Why do people hate the RSPCA?

Opening of the Cambridge RSPCA clinic 1936

The Telegraph's Pete Wedderburn has a column with the provocative title, "Why do people hate the RSPCA" to mark RSPCA week. Coming from a country where there is no strong, centralised animal welfare charity, he's clearly baffled by the amount of bile directed at a voluntary organisation which last year:

1. Answered 1,163,240 calls
2. Investigated 159,686 complaints of alleged animal cruelty
3. Issued 86,354 animal owners with welfare improvement advice
4. Rescued and collected 130,033 animals
5. Rehomed 64,086 animals
6. Treated and helped 210,970 animals in its hospitals and clinics
7. Spent almost £4m on veterinary care
8. Microchipped 67,388 animals
9. Admitted 16,429 wildlife casualties into its four wildlife centres

Opening of the Eddington RSPCA Clinic 1955

The number of foaming-at-the-mouth comment posts following the column illustrate what he means. However only a few weeks earlier the RSPCA achieved a pretty respectable 7th place in the Reputation Institute's annual survey of charities; comfortably ahead of household names such as Oxfam, Children in Need and the National Trust.

Why the discrepancy? I think it stems from the distinction between the attitude of the public in general and individuals with passionately-held special interests. Someone who is in favour of wild animals being permitted in circuses and someone else who thinks all kinds of animal keeping or training should be eliminated will be equally fed up about the existence of a large, middle of the road animal protection organisation which the general public likes and looks to for guidance. 


I suspect this also explains why, every year, we have such difficulty making the most of RSPCA week, because the general goodwill that puts two pound coins in tins isn't matched by willingness to go one step forward and volunteer to help us do the collection. 


Maybe there's more to it, though. I wonder if there's a more general problem that's not just confined to animal issues. Because I'm trying to encourage more people to volunteer with our branch, I try to keep up with news about social participation and volunteering initiatives. One thing that's very striking to someone coming from an "old charity" perspective is how very negative much of it is—to the point of being more about destroying community rather than building it. Virtually everything is either about stopping something or about lobbying for someone else to do something and there's almost no sense that a group might decide they need a facility and then just go ahead and set it up. There's also a weird over-complication of some things—for example if our 1930s branch committee had needed to master this diagram before they started they'd never have opened the clinic. I can't help wondering if that's also why there are so many complaints about ordinary people feeling powerless; because they're never really allowed a sense of having achieved anything. There's something very seductive about the bonding effect of being angry together (I think this explains a lot of the "hate the RSPCA" activity), but it doesn't really lead to long-term satisfaction.


If people are encouraged to believe everything is run by some mysterious, elite "them" it does make it more difficult to persuade them that they only have to step forward and they will find most things are actually run by "us".


I think this is the root of the infuriating way in which the instant reaction to a branch which is having to make cuts in order to stay solvent is, not to help, but to waste more of the committee's time and energy by getting up petitions and making personal attacks on individuals. Some of this is pure Alinsky politics (though I bet they've never heard of him) and it doesn't work simply because there's no point flogging a willing horse. 


If you are an RSPCA member, please do consider putting your name forward for election to the branch committee. If you can, please attend your branch AGM to vote for next year's committee of management, and please vote in the forthcoming postal/online elections for the National Society's governing council. If you're not a member, please consider joining the RSPCA or volunteering, or both, and helping to create better services for animal protection.


Susie, over at the RSPCA Manchester and Salford branch explains why it's such a problem if members don't have enough of a feeling of involvement and ownership to motivate them to turn out to vote.

Volunteers Meeting this Thursday

At the Corner House Pub, Newmarket Road, Cambridge, starting at roughly 7.30pm.

Post-mortem on RSPCA week and planning for the Gt. Shelford dog show which is now getting alarmingly close.

Hope to see you there.

Sunday at our Burleigh St shop

Ffiona and Teresa have created an amazing "floating handbag" display.

We took £183, making this the best Sunday so far. Many thanks to the donor of the writing bureau which sold for £50.

Please keep the donations coming! We sell over 100 items in a typical day, so we need to receive at least 100 items to keep the sales area well-stocked.

Poor little Samantha

Samantha was found as an injured stray having been hit by a car. She has a broken pelvis but with cage rest this should heal by itself. 

Unfortunately not long after she'd come in, her foster carer noticed she was becoming chubby round the tum. A scan revealed that she is pregnant with at least three kittens who are sufficiently well developed that it would be unethical to abort them - they're already showing signs of movement.

As it would probably be impossible for Samantha to give birth naturally because of her pelvic damage we've booked her in for a planned caesarian just before the expected time that she should be due to give birth.

Charity Shop Gift Aid Systems

The new "gift aid" tills went live in our charity shops today, and should not only mean increased funds from every donated item which has been "gift aided", but will also help with tracking sales of different types of item and with stock control.

Basically this is how it works:

1. When a donor arrives, we will ask them if they are a UK income tax payer. If they do, we ask them to complete a declaration giving their name and address and stating that they wish us to be able to reclaim tax on the funds from any of their donations which is sold.
2. We take a sheet of self-stick peelable bar-codes and stick one code on the form, one on a card which the donor keeps and put the rest in the bag of donations.
3. When the donations are sorted and tagged for pricing, a bar code is fixed to the price tag, and an item code is written on the tag.
4. When the item is sold, the till operator scans the bar code, types in the item code and then rings in the price in the usual way.
5. The till periodically uploads details of sales of gift-aided items and sends off a claim to HMRC.

The use of the item codes means we can print out a record of (for example) how many ladies tops we sell. This helps with planning the shop layout (obviously if ladies tops are a good seller but skirts are slow, it would pay to expand the space for tops and reduce the skirts, and so on). Where special or valuable items are donated it gives us a way to track them through the system and reduce mistakes like selling pieces from a valuable china set individually.

Sunday at 61 Burleigh Street

"Merrythought" toy mouse

30s style dress in primrose

Striking gown (photo doesn't do justice to the details)

Thank you to everyone who dropped off donations today - please keep them flowing in!

Ffiona and Wayne were working hard on more shelving for the books section. Stop by next weekend to see the new selections.

In addition to the mouse, we also have a Merrythought teddy bear in almost perfect new condition, and we're continually moving out more summer frocks, tops, skirts, shorts and trousers.

We need your support throughout the year; not just for RSPCA Week. Please come in and browse. We're now open 7 days a week. 10am - 5pm Monday-Saturday and 11 am to 4 pm on Sundays. Sunday opening may occasionally be a little late as I open up on that day and I may be held up dealing with other  branch activities.

Updates from yesterday's RSPCA_Frontline Tweetathon

Archive of RSPCA_Frontline "Tweetathon" for RSPCA Week

Inspector Tony Woodley, who blogs on Twitter as RSPCA_Frontline, copied a selection of actual incident calls to the National Control Centre today as part of RSPCA Week.

This archive illustrates the huge range of calls to the RSPCA.

Remember that many of them will subsequently mean follow-up actions by local branches, such as providing veterinary treatment or rehoming animals taken into RSPCA care.

The Purebred Paradox Conference

The RSPCA's scientific expert on the welfare of dogs has been live-tweeting from a conference in the US. She tweets as GetPuppySmart. I've saved the conference tweets and some related materials as a Storify record.

Easter Monday at 61 Burleigh Street

Radiator-hanging cat bed

Unusual cat scratching post

 Lots of goodies for cat-lovers at the moment, including this fake-fur bed (to hang off a radiator), the unusual wall-mounted cat scratch post shown below, and various smaller beds, bowls etc.

The cat scratching / climbing tree is nearly as tall as I am and made of rattan cane. It includes several shelves for climbing or resting and is new and never used. It's intended to be attached to a wall by screw fittings, but could be supported by tying to banisters etc. to avoid marking a wall.

Opening on Easter Monday was a bit of an experiment, but sales were nearly as good as on a normal Saturday, so I'm hoping to do more bank holidays in future. We could do with more volunteers able to help cover as the usual weekday people would like to spend the holidays with their families.

If you might be interested in training to help with occasional and/or weekend cover at the shop, please drop by and have a word with the manager, or email camshop@rspca-cambridge.org.uk Initial training would be given by Ffiona on a Saturday, as she doesn't work Sundays or bank holidays.

Happy Easter tasks

Just signed off the branch management accounts for the end of the first quarter of 2011. NOT really my idea of a fun way to spend Easter, but it has to be done.

Some points are worth sharing:

First of all, and very encouraging. The Newmarket shop took  £3,615.22 in the two weeks it traded in February, and £6,428.11 in March. This doesn't yet translate into extra funds for the branch because shop rent is usually payable quarterly in advance, which means we had to use the March takings to pay the £6,900 rent for the next three months. The upside of this, of course, is that April and May's rent is now paid and, after allowing for rates, power, wages etc., the shop is making £2,000 per month profit over running costs and is on track to repay the setting up loan from the HQ while still making a decent contribution towards the branch's animal welfare work.

61 Burleigh Street's takings are well up on the first quarter of 2010, although the figures are skewed by the dreadful weather in January 2010 which stopped people coming out to shop:

           January       February     March

2011:£5,115.35

£5,273.31

£6,004.59

2010:£936.01

£4,020.85

£5,939.88

The bookshop is now making a modest profit, but we have to accept that Mill Road is simply not busy enough to attract enough passing trade to support having a paid manager.

HQ were very patient with us during 2010 and gave us a lot of leeway by letting us have vaccines and microchips "on account" to keep our clinic going. We've now been able to pay them in full.

Clarence is home!

Clarence was handed in to us as an injured stray, and we were delighted to get a call from his owner who had recognised his picture in our rehoming gallery.

Clarence was chipped in Switzerland before his family moved to the UK, which is why, although we could detect that he had a chip, we couldn't use it to trace his owner.

This is becoming quite a common occurrence as more people move between countries with their pets and I'm not sure what the solution is, other than, possibly, re-chipping animals after the move.

Logically you'd think that registering a chip for a pet passport to get permission to enter the country ought also to mean some kind of record that could be used to trace the owner of a found pet.

Volunteer Recruitment meeting

Just a reminder that the next volunteers meeting will be this Thursday starting at 7.30 pm at the Corner House Pub, Newmarket Road, Cambridge.

All welcome.

Learn how happy pet rabbits CAN be!

If you have a chance, do go to this wonderful opportunity to see how to have happy rabbits AND a beautiful garden.

Thank you Cambridge United!

Cambridge United kindly gave us the opportunity to do a bucket collection at their home match today. Final total was £188. Many thanks to everyone who either collected or donated.

We usually find that collections like this at events or outside specific stores are much more productive in relation to volunteers' time expended than ordinary street collections. For example the sum raised today was the result of 5 people collecting for 2 hours each. This is a great improvement on the kind of event that leaves me feeling: "Well I could just have donated a tenner myself and saved the effort."

So, PLEASE! If you have not yet put down your name to collect in RSPCA week, and you live in our branch area, email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk Even one hour after work in the evening will raise valuable funds to keep our services running.

Why we help some owners with their vet bills II

Reasonably-enough, many of our potential supporters don't see why they should give their hard-earned cash to pay other people's vet bills, and this is often hotly debated on the National Society's facebook page.

We've just had a case that perfectly illustrates why we struggle with the ethics of this:

One of our clinic users contacted our emergency phoneline because her pup had suddenly begun coughing up blood. She was a responsible owner who had paid for vaccinations and did have the money to cover the emergency consultation fee, but she didn't have enough money to pay for tests to establish exactly what was going on; even at our subsidised rates.

Worst case scenario would have been a blood-clotting disorder, which would be hopeless and untreatable. Best case would be some kind of infection, which could be relatively cheap to treat. 

BUT without knowing what kind of infection (and whether it actually was something infectious) treatment wouldn't have been possible. 

It would unfortunately have been perfectly reasonable for the vet to advise euthanasia on the grounds that there was a 50/50 chance that it was an untreatable condition and any money spent on tests would be wasted.

We agreed that we'd cover the cost of the tests (and then of treatment if the underlying cause was a simple infection), and today the results are back and show that the pup has lungworm. This is potentially fatal if the lungs are badly damaged, but there is a reasonable chance of successful treatment with relatively cheap wormers.

In this instance the owner probably won't be able to pay any of the cost back and will therefore decide to sign the pup over for rehoming. We have to insist on some kind of penalty if the owner can't pay anything because otherwise everyone would say they couldn't afford to pay and we would go bust and close.

But we don't want animals to pay with their lives because their owners can't find money at short notice.

A hundred pounds is an enormous amount of money to someone who is on income support, and frankly it doesn't help all that much to know that the cost would have been more like three hundred pounds at a private vet. 

If owners put off basic things like chipping, vaccination and neutering because they're short of cash it may cost us in the long run in terms of strays who can't be returned, animals with preventable diseases and unwanted litters who need to be rehomed.

Results of the volunteers' hard work at E61

We still need to improve the lighting, but it's amazing what an improvement filling in the cracks  and repainting can produce.

We're now putting out our summer stock and (as always!) more donations would be much appreciated.

If you would like to drop off donations by car, you can get to the back entrance of the charity shop via Paradise street which runs parallel to Burleigh st.

Please phone ahead (01223 312 802) to let us know you're coming, so we can let you in, or just park behind the shop and come round to the front entrance.

Animal Welfare Statistics for March

During March our clinic treated 229 dogs, 120 cats, 25 rabbits and one miscellaneous "small furry".


We neutered 12 dogs, 4 cats and 4 rabbits and rehomed 3 dogs and one rabbit.

Redecorations at our Burleigh St shop

Alan trying to get the rails back straight!

We closed two hours early on Sunday so that the paint would be dry enough to put the rails back up on Monday. I looked in mid-morning today to take these photos and it's already a great improvement with beautiful, evenly-painted walls instead of all the marks and holes where fittings had been hung and moved.

Open on Tuesday as normal.

As always, we need donations of saleable stock to keep our till ringing.

Emergency treatment

Our animal clinic's veterinary service provider will provide emergency treatment for registered animals outside normal hours. To become registered animals must have visited the Pool Way clinic during normal working hours (9-10.30 am Tue.,Wed.,Thur., Sat.), and to maintain their registration they must visit the clinic at least once every two years.

This is done to protect the animals' welfare and we must not abuse their helpfulness by using the emergency service for things that could wait until a normal clinic session, so the branch has a rota of volunteers who act as the first point of call for incoming requests for emergency treatment. During the day we can phone in to the hospital direct, but at night the procedure is for us to phone the duty nurse, who then calls in to the veterinary interns whose turn it is to be on duty on the ward. Unfortunately this does mean that late night/early morning calls cause the nurse to be woken up (the interns work shifts so are at least already awake).

Tonight was not one of the better ones; a caller whose dog was in labour first phoned in for advice, then about half an hour later to let us know that she had managed to organise a lift in to the hospital, and finally a third time to ask for the interns to be called again by phone as they didn't seem to be responding to the entrance door buzzer. The poor nurse must have been cursing us.

Charity shop this Sunday

We took £186 and Phil managed to get a lot of shelf-filling and tidying done in the book section, while Jefferson held the fort at the till.

Vinyl records are still popular sellers. If you have any old records that you no longer want, don't throw them away; we can turn them into cash to help animals in need.

More rather sorry souls

Oreo

Jaeger

Click on the captions to go to their JustGiving pages.

Thank you for your support.

Appeal for Luke's operation

Luke looking very sorry for himself

Luke was brought in to us as an injured stray and he was found to have a broken jaw. The branch arranged for an operation to wire the break so that Luke would be able to eat and he is now much happier than in the photo.

The cumulative cost of treatment for a succession of injured animals is scary. It's not so much that each individual operation needs a lot of money, but that there are so many of them.

This is a bit of an experiment: creating JustGiving pages for the next ten or so animals that we take in and seeing whether people are prepared to donate towards part of the cost of each animal's treatment.

If it's successful we need to have much less worry that at some point we are simply going to have to say: "No more," and agree that treatable injured animals will have to be put to sleep because we simply don't have enough money to pay for them to be helped.

To go to Luke's JustGiving page, click the photo.

Rather a lot of biscuit-related cats

Bourbon

Flapjack

More to come, unfortunately, when Janine has time to upload the pics.

If you would be interested in adopting a cat from the branch, or becoming a temporary fosterer, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

We also need to recruit more volunteer collectors for RSPCA week so that we can keep on raising the funds needed to care for these and all the other animals who need our help.

Even a couple of hours after work or at the weekend would be useful: please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk if you can help.

McVitie

Hobnob

KitKat

Squirrels

A happier ending than I was expecting on this.

A few days ago I took a call from a friend who'd been contacted by another of her friends who was in great distress because the complex where she worked had problems with squirrel damage in their roof area and pest control operatives had been called in. 

Both of them were so upset about it that it was difficult to be clear what exactly was happening, but eventually they explained that that the squirrels had been trapped and were simply being left to die. 

This is clearly not legal under UK law, which insists that bird or mammal traps must be checked at least once a day and I suggested that they should call the RSPCA NCC, making it clear that it was a complaint about the squirrels being caused to suffer, not about them being killed (which is not in itself illegal).

I'm still not absolutely clear whether the squirrels were actually inside live traps in the roof space, or trapped in the space itself after the holes through which they were entering had been blocked up, but my friend called this evening to say that one of our inspectors had visited the building and got the squirrels released (blocking the entrance holes after them so that they couldn't return).

I must say that I had been expecting that the result would be to ensure that the squirrels were killed humanely instead of suffering a lingering death—and a pretty pointless one as a couple of them are not going to make much difference to the total squirrel population of Cambridge.

PLEASE don't use DOG flea treatments on CATS

Yesterday I took another call from an owner who'd used over the counter spot-on dog flea treatment on her cat. The cat was having a seizure as a result and needed urgent treatment, for which the owner had no money. I authorised payment for emergency first aid, using some of the funding recently given to us by the national society.

This morning the vet called me to say that the cat had improved, but still needed inpatient treatment and the bill at that point was over £300 - only £200 of which would be covered by the maximum amount we can give, so the owner will still be left with a bill for at least £150. 

If the cat had been registered with our clinic she could have been seen by our veterinary service provider on the Sunday at a fraction of the cost and, of course, if she'd been registered at the clinic and had a suitable flea treatment product there none of this need have happened.

PLEASE DO NOT USE DOG FLEA TREATMENT ON CATS

The most effective treatments are those purchased via vets or via pet stores that are accredited to sell non-prescription medications. Always read the label.

50 Campaigns to Shout About by Ellie Levenson

This is a study of an assortment of 50 different charity and pressure group campaigns, including the RSPCA "Think Pig" campaign to improve the conditions in which these intelligent animals live.

Animal Welfare Statistics for February

Just got these written up.

In February our clinic treated 233 dogs, 89 cats and two rabbits. We microchipped six dogs and eight cats and also neutered eight dogs and five cats.

We rehomed two dogs, five cats, two rabbits and two guinea-pigs.

From the NCC's Newsletter

We probably get more grumbles about the RSPCA National Control Centre (NCC) than almost anything else, and sometimes people are quite unreasonable about what is possible for someone stuck at the end of a phone line and fielding a non-stop stream of calls from agitated members of the public. 

With this in mind, I thought I would include an excerpt from the latest NCC newsletter to try to give some background about what this enormously stressful job actually involves. I've edited it slightly to make it clearer to non-RSPCA readers because the original was produced for internal consumption. 

A Day In The Life Of...A Service and Support Line Controller

Job Role:

To take calls from the Inspectorate, Branches, Emergency Services and Vets. The inspectorate call for various reasons, such as checking PCO [Person Complained Of] details, markers and matches, allocations, directions and telephone numbers. Branches call in to report anonymous complaints that they receive either by telephone, letters or e-mails, they will also ask the NCC to arrange collection and transfer of animals from vets and other establishments. The NCC take calls from emergency services such as police, fire and rescue, coastguard and occasionally the ambulance service. They will call in for assistance with trapped animals and will also call in to register complaints when they have attended a property and have concerns about the welfare of animals being kept there.

The Vet Line is a dedicated line for vets to contact the NCC to request a contribution towards Initial Emergency Treatment of stray domestic animals when the owner is unknown and for treatment of some wildlife, predominantly wildlife above the size of a wild rabbit. The Vet Line has recently also started to deal with owned animals when the owner cannot afford to pay for the treatment. The controllers will liaise with the owner, vets, branches and other charities to try to assist.

This is a typical day: 

07:50 - Log onto system and check knowledge base for any updates.

08:00 - 09:30 - Take calls from various people including a vet who had been called out to a sheep. The member of public had spotted the sheep with a protruding eye in South Yorkshire, had picked the sheep up and put it in her car and had taken it home with her to Nottingham! The vets had to euthanize the sheep and NCC issued IET and also advised to contact the police and the local councils to try to trace the owner. NCC also advised them that DEFRA should be contacted due to the movement of the sheep.

09:30 - 09:45 - Break

09:45 – 10:15- Fit to Fly. This is a weekly meeting with other members of the team and their Team Leader. It is a chance for the TL to keep the team up to date with any changes that they need to be aware of and to also give feedback on performance and quality and gives them a chance to ask questions and raise any issues they may have and are usually quite upbeat and informative.

11:00 – 12:00 - Back to more calls. NCC was asked to do a call back for an owned animal. The owner had been given assistance from the local branch but could not afford the consultation fee so was asking for more assistance. NCC rang the owner back and discovered that it was not the consultation fee that she needed assistance with; she had an outstanding bill with the vet and wanted the RSPCA to clear her previous debt, this was declined.

12:00 – 12:30 - Lunch. 12:30 – 13:30 - More calls from Branch, Vets and the Inspectorate.

13:30 – 14:15 - Presentation to New starters. The presentation gives an overview and how their role as a call takers will link with the service and support team and explains what Initial Emergency Treatment is and when RSPCA would pay it.

14:15 – 14:25 - Break

14:25 – 15:30 - Final calls of the day included a call from the police about a dog locked in a car, a call from the fire service asking for assistance with a cat trapped in a car engine, a call from Branch asking for three cats to be transferred from a vet to the Branch and a call from an inspector regarding a case of someone illegally docking puppies tails.

If you need to contact the NCC

• Make sure you can explain as accurately as possible where the animals involved are located. In a residential area a street number and post code will do this, but it will be much more difficult if the problem involves animals in the countryside or beside a road. This is crucially important for neglect complaints because of the risk that an inspector will visit the wrong animals (for example if there are several fields all with similar animals in them).
• If a sick or injured animal needs help, please contain it if this is possible without putting yourself at risk. It may mean a wasted journey if the animal concerned cannot be found. If it is possible for you to transport the animal to a vet the NCC may request this in order that treatment can be started without delay.
• Stay calm, and explain the situation to the controller answering the phone. If you are too upset to give complete details they may not be able to assess the situation correctly. Please remember that the RSPCA has to deal with the law as it is, not as we might want it to be—for example we can intervene to stop grey squirrels being killed in a cruel way, but we cannot prevent someone arranging for them to be killed humanely.

Knitting Needles and Old Lace

(By littlenemo)

I have some permanent newsfeeds set to alert me to charity items that I ought to be aware of and there were three recent ones which caused me the proverbial sharp intake of breath:

• How on earth did no-one notice that things were a bit odd at the People's Opportunity to Work charity until two and a half million pounds had been siphoned off? 
• Health 'n Safety not exactly gone mad, but not improving anyone's well-being either. 
• I do think anyone putting together a charity's annual report should understand that whether or not the charity is a "going concern" is pretty important.

The charity shop piece is very unfortunate. Reading between the lines, I think what happened was that the parent charity (CRUK) became concerned that it could be liable if one of the volunteers was injured. Some health and safety breaches (for example fire safety) are strict liability offences, which means the charity could be fined very large amounts even if no-one was ever injured.

The most infuriating thing about it is that, very possibly, the volunteers were safer at the shop than if they were alone at home, simply because there would be people about if they had an accident or were taken ill.

All in all, it's a perfect example of why, on the one hand, volunteers do have to be reasonable about sticking to health and safety rules, and on the other, it doesn't really benefit anyone if those rules are complicated to a point where it's deemed impossible for any volunteer to cope without a paid manager always on the spot to enforce them.

There does seem to be some movement on this from the Health and Safety Executive, who are in the process of consulting on a new online tool for charity shop risk assessment. The new process looks  much simpler and no longer treats ordinary household cleaning agents as if they were dangerous industrial chemicals.

Please, if you volunteer for RSPCA Cambridge, do take notice of our health and safety instructions. Don't block fire exits and keep walkways free of hazards. And don't sell knitting needles to anyone under 25.

I don't want you to have to visit me in Holloway.

Actually I'm not very sure of the legal status of knitting needles and Google is almost silent on this. We're always told the needles must not be put out on the open shelves, but only sold from the secure cabinet. Ditto knives of any sort (which makes sense) and any other cutlery (presumably on the slippery slope principle that if it's teaspoons today it will be steak knives tomorrow.) 

Prioritising, tough choices, unhelpful attitudes

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RSPCA Solent branch runs the largest RSPCA animal shelter in the UK (bigger even than the largest shelters owned and run directly by the national society) and rehomes thousands of animals each year. Their published accounts show that in 2009 the trustees were reimbursed expenses to the princely total of £195 between all of them. These are people who are working their socks off and making a huge difference to animals in their local area. They also run a welfare clinic for animals owned by people on low incomes and like most of us they are wondering how to make ends meet.

Not one of the comments to the online article about the possible closure of their clinic shows even the slightest recognition that the branch is run by a group of volunteers who are giving their time to help animals. Almost all of them assume that the branch chairman and other committee members are paid. There seems to be no interest at all in giving useful help to fundraise to keep the clinic open.

Admittedly Solent do employ people to staff the shelter and clinic, but it really wouldn't be practical for all the day to day animal care to be done by volunteers who might not be available during the week.

Volunteers Meeting

The next volunteers meeting is this Thursday, March 17th. 7.30-9.30 pm at the Corner House Pub, Newmarket Road, Cambridge. All welcome.

Busy, busy

Jake, the little terrier, is doing well and should be fit to go out to a foster home tomorrow. He'll need cage rest with toilet breaks very strictly on a lead to stop him running or jumping and dislodging the metal plates that are holding his pelvis together. Back to the Vet School for X-Ray in a month. 

Luke, the tom cat with a broken jaw, is also well enough to go out and we'll probably move him down to the kennels as there's no reason to restrict him to a cage. He's also not yet neutered (because the vets were anxious about the legality of doing it before we've had him for at least 7 days) which means he's a bit of an anti-social guest for a foster home due to the strong tom-cat smell.

Just after half-past 8 this morning the emergency vet phoned to say they'd got another traffic accident needing to be transferred to our clinic, so our volunteer clinic manager cut her poor dog's morning walk and zoomed down to do the move before closing. This cat has chest injuries - basically the air-tight seal which normally makes your lungs expand when your ribs move has been breached so that there's a leak, making the cat breathless. The initial news on this one is that the School vets think it can be managed by medical treatment rather than needing any operation.

Can anyone tell us more about this print?

It was donated to our Burleigh St shop at the same time as the assorted owl pictures and ornaments. It's a limited edition print by Kenn Burrows who seems to have been a modestly famous artist in the 1960s.

First three weeks results for Newmarket

Lorna's just emailed me the latest results for the Market Street shop which are very encouraging.


w/e   19.02.11: £2,177.06

w/e 26.02.11: £1,438.42

w/e 05.03.11:  £1,606.60

Publicity for the initial opening boosted takings in the first week, so I'm not disappointed that the 2nd and 3rd weeks weren't quite as good, especially considering the cold weather which doesn't encourage browsing at the moment.

Thank you to everyone who's supported us by donating, shopping or volunteering: please keep it up and help us to go on helping local animals. Recently these have included Jake, a small Jack Russell-type terrier who was hit by a car and will need around £500 to pay for surgery to fix his broken pelvis, and several other cats and dogs signed over to our inspectors because their previous owners could not cope.

Sunday at the Burleigh St shop

Wren ornament

Long-tailed tits

"Compulsory Education"

We're regularly taking £100+ on Sundays now, which makes it well worth doing as it's more than we'd expect to raise by "stand-alone" events like jumble sales and all of it can go towards helping animals as this is the one day when it's possible to staff the shop with all volunteers.

Inspectorate group reports for 2010

Fox cub stuck in netting

I've just this morning received the inspectorate report for the Cambridgeshire branches group.

E2 ANNUAL REPORT 2010

CASES OF INTEREST

Three men from Peterborough were banned from keeping horses for 5 years after 5 horses they owned were found living on land deemed unsuitable, poor feed and no water made available. Two of the horses were emaciated. The RSPCA arranged care and treatment for the horses and are still looking to secure them good homes.

A man from Cambridge was banned from keeping all animals for 10 years for causing his dog suffering by failing to feed it properly. It was found in an emaciated state. He was also ordered to pay the society costs of £600 and ordered to complete 40 hours community service. Unfortunately due to the dogs condition and prognosis being poor the veterinary surgeon euthanased the dog on humane grounds.

RESCUE OF INTEREST

A collapsed pony was discovered on a bridle path in Peterborough. The pony was suffering from severe arthritis. The RSPCA cared for the pony and as no owner was ever found the pony was eventually rehomed.

Statistics for 2010

The "Collections" heading refers to situations other than cruelty cases where frontline staff were asked to attend sick or injured animals. These would normally be injured strays or wild animals which the person calling the RSPCA was not able to take direct to a vet. 

The majority of the cruelty complaints can be resolved by giving suitable advice on correct care. This is where the branch facilities are very important as it is often the case that very low income pet owners don't obtain veterinary help because they are afraid of the cost. Our inspectors can deal with many neglect complaints by telling the owner that they must take the animal to our clinic and checking later that our records show that this did happen and that the animal's condition was treated.

E2 statistics for 2010
Complaints dealt with	4549
Case files submitted	30
Convictions secured	12
Adult written cautions	10
No proceedings	8
Collections	5446

Claire and Ffiona on the Andie Harper show

Claire and Ffiona were interviewed on Radio Cambridgeshire's Andie Harper show today, talking about the cost of looking after pets. The link to listen again should work for the next seven days. 

It's a three hour program, so I'm afraid you have to listen to quite a lot of general current affairs before you get to the piece about veterinary treatment. Hopefully at least some of the listeners will have been motivated to think about making arrangements to ensure that they would be able to meet the cost of their pets' treatment.

It's that time of year again...

Even a few hours collecting can bring in enough to make a real difference to local animals.

If you live in our branch area and might be able to help, please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Otherwise, click on the RSPCA Week banner for more information about helping your own local branch.

More animal-related donations for sale at our Burleigh St shop

Badger "piggy-bank"

Birds cup and saucer

Closer view

Please keep the donations coming: they are the life-blood of our shops.

Merlin

A wide-eyed Merlin checking in to have his external fixator removed

Merlin has now had his external fixator off and is looking good. He'll have to be kept indoors and not allowed to jump for another four weeks, but the x-rays show his broken leg is nicely healed. Once the four weeks is up he'll be ready for adoption.

An external fixator is effectively a splint that's actually attached to the bone through holes in the leg. It means that a limb that's broken in several places can be stabilised so that the ends hold together and new bone can grow to fill the gap between. Merlin's x-rays show this process is complete and healthy new bone has completely filled the break.

Animal Welfare Statistics for January

In January our clinic treated 232 dogs, 90 cats, 6 rabbits and 2 miscellaneous "small furries". We rehomed 2 dogs, 9 cats and 3 rabbits.

This illustrates how vital it is that we keep on raising enough money to fund the clinic, because this represents 330 animals who might either have been put to sleep or relinquished for rehoming if a low-cost option for getting veterinary treatment hadn't been available. 

Where owners are caring, but don't have enough money to pay the full cost of a vet, it's much better all round if they can be enabled to keep their pets. 

• It costs less than treating the animals and boarding them until they can be rehomed.
• It means animals don't have to lose the family they know and love.
• It prevents "recycling" whereby people relinquish an animal they can't afford to look after and then acquire another one.

Our clinic costs us around £50,000 p.a. to run, including payments for the provision of veterinary services, vaccines, heat, light, rates, repairs etc.