Medical Detection Dogs

One of the volunteers at our second-hand bookshop is helping organise this event.

Where will it all end?

Several cases this week have made me wonder what we're drifting into. We're seeing more and more animals owned by people with multiple problems who are struggling to look after themselves, let alone an animal, yet they are also the ones whose social isolation means pets may be their only friends.

Our clinic is subsidised from branch funds, but is not free for users and at present we would struggle to provide a higher level of subsidy, even if we disregarded the concern that making charity vet treatment too cheap may encourage people to take on more animals so that the final situation is no better than the one we started with.

However for some individuals paying for even low-cost treatment can potentially dig them into a financial hole from which they can't escape. I've always been a bit concerned that some of our owners might take out payday loans to fund a beloved pet's treatment, but even normal banks can create a situation where the borrower pays several times the loan amount if they take an unauthorised dip into the red and end up racking up daily penalty charges.

Pets are not seen as a priority for over-stretched social services, so owners can wind up with no money to buy food or pay their rent. One of the frustrations of what we see is that at least some of these owners are possibly capable of doing very light work which would give them an outlet, and help get away from the worrying scenario where their lives revolve around their animal because they really don't have anything else to live for. I say, "possibly capable" because most of them wouldn't realistically be able to compete for jobs with workers who don't have problems.

We can't fix society, but we can try to identify the owners who desperately need extra help and do what we can to keep their pets going for them.

We're struggling; the same few people try to raise funds, answer the phones 24/7, rehome animals etc. etc.

If you would like to be part of the solution, please consider joining the RSPCA. Membership details are at www.rspca.org.uk/membership/http://www.rspca.org.uk/membership/

How to pick an animal charity to support

The Cause4Opinion site has an interesting post reporting Animal Charity Evaluators latest research on selecting effective animal welfare organisations to support.

I have to say that I find it slightly ironic that ACE's take on the RSPCA is:

"The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is the United Kingdom's leading animal welfare charity. The organization rescues, rehabilitates, and finds homes for hundreds of thousands of animals each year, offering advice on animal care while campaigning for protective legal reforms.

While the RSPCA has campaigns that are focused on some cost-effective interventions in helping animals, the vast majority of its resources are spent on suboptimal companion-animal issues." (Animal Charity Evaluators: 2014)

This might come as a surprise to the people claiming that we need to return to our "proper" role of protecting domestic pets instead of "wasting" funds on campaigning and prosecutions (or possibly not as I suspect some of them are very well aware that effective campaigning and practical welfare go hand in hand).

At first sight the idea of convincing people not to eat animals seems an “instant” way to prevent suffering and save life. This won’t necessarily work as intended and the UK inadvertently performed a natural experiment demonstrating this as a result of the horse meat scandal. This removed the market for horses which were being exported and re-imported as meat falsely labelled as beef almost overnight. We now have a situation where horses who would have been slaughtered are simply abandoned to die, causing enormous welfare issues.

Essentially Vegan Outreach is trying to prevent the production of animals whose lives are worth avoiding, while the RSPCA tries to increase the chance that animals will have lives worth living (J. Yeates, "Is ‘a life worth living’ a concept worth having?" Animal Welfare, 2011.

Choosing between promoting vegetarianism vs improvements to the way farmed animals are kept also depends on what you think are practical goals in terms of changing the behaviour of large numbers of people. If the majority are not going to change then it’s more effective to promote gradual improvement rather than revolution. If the cost-effectiveness of interventions is measured in terms of the cost to improve the life of an animal the impact of the RSPCA’s spend on the Freedom Food scheme is actually slightly better than that of the leaflet campaign evaluated by ACE.

Which species are we talking about?
Some of this is a bit like saying we shouldn't support UK children's charities until every child in malaria zones has an insecticide-treated mosquito net because the net costs pennies in comparison with the cost of supporting a child with a genetic condition. People just don't think that way, and it's not reasonable that they should have to. Single-species animal charities exist because people want to help the animals they feel most empathy with.

As Nathan and Jennifer Winograd point out in their book, American Vegan, we have an opportunity to encourage people who already love their pets to expand their concern to other animals as well.

Shouldn't animal charities leave law enforcement to the state?

In practice, government funding for animals is always liable to be treated as a lower priority than other things.

The recent ITV program, Dangerous Dogs, highlighted the work of local dog wardens and, perhaps unintentionally, revealed the lack of proper training and support which makes their jobs more difficult and dangerous than they ought to be. National Dog Wardens Association have issued a statement on the program setting out the improvements that are needed but also illustrating how much councils rely on being able to hand over possible abuse situations to RSPCA inspectors (at no cost to the council).

How effective are animal charities in terms of companion animal welfare?

This is the question that interests the "average" person who wants to decide which charities to support and its answer is not straightforward as charities will make different decisions about which interventions are most useful. It's often misleadingly posed as a straightforward question about numbers of animals rehomed without any attempt to look at the bigger picture:

• Do owners of relinquished animals simply replace them by purchasing more?
• Is it preferable to support "good enough" owners to keep their pets rather than rehome them?
• Does focus on numbers rehomed as the measure of impact encourage "cherry-picking" whereby only the most rehomeable animals are taken in?
• How many animals are put to sleep by their owners when they are not accepted because shelters are full?
• Is it more effective to spend funds on low-cost spay/neuter to prevent unwanted animals being born in the first place?

If rehoming is taken as the measure of charities' commitment to animal welfare as it is understood by the person in the street—not necessarily a requirement to spend funds on nothing else but something the charity must do to have credibility—it's possible to do some crude measurement.

Animals homed for each £1million of income:

Cats Protection: 1,250

(note that Cats Protection also does a very large amount of work on cat neutering)

Shelters responding to Nottingham University PUPS survey: 714

Wood Green Animal Shelters: 500

Battersea cats and dogs home: 435

RSPCA: 400

Blue Cross: 250
(but note that the Blue Cross spends roughly half its income on provision of veterinary treatment)

Dogs Trust: 200

(but note that Dogs Trust provides free veterinary treatment for dogs owned by homeless people and runs a neutering scheme in certain areas of high need).

Probably the only reliable conclusions that can be drawn from this are that cats are cheaper to look after than dogs and that none of the charities is doing an outrageously low amount of rehoming in relation to income.

Baby Birds coming up!

Horse Crisis — everywhere!

RSPCA branch organisation

Not exactly a thrilling subject, but some recent discussions have made me think it might be useful to re-post something about the way the RSPCA branch structure works.

The RSPCA was originally founded in 1824 to enforce the new Act for the protection of livestock and to promote improved treatment of animals by a combination of education and parliamentary activity.

The original society was based in London, but over time other groups were set up to promote animal protection in their own local areas. The London Society offered local groups an option to affiliate and pay for the services of a trained inspector who would be deployed to serve their "patch". By the 1940s this had produced a network of branches covering the whole of England and Wales, each fundraising to support their own inspector.

Branches were (and still are) managed by committees elected from the local RSPCA membership by vote of all branch members who attended the annual general meeting. RSPCA branches elect 10 of the 25 members of the National RSPCA Council, with elections taking place on a regional basis.

Originally, the individual branches could keep all the funds they raised once the Inspector's salary was covered and they used these funds in diverse ways to address the particular problems of their own locality. Some (like our branch in Cambridge) set up clinics for low-cost treatments, others ran animal homes, tried to save oiled seabirds and so on. In the meantime the National Society continued to press for better legal protection for animals and operated its own projects, such as strategically placed hospitals, regional animal homes, and equine facilities.

As branch activities, such as rehoming animals taken in by inspectors, became more important and funds directly raised by the National Society increased, so the requirement for branches to fundraise for inspector's salaries became less justifiable and currently the majority of branches receive considerably more income as grants from the National Society than their token payment to central funds. (Currently our branch pays an annual contribution of £350 and receives an annual grant of around £20,000).

Branch committees have genuine power to affect the way the RSPCA operates in their area—for example if the branches where RSPCA adoption centres in Pets at Home stores are located weren't convinced the scheme was being managed in the best interests of the animals concerned they could veto  it. Of course the other side of this is that it imposes an obligation on the branches to provide enough volunteers for quick and effective home-checking to make it work properly.

Anyone with a genuine concern for animal welfare can become an RSPCA member. Details are at http://www.rspca.org.uk/membership/

Mythbusters infographic

Branch Animal Welfare Statistics for 2013

Breakdown of reasons for animal intake

In 2013 Cambridge branch rehomed 9 dogs, 95 cats and 54 miscellaneous "small furries" — a total of 158 animals.

The branch provided a total of 3,531 welfare assistance veterinary treatments for owned animals: 2,434 for dogs, 956 cats, 81 rabbits and 60 small furries.

In addition the branch chipped 343 animals and neutered 277.

Interesting take on the flood situation via twitter

The ponies shown in this picture may be wishing the rain would let up, but there's really no indication that their welfare is seriously at risk (no standing water, good grass cover, field not even muddy enough for the PCSO's wellies to sink in). 

This may seem trivial, and probably isn't a problem in an area where there aren't any genuine flood problems. BUT every call asking the police or RSPCA to check animals who aren't in danger uses resources needed by ones who really do need help.

One of the worrying features of the current situation is the extent to which various groups seem to think they can ensure "their" particular concern gets priority by what's essentially pester power. 

PCSOs Wright & Fairs have been out today checking the various horses & ponies in waterlogged fields in #Epsom
— Epsom & Ewell Police (@EpsomEwellBeat) January 6, 2014

Is this the future for England?

4,000 acts of horrific animal cruelty in Northern Ireland but just one court case

 Northern Ireland's equivalent of the RSPCA—the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—does not have the ability to prosecute cruelty. Its website states:

"We are a charity that provides a much needed voice for animals, we investigate issues that fall below the legislative radar, badger crime, dog fighting, puppy farms, equine cruelty, tame deer hunts etc. We lobby for changes in legislation, the recent ban on the sale in the EU of cosmetic products tested on animals is one example. As long as there are people in Society who derive pleasure from inflicting suffering on animals our voice will continue to be heard."

"Disgracefully Hunting with Dogs is NOT banned in NI, we are the only area of the UK where this travesty is permitted."

USPCA

Until 2012 animal protection laws in Northern Ireland were enforced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Enforcement of welfare legislation relating to non-farmed animals was then transferred to local Animal Welfare Teams run by individual Local Authorities; see, for example the Coleraine Borough Council website.  Legislation relating to farm animals is enforced by the Department of Agriculture, while the police retain control of cases relating to wildlife and animal fighting. By the end of 2012 there were nine local authority Animal Welfare Officers for a population of just under 2 million people—for comparison the RSPCA provides twelve Inspectors and four Animal Collection Officers for every 2 million people in England and Wales and also has a network of branches and animal shelters to care for animals who need to be removed from their owners. The RSPCA also has veterinary resources to help owners who genuinely can't afford the full cost of veterinary treatment.

There is a concerted campaign to remove the RSPCA's ability to prosecute cruelty. This seems to be mainly orchestrated by pro-hunting groups.

Mill Road Winter Fair this Saturday

Mill Road's popular Winter Fair is this Saturday, 7th December, and local author Saumya Balsari has kindly donated some free copies of her book, The Cambridge Curry Club, to local shops.

The first few lucky shoppers at the RSPCA bookshop on the 7th can add a copy to their purchase at no extra charge.

Visit Saumya's website

Lost and Found

The way calls to the RSPCA about lost or found animals are handled has changed. Instead of recording these on the central computer (along with all the other things the National Control Centre deals with), anyone who contacts the RSPCA wanting to leave details of lost or found animals will be asked to go to the PetsLocated site instead. 

PetsLocated is an independent, commercial site which automatically matches records of animals reported lost or found. The advantage of this compared with the old system is that it doesn't require a human being to run a manual search and it doesn't tie up the RSPCA emergency number while details are collected via the telephone. There is a £10 fee to register lost animals, but found animals can be added to the database free of charge.

Under the old system lost and found calls would be taken by the control centre but, because of their comparatively low priority, callers would typically have a long wait to get through. If they gave up and tried to call the local branch the person answering might take their details and pass them to the national control centre, or something quite random might happen—particularly if the call was taken by a charity shop or somewhere else that's not really intended as part of frontline activities. I strongly suspect details were sometimes noted on Post-Its and simply lost. Once passed on, so far as I can understand, the details would be entered up in the computer, but would probably only be used for anything if a branch or animal home called in requesting a manual search on an animal they'd just taken in. Very few branches would have the time or energy to keep phoning in to check whether someone had subsequently realised their pet was missing and called in the details. Entering details over the phone was very time-consuming and tied up an NCC operator meaning real emergencies might not get through.

I can't remember ever locating an owner through the old system, although we have had successes with publicising found animals on facebook and our website.

I tried the PetsLocated site earlier this year, when my neighbour's Siamese went AWOL, and was favourably impressed that the system returned partial matches which might possibly have been her cat (who in fact knew perfectly well where he was and came home when he felt peckish). The old manual RSPCA system didn't do this effectively and depended on loser and finder describing animals in the same way—is this a black cat with white markings, or a white one with black markings? Persian, or just a bit fluffy?

None of this is a substitute for microchipping (which means you can be contacted instantly if your pet is picked up by a dog warden or taken to a vet), or for calling local vets and checking with neighbours if a pet goes missing. Dogs found straying must by law be reported to the council dog wardens, so anyone who loses a dog needs to contact them.

Many (possibly most) "lost" cats have in fact suffered some mishap which means they know where home is but can't get there. Worst case scenario is that they've been injured, but often they've simply got shut in somewhere and will be released if neighbours are requested to check garages and sheds.

Predictably, the "usual suspects" are complaining, but this really is a sensible change to make matching up of lost and found animals more efficient and to release resources for animals in need of immediate help.

Isn't @Petloglostfound part of @KCLovesDogs? Is @RSPCA_official challenging them? What about @DoglostUK? Need for Petslocated?

Westminster Hall debate on fly-grazing and equine welfare

Storify of today's conference on welfare of dogs and cats in the EU

Welfare figures for first three quarters of 2013

Finished writing up the branch welfare statistics for January-September last night:

	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
Rehomed	7	69	0	42	118

	Microchipping
	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
Rehomed animals	7	69	0	0	76
Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	69	25	2	0	96
Welfare micro-chipping events	56	37	0	0	93
Total	132	131	2	0	265

	Welfare assistance (veterinary treatment)
	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
Branch clinic	1899	716	68	48	2731
Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	16	15	0	0	31
Welfare events	0	0	0	0	0
Total	1915	731	68	48	2762

	Neutering
	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
Rehomed animals	7	69	0	12	88
Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	73	4	7	3	87
Welfare neutering events	29	5	2	0	36
Total	109	78	9	15	211

So, if we can get pet births down to replacement levels, problem solved?

Alfie looking for a home

Not entirely.

It's quite possible to have a situation where most of the young animals are wanted but there's still a substantial welfare issue about animals being discarded when they don't match owners' expectations.

It may be possible to solve this partially by a combination of education, help for otherwise good owners who run into financial difficulties and improvement of the conditions in which dogs are reared so that fewer end up with behaviour issues. However there will always be some people who die, get ill, lose their jobs etc. etc. and can't keep their animals for reasons that are not their fault. Barring an unlikely amount of improvement in human behaviour there will probably always be some owners who aren't suitable and a few who are actively cruel and whose animals must be removed.

So long as there are more people looking for animals than there are animals needing homes, this just means that animal shelters will still be needed, but most of their occupants will fairly readily be placed. Unfortunately it doesn't mean this will apply to all animals taken in.

Some animals will have chronic health conditions that make them less attractive to potential adopters (or simply unaffordable because of the cost of treatment). Some will be elderly. This doesn't mean it's going to be impossible to save them, just that the simplistic model of "find good home, problem solved" won't work. Realistically the majority of adopters want a pet with good prospects of being a companion they'll have for many years and few are going to consider a relationship they know will end in heartache in a few months or years.

This means high-quality, long-term fostering is likely to become more important to avoid elderly or difficult animals simply being warehoused in kennels.  Getting it right will be crucial, so that no-one is overwhelmed with the stress of looking after multiple animals who are approaching the end of their lives. Cost isn't the whole story; it's the cumulative load of animals needing to be taken to the vet nearly every week, tempted to eat and helped with grooming.

Cats and dogs

Virtually every week our branch gets requests for help with dogs or puppies who've been recently purchased and now have some kind of problem. Sometimes this is clearly the fault of the original seller; sometimes simply that the buyer had no idea how expensive vet treatment can be. It is really fantastically aggravating when we're asked to spend charity money treating a puppy we know would have cost quite a lot to buy.

It is extremely rare for us to get similar requests for help with cats or kittens, but we get lots of requests for help finding homes for unexpected/unwanted litters of kittens or for help catching and taming kittens which have been born to unowned mothers in people's gardens. Conversely, it's unusual for us to be asked to help with unwanted puppies, but we get a lot of requests for help with mother dogs who need expensive veterinary help giving birth and we sometimes have to take in litters of puppies who appear to have been dumped because they are ill (and therefore valueless).

There's a "pet population" problem for dogs and cats (and rabbits, ferrets, you name it), but the biology that underpins the problem isn't identical. To solve a problem you first need to understand it.

The non-pedigree cat population of mainland Britain is reproducing at a rate that makes it not only self-sustaining but over-producing. If no cats were ever imported and all pedigree breeding stopped, there would still be a "cat crisis" every summer, because most cats breed in spite of human activity, not because of it. We need to increase the percentage of pet owners who spay their female cats (currently around 80%; around 90% is needed to bring births and deaths in balance), and increase effort to trap and spay free-living cats who don't have owners.

(Bradshaw, J. W., Horsfield, G., Allen, J., & Robinson, I. (1999). Feral cats: their role in the population dynamics of Felis catus. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 65(3), 273–283. doi:10.1016/S0168-1591(99)00086-6)

There is very little incentive for anyone to breed cats to make money because kittens are available from rescue centres at no more than the cost of neutering and vaccinating them.

The dog population is quite different; almost all breeding is the result of human selection and a very high proportion is aimed at making money. The "high-end" serious breeders, who care about their dogs, have to charge a lot because their costs will be high if they're doing expensive health checks on the parent dogs before deciding on a mating. Unfortunately this opens a marketing opportunity for breeders and traffickers who can produce a "product" (a living creature!) at lower cost, either by keeping their breeding bitches in dreadful "battery" conditions or by importing pups from countries where there is still over-production of unwanted litters (presumably because of lower rates of spaying and/or because it is more acceptable for dogs to be allowed to roam freely).

In these respects the "dog problem" is more similar to the "rabbit problem" than the "cat problem" because the driver producing more animals than can easily be rehomed is primarily commercial breeding and importing, not accidental litters. We could probably achieve 100% spay/neuter of the UK pet dog population and still have a problem of over-production of dogs because we have no way to "turn off the tap" in Ireland, Bulgaria or Romania.

A hundred years or so ago unwanted litters of pups were the major source of Britain's unwanted dogs. Affordable spay/neuter and a reduction in numbers of dogs allowed to roam unsupervised solved this, but made large-scale breeding for profit possible. As we approach the level of cat spay/neuter that should reduce cat breeding to replacement levels we need to learn from the earlier experience with dogs and avoid anything that might make commercial exploitation appear attractive. Cats and dogs are primarily companion animals and it's absolutely critical that they should be reared as far as possible in a domestic environment where they will have extensive social contact with people and other animals to avoid behaviour issues that will increase the risk of them becoming unwanted adults.

Useful links
BVA/AWF/RSPCA Puppy Contract
Advice about stray cats

How not to keep dogs

Fortuitously (I sincerely hope it is not a portent of more of the same!) this week's calls could have been used as case studies to illustrate what is wrong with the dog situation in this country.

1. Request for help with the cost of "cherry eye" surgery for a young bulldog. The owner had spent £300 on surgery on one eye and couldn't afford to get the other one done. Sadly this isn't something we can afford to help with.
2. Request to help with first aid for a young dog passing copious diarrhoea with blood. He'd been adopted from an organisation which rescues dogs from Romania by someone eligible to use our clinic, but unfortunately as he'd been vaccinated by the rescue the owner hadn't made it a priority to get him registered with us. Typically it was a Sunday when most vets charge extra and the owner couldn't afford the cost.
3. Last, and saddest, an 8 week old puppy, bought at a car boot sale and now with probable internal injuries. After spending all her money on buying the puppy, his owner had none to pay for treatment. We covered this, but the pup is probably not going to make it. 

"Fire fighting" like this is essential because these individual animals need our help, but it is only putting a patch on a broken system.

Newmarket shop re-launch!

We've now recruited a new manager to replace Lorna and our shop in Newmarket will be re-opening next week. Lynne will be at the shop most of the rest of this week, putting out the winter stock and arranging the rota for volunteers.

To help us make the launch a success we need your help with stock donations and we need more volunteers. If you live in the Newmarket area and can help, please drop by the shop.

RSPCA rehoming?

Our inspector's request for us to crank up the numbers of rabbits we foster and rehome has provoked some soul-searching among the rehoming team. 

On the one hand, there's the desperate need to take in rabbits from truly dreadful conditions where they're likely to produce yet more babies who will have miserable lives.

On the other, there's the concern that we'll at best end up creating "sanctuary" conditions where they'll be in better circumstances but we won't be able to move them on and eventually we'll still have no space for new requests. 

At worst we could end up creating the kind of sanctuary that's a welfare problem in its own right if we're not strict with ourselves about taking on no more animals than foster carers can cope with and not skimping on the specifications for their housing.

Keeping rabbits correctly is not cheap; a pair will need living accommodation that will cost at least £500 unless you are a really good carpenter and they'll need yearly vaccinations costing £40 each. They also need good quality hay and green vegetables daily. 

This is possibly a reason why so many people buy rabbits from pet shops rather than adopting—because the shop will let them buy when we would refuse because the proposed accommodation is not adequate.

In one form or another similar dilemmas impinge on the rest of our rehoming:

• Rats are extremely prone to benign tumours as they age; if we rehome to someone who clearly does not have the funds for vet treatment, are we condemning them to a long-drawn-out period of discomfort with large lumps of flesh that may ulcerate or become infected.
• All small animals will need cages that will cost far more than the monetary value of the animals themselves (which is why some pet shops offer a "free" hamster with purchase of a cage).
• When we rehome animals with ongoing medical issues, like Lulu (pictured above), are we taking a risk that the adopter may not keep up their treatment?

We have to be practical about rehoming as fast as we can so that other animals can be taken in, but there is always some degree of risk, and that's partly why we encourage adopters to come back to us if they find they're not coping. It's also why we visit homes before adoptions so that we can assure ourselves as much as possible that the prospective owners have thought through the practical and financial aspects of owning animals, and why we do reject some people if their facilities aren't suitable. We try to operate a "buddy" system for foster homes so that no-one feels under pressure to take more than they can cope with and animals can be dispersed to other foster homes to spread the load if needed.

We need to recruit more temporary foster homes and home-visitors for the pre-homing checks. We particularly need visitors to cover the area round Ely and the northern part of our branch area. If you might be able to help, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk