable animals (for wild animals between animals fit to be released if a site was available and animals who can't be released). Arguably feral cats should be reported like wild animals (recording any healthy cats who were put to sleep because no release sites could be found).
  
  
• To collect meaningful results from so many individuals the form has to be straightforward enough to be completed. Over-complicating it would probably mean some volunteers submitted late or not at all (because it is difficult to convince people that a return with some errors is preferable to no return at all). This means it probably isn't going to be possible to collect some data which would potentially be very useful—such as comparative euthanasia rates for large dogs vs small ones, animals of different ages or cats who are timid but not feral.
  
  This is probably already an issue for some of the reasons for euthanasia (e.g. "behaviour" vs "aggression" is probably trying to capture the distinction between the dog who might kill someone and the cat who sprays indoors) but I would be surprised if no-one was ever confused by this and aggregating the data probably produces a more accurate result.

		Period covered:				Year		2012			Branch:							Cambridge & District
		(1) Animals in branch care									(4) Microchipping
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Balance at start of year	4	24	3	6	37				Rehomed animals	11	94	0	4	109
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	45	13	0	0	58
	IN	Reason for entry								Welfare micro-chipping events	71	46	0	0	117
	RSPCA Generated	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Total	127	153	0	4	284
	Inspectorate case animals	4	10	0	0	14
	Welfare concern	12	33	4	19	68				Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
	Unowned sick and injured via NCC	2	51	4	7	64
	Pet Retreat and home for life	0	0	0	0	0
	Transfers from RSPCA centres	0	0	0	0	0
	Returns	2	2	0	0	4					(5) Neutering
	Born in branch care	0	11	0	6	17					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Total in - RSPCA Generated in	20	107	8	32	167				Rehomed animals	9	76	4	13	102
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	73	11	7	3	94
	Non-RSPCA Generated	1	0	0	0	1				Welfare neutering events	31	2	0	0	33
										Total	113	89	11	16	229
	OUT	Reason for leaving
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
	Rehomed	12	95	9	36	152
	Died	0	2	2	2	6
	Transferred out	6	16	0	0	22
	Other	0	1	0	0	1					(6) Welfare assistance
	PTS	2	7	0	0	9					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Total out	20	121	11	38	190				Branch clinic	2592	1058	76	49	3775
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	14	7	3	0	24
		Animals in care at end of month								Welfare events	0	0	0	0	0
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Total	2606	1065	79	49	3799
	Balance at end of year	5	10	0	0	15
										Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
		(2) Homevisiting											(7) Feral Cats
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				No. of Feral cats neutered & released					0
	Pre-home visits	47	93	4	2	146
	Post-home visits	8	23	0	0	31
											(8) Length of Stay of animals currently in care
											Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
		(3) Animals in Branch care and								0-3 months	2	8	0	0	10
		subsequently PTS								4-6 months	2	2	0	0	4
	Reason	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Over 6 months	1	0	0	0	1
	Vet Advice	2	7	0	0	9				Total	5	10	0	0	15
	Animal's best interest	0	0	0	0	0
	Aggression	0	0	0	0	0
	Behavioural	0	0	0	0	0
	Unwanted/unhomed	0	0	0	0	0					(9) Wildlife Information
	Orphaned	0	0	0	0	0
	Feral	0	0	0	0	0				Accepted	0		Died		0
	Legal	0	0	0	0	0
	Total	2	7	0	0	9				Transferred	0		PTS		0
	At owners insistence	0	0	0	0	0				Released	0