Superpowers? What works?

The RSPCA was originally founded as a political organisation with the threefold aims of enforcing "Martin's Act"; pursuing improved legal protection for animals and altering the moral feelings of the country towards cruelty to animals.

Over time its practical welfare services developed, sometimes in a relatively strategic way; for example the roll-out of animal homes in the regions was planned as a way to work towards the goal of ending the euthanasia of healthy companion animals. Most of it "just grew" as a reaction to the needs of the time.

If owners are to be prosecuted for failing to seek treatment for sick animals, there is an obligation on the prosecuting body to make sure at least basic treatment can be accessed by owners who genuinely have no money for a private vet. Hence the requirement for branches to provide basic veterinary help for owners on state benefits.

Once legislation had incorporated provisions to deprive owners of animals who had been subjected to cruel treatment there was a need for facilities to house and care for these "case animals" until they could be rehomed.

Sometimes the practical services were intended to encourage someone else to be helpful: the RSPCA has an agreement with the BVA to pay for basic first aid and/or euthanasia of sick or injured strays and larger wild animals. In return the BVA members agree to give basic care to small wild life (smaller than a duck or rabbit) free of charge if brought in by members of the public.

RSPCA inspectors became known as animal experts and were asked to rescue animals in difficulty or danger, generating a need for training and equipment and for wildlife hospitals to care for viable wild animals not fit for immediate release.

As telephones became more common and inspectors' wives became less willing to act as unpaid receptionists there was a need for staff to take incoming calls; initially at regional centres and today at the single RSPCA National Control Centre. The change to one unified centre was partly driven by cost, but mostly by the ubiquity of mobile phones which removed the concept of a local call.

At times these practical roles shade into education, Freedom Food being the prime example of science and evidence-based technical advice and accreditation schemes intended to lead achievable improvements in the welfare of farmed animals. 

The RSPCA's welfare services are now seen by the public as its raison d'être and as the things which  validate its claims to expertise in guiding further change.  In a somewhat back-handed way the ongoing hunt saga only goes to prove the importance of campaigns AND practical work (including the prosecutions as another form of practical service) as it's become fairly clear that without the Inspectorate, the hunting ban might have been quietly ignored for high-profile people. The only way to achieve real, not just paper, improvement for animals is to combine the campaigns to change the law and alter personal behaviour with services that make it possibly to comply and enforcement to ensure the law can't be ignored because other things are seen as more important. Good services keep the public on our side and make the RSPCA message credible.

It's not an accident that opponents who object to RSPCA policies nearly always attack the services, either by claiming that they are not good enough, or by attempting to discourage the donations needed to keep them going.

Fundamentally, most politicians are not very interested in animal welfare, beyond the extent to which it affects their ability to get votes. They are not going to promote welfare changes if these are going to involve significant detriment to anything higher in their list of priorities. Animal experimentation is the prime example of this; a campaign aimed at abolition and nothing else would fail without benefiting animals, while lower-profile improvements like the establishment of the national centre for the 3Rs can be portrayed as "welfarism" but have a better chance of doing some actual good. Promoting veganism and nothing else is perhaps another (although it's a little different in that it would promote a personal change rather than a political one).

I do wonder if someone thought there was political advantage to be gained by getting public approval for taking action on the problems of irresponsible dog ownership through the relatively cheap option of microchipping using chips provided by an animal charity. The cynic in me says I would not be a bit surprised to find that the next step was to say universal chipping means there's no longer any reason why local authorities should fund 7-day boarding for stray dogs, as it should be possible to contact their owners immediately. I suspect we should be thinking about using the 3 years grace period before all dogs are supposed to be chipped to prepare for a potential demand that the RSPCA should take on all the un-chipped strays.

The RSPCA is often in a delicate position between special interest groups who need to be kept on side if progress is to be made at all. One group may resent time and effort spent on anything other than their particular concern even if that might be more fruitfully promoted at another time. Breed specific legislation is an example of this; if it's certain that politicians are not going to budge at the current time it's pointless and damaging for the RSPCA to be forced into a campaign that can't be won — and would be even more damaging if it happened at the end of a series of attacks claiming that the RSPCA doesn't care about animals. Campaigns that make us feel good without helping animals are really not much more than self-indulgence.

Bottom line: if you care about animals and have a specific concern, you can be far more effective if you work with other animal lovers, even if they may not have identical priorities. The public don't like infighting and they're much more sympathetic to campaigns if they come from groups with a track record of practical welfare work. The majority of them do love their own pets and that's the foundation on which we can build.

When the RSPCA DOESN'T prosecute

Mulling over something that happened today made me think it might be helpful to describe an actual incident where one of our inspectors investigated a complaint and resolved it without going down the route of prosecution. I've suppressed any details that might identify individuals for obvious reasons.

Early this afternoon I had a call from our inspector asking if we could help with veterinary treatment for an animal whose owner hadn't gone to a vet when they should have done. In these circumstances the National RSPCA allows inspectors a certain amount of funding which would cover the cost of a consultation, but this owner was claiming to have no money at all (so wouldn't be able to pay for medication if the inspector arranged to book her an appointment at a local vet). 

At the moment we don't normally pay for treatment at private vets (because it's so much less cost-effective than treatment at our own clinic), but in these circumstances I agreed that we'd cover the cost of medication today on the understanding that the owner would register at our clinic at the next available session. We also agreed that I'd arrange for the owner to be issued with one of the neutering vouchers which the National RSPCA gives to branches to part-pay for urgent neutering and that this would be the other condition of us giving them help with the immediate costs of first aid.

Provided the owner complies with all of this they won't need to hear any more from us. 

The RSPCA's 2011 Annual Report states:

... investigations that led to prosecutions represented around one percent of the numbers of complaints investigated in 2011. The educational and advice element represents a much larger proportion of how complaints were investigated and acted upon. For instance, the success rate for issuing welfare advice by RSPCA inspectors, either in the form of informal advice or a formal warning notice, had a success rate of 92 percent in 2011. As over 11,000 such notices and advice were issued, this had an enormous impact on preventing further welfare problems in any of the animals concerned.

If the campaign against the RSPCA was to succeed in causing a permanent fall in donations and legacies to support our work it would have a lot more impact on the 99% of animals whose owners need not be prosecuted than on the 1% whose owners really must be stopped.

Power Without Responsibility...

The National RSPCA has made an official complaint to the press regulator following a series of apparently intentionally misleading articles in the Telegraph.

No doubt this will be portrayed as an attempt to muzzle the free press and I think it's very important to be clear about why the articles were objectionable.

If the Telegraph had stated openly that they were running a campaign to repeal the Hunting Act and published the articles under that banner — i.e. as part of a series with a clear political intention that would have been one thing.

The issue is with the confusion of comment and "news" and with events being reported in what appears to be a deliberately misleading way - for example the way the original complaint about the RSPCA was reported as if it was being brought by an impartial group of MPs (rather than by ones who want to bring back hunting with dogs).

The sequence of articles

RSPCA trustees 'broke charity rules' over David Cameron hunt ...

December 21 2012 | Christopher Hope | News
Trustees of the RSPCA broke charity rules by sanctioning a £300,000 prosecution of David Cameron’s local hunt, according to a cross-party group of MPs and peers including Lord Heseltine, the former Cabinet minister.

[No indication that all the members of the group of MPs who complained are supporters of hunting and their claim that the trustees broke charity rules is reported as if it was a fact in the article heading].

Local RSPCA branch to close despite head office spending £326k ...

January 3 2013 | Christopher Hope | News
A local branch of the RSPCA is facing closure due to lack of funds, despite its head office spending hundreds of thousands of pounds successfully prosecuting Prime Minister David Cameron's local hunt.

[RSPCA Preston branch's animal home appeal used as ammunition against the National RSPCA]

Our once great RSPCA is being destroyed by a militant tendency ...

January 4 2013 | Charles Moore | Earth
The animal welfare organisation has badly lost its way under its new leadership

[More clearly identifiable as an opinion piece, rather than news, but repeats some of the false and misleading claims made in the earlier Mail article].

RSPCA 'is one of Britain's most complained about charities' ...

January 6 2013 | Christopher Hope | News
Britain’s biggest animal welfare charity is one of the country's most complained about charities, figures from charities regulator suggest.

[Logical fallacy; if you are in the middle ground you are liable to get furious complaints from both sides.]

RSPCA accused of double standards over hunt prosecutions ...

January 11 2013 | Alice Philipson | Earth
The RSPCA is more interested in social class than animal rights, it has been claimed, after the charity failed to prosecute members of the travelling community who were shown on television cock fighting and hunting deer with dogs.

[Opinion presented as fact; the real issue preventing a prosecution in the "Gypsy blood" case was the lack of access to unedited video materials. Edited videos can only be used as evidence if the perpetrator is clearly in-shot with the illegal act, otherwise you could frame people by splicing clips of them watching football into audience clips of illegal animal fighting.]

RSPCA summoned to meet head of charity watchdog after ...

January 11 2013 | Christopher Hope | Earth
Senior figures at the RSPCA have been summoned to see the charity watchdog to defend their decision to spend £326,000 on prosecuting David Cameron’s local hunt, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

[Once a group of MPs had put in a complaint the Charity Commission was pretty well bound to ask for discussions; it's not proof of any wrongdoing by the RSPCA]

Video: CA: This isn't what people give money to the RSPCA for ...

January 11 2013 | Earth
Tim Bonner from the Countryside Alliance says charity is pushing a political animal rights agenda by spending £350,000 to prosecute a foxhunting club linked to David Cameron.

[Slightly odd this; a recording via Skype with no attempt to probe the assertions made by Tim Bonner. Reminiscent of a party political broadcast or a straightforward advert.]

RSPCA warned on hunt prosecutions by charities watchdog ...

January 17 2013 | Christopher Hope | News
The RSPCA has been told by the charity watchdog that any decision to prosecute hunts must be a “reasonable and effective use of the charity's resources".

["Charity Commission repeats standard guidelines on charitable activities" is not really news.]

Figures just released by Third Sector Magazine appear to show that RSPCA general approval ratings rose slightly immediately after the successful Heythrop prosecution in early December but fell in the first week of January. This might be interpreted as a delayed reaction to the prosecution, but is at least equally likely to be the cumulative effect of the claims about destroying healthy animals in the Daily Mail (29th Dec) and the string of Telegraph pieces.

Delving more deeply into the figures given on Third Sector's brandwatch page it looks as though there was an initial increase in the RSPCA's popularity immediately after the case with dips following the hostile publications.

Interestingly there seems to have been a significant "PDSA effect" (some of the hostile news "buzz" explicitly asked donors to divert their money from the RSPCA to the PDSA or the Dogs Trust). This is a problem in its own right because the people doing it never explain that the PDSA is purely a veterinary charity for owned animals. The PDSA is an excellent charity and money donated to it will be well spent, but the propaganda writers are not the ones who will have to cope with owners who believe that PDSA cover is much more extensive than it really is.

Third Sector finishes by saying: "Only time will tell if all publicity is good publicity for the RSPCA. However, the negative stories it has generated over the past month in the aftermath of Heythrop suggests that it isn’t."

I think this misses the crucial point — it is a scandal if animal welfare laws can't be enforced because some newspapers will hold the animals in RSPCA shelters and hospitals to ransom if we do.

It's rather as if it was possible to force out local Police Commissioners by threatening to bankrupt the local NHS Trust.

I am beginning to think that the answer might be for the RSPCA to announce that it is not possible to continue to prosecute at all if we are not allowed to do it impartially and refer everything to the police and CPS. Most of the Inspectors work involves rescues or sorting out the problems of owners who can't cope and would continue.

The most obvious objections to this are a) that CPS/Police might decide there were not enough resources to fund animal cruelty prosecutions or b) that they might in fact end up prosecuting more people than the RSPCA does at present (because they would have less expertise in identifying which situations can be rectified without a prosecution) and c) that case animals might have to be kept in police kennels rather than purpose-built RSPCA animal homes or in foster homes. From a welfare point of view (c) is the most serious concern because animals may be held for very long periods of time before cases are brought to trial and it's preferable for them to be in a situation where their welfare is paramount.

Bernard Rollin: part 6

Bernard Rollin: part 5

Bernard Rollin: part 4

Bernard Rollin: part 3

Bernard Rollins: part 2

Bernard Rollin lectures

Light blogging at present due to heavy workload. In the meantime, I've just come across this series of lectures by Professor Bernard Rollin given at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Alternatives to Animal Testing. Unfortunately the sound comes and goes a bit.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry...

In one corner of the Internet, furious people repeat the claim that, "The RSPCA kills HALF the animals it rescues." 

In another corner, people with apparently rather similar interests are suggesting rescues ought to kill all animals who can't be rehomed pretty much immediately and all animals needing any significant amount of veterinary treatment.

Humans aren't consistent creatures, but a bit more of an attempt at sensible perspective would go a long way towards improving the quality of life for humans and animals in this country.

The RSPCA is absolutely bedevilled by attempts to divert a general purpose animal protection organisation into single-minded focus on whatever issue happens to be the special interest of the person doing the diversion, whether it be rabbits, ragwort, ferrets, vivisection or vegetarianism. This is further complicated by those who don't particularly care what the Society concentrates on so long as it doesn't turn a reforming eye on their activities — whether their activity is dog breeding, hunting, intensive farming or whatever. This group ultimately don't care what damage they do to the practical animal welfare work which forms three-quarters of the RSPCA's activities; in fact they may welcome it because it is the practical work which gives the RSPCA much of its clout as a campaigning and educating body.

In some ways an unbiassed external investigation into the RSPCA might be no bad thing for animals because it couldn't avoid also being an investigation into the interest groups which would like to reduce the Society to an organisation which runs shelters for domestic pets and never tackles the root causes of any animal issues. 

Ironically this might not affect the hunting issue very much (although I think there are a lot of questions to be answered about the way the hunting lobby seems to have been able to manipulate several national newspapers). 

The dysfunctional state of the dog "industry" affects many more members of the general public—whether through the cost and heart-break involved in purchasing a puppy who is doomed to die young, or simply through the fact that most British dogs will be pets but most British dogs will not be bred with a view to being successful pets. 

End of year statistics for 2012

Blossom: still looking...

Hot off the calculator...

In 2012 RSPCA Cambridge rehomed 12 dogs, 93 cats, 9 rabbits and 36 miscellaneous "small furries" and domesticated birds—a grand total of 150 animals.

For comparison, we rehomed 29 dogs, 75 cats, 11 rabbits and 13 miscellaneous in 2011—the increase probably being due to us taking in a larger number of kittens in 2012, as these would tend to be rehomed more rapidly.

Two dogs and seven cats had to be put to sleep on veterinary advice that further treatment would be futile.

We provided 2,606 assisted veterinary treatments for dogs, 1,065 for cats, 79 for rabbits and 49 for miscellaneous small furries.

This was a slight decrease on 2011, due to us being forced to cut back the amount of supplementary help we were able to give via private vets.

More boring accounts stuff...

If I played my cards right it looks as if I could get our New Year clinic appeal into the national press. Sadly I don't think keeping RSPCA Preston's animal centre open is the Telegraph's main interest in this, so it might be useful to give a bit of background on the financial relationships between the central RSPCA and its branches.

This table from the 2011 accounts shows the funds spent on support of the 170 branches (amounts are thousands of pounds, meaning that the total support was £8,840,000 in 2011).

This means that (on average) the central RSPCA spends £42,000 on support of any individual branch (sales to branches can be ignored because there will be a corresponding incoming payment from branches). To put it in context: £42,00 is a bit less than half of our branch's annual spend on welfare work. 

In practice some branches will get more funding than others. There's a regular annual grant of around £12,000 per branch which all branches get and which can be used in whatever way the local committee thinks best. Discretionary grants are agreed by Council and allocated to specific branch welfare or development projects.

In addition, and probably more controversially, the central RSPCA provides support "in kind" by employing development officers to advise branches and running some administrative functions centrally  (for example I don't have to submit our VAT returns directly to HMRC, I simply send quarterly figures to Horsham and the accounts department there deal with it). This is probably the area that causes the most friction because we may sometimes feel we'd rather have cash up front than the help.

In practice I don't think many people could take on a branch absolutely from scratch and run it without any source of advice, simply because running a modern charity is just too complex. Some of the help is a bit like presents of odd socks for Christmas, but most of it is actually useful.

Where a local branch is unable to form a committee of volunteers to manage it, control reverts to the central RSPCA. The table below shows details of the branches which were in Council (central) trusteeship in 2011 and you'll see that they tend to be given a rather larger amount of financial support 

to keep them going. 

Animal Welfare Statistics for November

During November RSPCA Cambridge rehomed two dogs, fifteen cats and one rabbit. Our clinic treated 182 dogs, 90 cats 11 rabbits and 4 miscellaneous "small furries".

At the end of each year we complete a return of our animal welfare figures to the RSPCA's HQ in Horsham and staff there combine the statistics for all the RSPCA branches, animal homes, clinics and hospitals to produce the detailed report which is published on the national website before the RSPCA Annual General Meeting in June.

You can see the full report for 2011 at http://www.rspca.org.uk/in-action/aboutus/corporate/reports and staff will shortly begin to compile the figures for 2012 as branches and centres begin to send off their end of year statistics. 

So, you can see that the 2011 figures are not exactly "hot news"; however as they've been reported in the press over the weekend I think it may be useful to pull out some of the information and discuss it in a bit of detail.

This graph shows the progress so far in reducing euthanasia of rehomeable dogs, cats and rabbits. One of the first things which stands out is that the introduction of "RSPCA Generated" in 2009 appears to have checked the upward trend which was evident from 2006-2008. (The second thing is that whoever wrote the Sunday Mail article either can't add up or was using the 2008 figures instead of "last year").

Calls to the RSPCA National Control Centre increased in 2011 compared with 2010

Note that most calls are not cruelty complaints but are requests for help: for example relating to injured stray animals, and far more cruelty/neglect complaints are resolved by providing help or dispensing welfare improvement notices than by prosecutions.

  

The national RSPCA spends much more on animal shelters and hospitals and on funding the inspectorate than it does on prosecutions. In addition to this its 170 independent affiliated branches (of which RSPCA Cambridge is proud to be one) all provide locally-based animal rehoming and veterinary treatment. Without the RSPCA there would be around £50 million less spent on community-based animal welfare benefiting animals and people.

Just to reinforce this: the majority of people employed by the Society are doing direct welfare work with animals (which is not to say the back-room people are just sitting about twiddling their thumbs; someone has to do things like paying vets).

By far the most common reason for euthanasia of animals in RSPCA care is veterinary advice that it would be cruel to continue to try to keep the animal alive. In 2012 this was the case for all animals put to sleep while in the care of our own branch. 

The RSPCA is the only charity in England and Wales with a blanket agreement with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons that it will pay for initial first aid of injured unowned animals (subject to some conditions aimed at preventing people from dumping healthy animals who are not strays). Sadly a fairly high proportion of these animals have injuries which are not treatable. The "Misc" heading includes some small domestic animals such as rabbits, guinea-pigs and ferrets, but by far the largest proportion is  wild animals and these will almost always be in a very bad way before they will allow themselves to be caught. 

Most of the hard work done by RSPCA staff and volunteers is not "news", but an awful lot of animals and people would suffer if we weren't there. It would be incredibly sad if a selfish and vindictive minority was successful in its destructive aims.

Clinic Opening Times Christmas 2012

RSPCA Cambridge Animal Clinic will be closed on Thursday 27th December and Tuesday 1st January.

Open Saturday 29th December and as normal from Wednesday 2nd January.

Out of hours service running normally throughout.

Poor Rudolph spending Christmas away from home

Rudolph was reported to our control centre as an injured stray in the early hours of Thursday morning. He's a very friendly, neutered male who must have been someone's loved pet. He seems to have got away with a nose-bleed and bruising which has left him very unsteady on his back legs although x-rays haven't shown any damage to his spine or pelvis. 

As he doesn't need any further vet treatment for the moment, except rest and pain-relief, I've got him back home in a cage lined with vet-bed so that the surgery staff won't need to come in on Christmas day.

As you can see from the photo he's looking quite bright and he's also eating and using his litter tray, but his back legs are still extremely shaky. 

Emergency Christmas Menu Ideas

Alarmed at the thought of entertaining vegetarian friends this Christmas? Some helpful ideas in this Kindle book from amazon.

"RSPCA Generated"

Lola

“RSPCA Generated” is the concept that RSPCA branches and centres should give priority to animals "generated" by the work of the Society when setting admissions policies. 

This was a huge benefit to branches when it was introduced because it ended a situation whereby HQ run centres would preferentially accept very adoptable dogs, which were simply unwanted by their owners, and branches had to take a higher percentage of inspectors’ animals (because branches are responsible for animals taken in buy their local inspector or found as sick/injured strays in their area and HQ centres don't have formal responsibilities of this nature).

 

Concentrating on the more problematic animals meant higher boarding costs for branches and also made their raw rehoming statistics appear to show that they were very slow and inefficient at rehoming compared with HQ centres, because like was not being compared with like. Injured strays and neglected animals signed over to inspectors will normally take longer before they are fit enough to go to new homes and are also more likely to belong to breeds which are less popular with the general public. Freeing up space at HQ animal centres for animals signed over for welfare reasons took some of this load off branches. 

"RSPCA Generated" is also morally the right thing because if we have made a decision to take an animal out of their current situation it is our responsibility to find a suitable placement.

The downside of this is that sticking to “RSPCA Generated” absolutely strictly means our branch sometimes has to turn away easily adoptable animals whilst still being unable to take on the very expensive traffic accident cases. This probably makes it more difficult to home the animals we do admit because potential adopters who are attracted by photos of cute kittens may go on to adopt an older cat or dog. Healthy kittens and puppies cost us very little because they can usually be placed with foster homes and having them increases interest in and support for the branch.

The 12 Dog Rules of Christmas...

And please make sure you know how to contact your vet's emergency stand-in over the holiday period. Remember there may be a higher than usual charge because the vet covering has to work when most people are enjoying themselves, so make sure you have enough funds available if an emergency does happen.

"Couldn't find a vet that accepts benefit claimants"

Occasionally when you read newspaper accounts of RSPCA prosecutions you'll see that the defendant states that they did seek veterinary help for their animal but couldn't find a vet who would accept people who are on benefits.

People who call our branch helpline sometimes say this and it can occasionally be very difficult to persuade them that they must go to the private vet if their pet is suffering and they are not registered to use the out of hours emergency service attached to our clinic.

Of course the idea that vets are operating some kind of selection process and refusing to add anyone who's not in employment to their client list is nonsense, but I don't think owners who say this are simply making up a story to excuse themselves.

The original conversation with the private vet's reception probably goes something like this:

Animal Owner] My dog's not himself.

Receptionist] Oh dear! Do you want to bring him in today?

Animal Owner] How much will it cost?

Receptionist] £30 for a consultation plus the cost of treatment.

Animal Owner] I'm on benefits; what would I have to pay?

Receptionist] We're a business; we can't give a reduction to people on benefits.

Animal Owner] (puts phone down)

From the point of view of the animal's owner; they would go to a vet if only there was a vet who accepted claimants (by which they mean charging reduced rates). 

From the point of view of the vet surgery; they are not failing in their obligation to provide pain relief even if the owner cannot pay because that's not what they've said. They haven't refused to see the animal; they have simply said there won't be a reduction in price.

Animal Welfare Statistics for October

In October we rehomed 11 cats, one rabbit and nine ferrets.

Our clinic treated 220 dogs, 102 cats, 8 rabbits and 2 hamsters and chipped 14 dogs and 11 cats as well as neutering 8 dogs.

Most of the rabbit visits were for vaccination with the new 12 month vaccine which I hope is a sign that all our educational efforts about the importance of vaccination against myxomatosis is having some effect.

Please sign the petition against live exports

RSPCA at World Horse Welfare Conference

The image of RSPCA Inspectors tends to be of worthy, but rather "establishment" blokes with not a lot of sympathy for those who don't conform.

Chief Inspector John Grant may fit the stereotype if you judge by looks alone, but as a person who was brought up in the traveling community he's better placed than most people to understand the motivations that can lead to over-breeding and welfare problems and search for solutions rather than just nagging about irresponsible behaviour.

2 puppies; no money; possible broken leg

Call just now from a relation of someone who's bought two very young puppies and now suspects that one of them has a broken leg as the pup is crying and unwilling to put any weight on it. The actual owner of the pups is on benefits and doesn't even have enough funds for credit on a mobile phone to call me direct.

Dogs are very much more liable than cats to injure themselves by jumping on or off household furniture and unfortunately this kind of thing is a fairly common occurrence. I'm hoping that the leg is simply twisted or bruised and simple pain relief and rest will sort it out. If it really is broken then some kind of operation will almost certainly be needed, although the pup's age is in his favour since growing bones repair themselves much more easily than adult ones.

We may well end up taking in one or both of the pups for rehoming if the owner isn't able to contribute anything towards the cost of treatment because it just isn't fair for us to provide free treatment for owners who haven't made any effort to plan at all, but charge the responsible ones who register their animals and save up to cover the cost of treatment.

Update 10 pm

The owner still hasn't managed to get the puppy to the emergency vet because they don't have any transport or money for a taxi. The puppy seems to be resting reasonably comfortably although he's distressed when he tries to walk. The owner's going to keep trying to locate someone who may be willing to give them a lift.

Update 18th November

Puppy has been seen by a vet and has a probable hairline fracture. He's been prescribed pain relief and cage rest (to give the injury a chance to heal). Owner will have to take him to the RSPCA clinic on Tuesday for a follow-up examination, but fortunately it doesn't look as though a repair operation's going to be needed.

Congratulations to our Newmarket shop team!

Congratulations to our Newmarket shop team for achieving a fantastic 40% of gift aid sales in October. This represents a lot of hard work behind the scenes as gift aid tax relief can only be claimed if there is a paper trail from donated items to the funds they raise.

This means that our sales team must ensure each donated item is labelled with a bar code sticker matching the sticker placed on the gift aid form completed by the donor. When an item is sold this bar code is scanned at the till and the sale amount credited to the donor number. The till uploads sales details overnight and the computer system keeps a running total of the amount raised by each donor. Periodically I print and mail out the "donor letters" thanking donors and letting them know how much they have raised by their generosity. Once donors have been notified we are able to put in a claim to HMRC for the tax equivalent of the funds raised; meaning that we reclaim 25p for every pound of sales. 

That means an extra £500 raised by Newmarket in October—enough to cover the cost of neutering fifteen cats, chipping 70 dogs or providing 150 low-cost consultations at our animal clinic.

Shops, and the volunteers who keep them running, are the life-blood of the branch because they are our only source of regular income which can be increased by working harder.

We need more volunteers to help keep them in action. If you might be able to help, please drop in for a chat or email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk We also need donations of saleable items and volunteers to help collect donations from people who aren't able to bring them in to the shops.

Revised national policy on branches

The RSPCA Council have updated the policy on the role of branches and it's worth reading the document if you might be considering the possibility of joining your local branch committee or volunteering with your local branch as it provides a concise summary of what we're all about. The image below is a bit small - so you may find it easier to read the PDF version.

In fact it's not enormously different from the branch Minimum Animal Welfare Standards which were agreed ten years ago: basically the priorities are to provide help (welfare neutering, microchipping, treatments) to prevent cruelty or neglect and to care for and rehome animals taken in when prevention fails.

RSPCA week isn't a success

To be honest it wasn't a big surprise that my inbox today contained a message from our HQ saying that Tesco are reducing the number of days during RSPCA week 2013 when we can collect donations outside their stores. 

RSPCA week has been incredibly valuable to branches over the years, but we've never been able to realise its full potential because we simply don't have enough volunteers to cover all the major Tesco stores over 7 days. Reasonably-enough Tesco now say it's not fair to say no to other charities who might be able to make full use of the opportunity.

The days we can collect will now be Friday May 3rd, Saturday 4th and Sunday May 5th.

If we make a real effort to achieve total cover in 2013, Tesco may  revise their decision and offer us the full 7 days again in 2014. If we don't ... we could well see our collection permission reduced even further.

Animal welfare is in crisis. Our inspectors are needed as never before and all the while there is the ticking time-bomb of people who have animals and won't be able to cope if they get ill, or injured, or if the price of feed goes up. 

Whether you think the RSPCA is too timid in its campaigns — or much too "activist" — please make a resolution to help us provide the basic welfare services that make animals' lives tolerable.

It would be an enormous help if you could spare just two hours to collect — either during 3-5 May 2013 or during 15-17 February 2013 when we have permission to collect at Pets at Home.

Sheep for live export at Ramsgate port

If you can help collect, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

We also need more volunteers to help at our three charity shops and to set up a fundraising group.

Please also consider joining the RSPCA. The more members we have, more likely it is that government will pay attention when we lobby for better treatment of animals. More members also means a larger pool of talent to draw on for local branch committees and stronger democracy.

Cystitis!

Harry doesn't have cystitis: he's just looking for a home 

Feline cystitis, or to give it its more correct name: Feline lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD) is frightening to owners because any unexplained bleeding is scary. 

It can ultimately be a killer in male cats because there is a risk that it will cause what's known as a blocked bladder — when the cat cannot pass urine at all and strains so much that he may rupture his bladder or build up urinary toxins to a point which causes death.

In female cats urinary tract disease is less of an emergency but it should still be treated by a vet as soon as possible. 

In both sexes, low-level disease may cause the cat apparently to lose house-training (because he or she comes to associate the litter box with the pain of unproductive straining to pass urine) and cause the owner react harshly and so increase the stress which makes the condition worse. 

Today's early morning call from an owner whose female cat was passing small trickles of urine stained with blood was fairly non-worrying (although it would have been better all round if she'd kept up her registration so that she could have seen our out of hours vets today). As she wasn't acutely ill and being female was at low risk of blocking, she could reasonably be asked to wait until our normal clinic session on Tuesday morning. 

If she'd been a male with a blockage the story might have been much less happy. Surgical un-blocking can cost up to £600 at a private vet and by the time an owner realises there is a problem a male cat can be in terrible pain, to the point that waiting until our next clinic session would be inhumane.

Heart disease to round off a stressful weekend

This caller's cat had been missing for several days and returned on Saturday evening, apparently distressed and panting with her mouth open. She had been to the local private vet in the past, but her owners had no idea that they would be closed over the weekend and that the out of hours cover would cost £100 just for the consultation fee. 

They decided to wait until Monday when their normal vet would be available, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday the cat was so visibly distressed that they called the branch helpline in desperation. 

I agreed that we would cover the consultation fee so she could have first aid today and they would bring the cat to our Tuesday clinic to register her (with a silent mental reservation on my part that she might not live until then).

Even responsible owners who get their pets vaccinated and chipped and provide routine vet care don't always recognise just how expensive it may be if an emergency happens at an inconvenient time or if a condition doesn't respond to initial treatment and requires several visits to the surgery.

Considering that the recent PDSA survey showed that a third of pet owners aged between 18 and 24 would give their pets up if the cost became too great there's a time bomb of unwanted animals in the making.

Myxomatosis

Had a call to our helpline yesterday which left me feeling exasperated and upset in more or less equal measure. The person concerned clearly did love animals but also had some issues which meant she wasn't really capable of looking after them properly. She'd "rescued" three rabbits from someone else who'd been threatening to kill them by wringing their necks, but couldn't afford the cost of vaccination at her local vet and didn't have transport to get them to our clinic from the remote village where she lived.One rabbit had already had to be put to sleep because he had myxomatosis and now a second was showing the same symptoms but the vet wouldn't see her because the owner hadn't yet paid off the debt for treating the first one. 

In any case, because it was Saturday afternoon, the surgery she could reach on foot was closed and being covered from their other one in Cambridge which would have cost her £100 for an out of hours consultation and in any case wasn't accessible because she had no transport and no money for a taxi.

Our fantastic inspector offered to go out to the rabbit as she clearly needed to be put to sleep to end her suffering but the owner called back about twenty minutes later to say the bunny had died.

I've offered to cover the cost of getting the surviving rabbit vaccinated at the private vet, which is trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted but will give him a chance if he's not already incubating the disease.

We can't offer to pay off her existing debt, both because we can't afford it and because it would risk opening the floodgates to everyone who hasn't budgeted for their pets becoming sick.

The problem of vet treatment costs isn't straightforward. The only way we could provide anything like an NHS for animals would be if virtually every animal lover in England and Wales joined us and helped raise funds to do it. We can't simply wash our hands of it and say it's the owner's responsibility and that's it because there are too many people with animal who really are not capable of making the hard decisions needed to ensure they only have the pets they can afford to care for properly. On top of that there are the good owners who lose their jobs, have accidents themselves or take on uninsurable animals with existing medical problems.

Transport!

Writing this at 4.30 am having had an emergency call to the branch helpline just after 4 so no point trying to get back to sleep as I've got to be up by 6 anyway.

Our clinic has out of hours emergency cover for animals who have been registered by attending a normal clinic session, meaning pets whose owners couldn't pay the £100+ unsocial hours fees which a private vet would charge have access to low-cost treatment instead of having to take their chances until morning.

What we can't do is provide transport; I can't really wake up one of our volunteer drivers at this time of night and it costs around £100 to call out the commercial animal ambulance. RSPCA inspectors are not there to provide a taxi service and in any case there simply aren't enough of them on duty at night for it to be practical to divert one of them away from other emergency calls because some pet owner has no arrangements for transporting their pets.

The 4 am call was regarding a large dog whose owner was doubtful whether she could get him into a car and is the third this month where the main issue for getting the animal treated was transport to the vet.

At reasonable times of day we can sometimes arrange for one of our volunteers to help but there really are limitations on what's possible.

Cambridge Evening News have kindly given some publicity to our survey about access to veterinary treatment and it's looking as though transport is a fairly major issue in stopping animals getting timely care.

Click here to take the survey

Broken hip

In many ways the most problematic cases where owners have no money for treatment are those where an animal's life is not in danger, but he or she is suffering severe pain. A bitch with life-threatening pyometra fairly clearly has to be either treated or put to sleep, but in the case of less obvious conditions there is the risk that an owner may simply leave without the animal getting any useful treatment.

We had an example of this today: a dog who had been lame for some time and treated with pain-killers then referred to our clinic because the owner did not have enough funds for further investigations at the original private vet.

X-rays showed that she not only had a broken hip, but also an older injury to another leg - raising the concern that both legs might break down unless the hip was stabilised by operating.

This would cost £1000+ at most private vets and £300-£500 at our clinic meaning that the owner would be in a difficult situation even with our help. In the event, he said he had no money at all, so we offered to provide pain relief free of charge to give him a few days to think about it and a choice of raising the money to pay or signing the dog over to us for treatment and rehoming.

We can't be in the business of providing completely free operations with no sanctions on the owner or we will simply run out of money and not be able to treat any animals.

Equally, there has to be a safety-net so that dogs like this one don't simply go back home and suffer.

Local or National RSPCAs?

RSPCA branches cover the whole of England and Wales and are responsible for providing welfare services within their area. These would normally include:

• Caring for and rehoming animals signed over via the RSPCA inspectors or taken in as a result of cruelty prosecutions.
• Providing treatment, care and rehoming for injured stray or unowned animals.

• Provision of low-cost veterinary care (or help with the cost of vet treatment) for pet owners on very low income whose pets might otherwise go without proper treatment or be put down.

• Low-cost neutering to help prevent the birth of unwanted pets.

• Low-cost micro-chipping to help to ensure strays can be re-united with their families.

Branches are normally run by unpaid volunteer committees elected by local RSPCA members whose job it is to decide what facilities are most needed in their area and then work to raise funds to pay for them.

If not enough members are prepared to stand for election or vote, then control of the area returns to the National Society at Horsham and the branch is run by paid employees until a volunteer committee can be recruited again. This naturally means the loss of local knowledge of welfare needs and the mix of skills provided by a group of people based in the branch area pooling their interests.

I don't think the people who originally set up the structure of the RSPCA intended branch elections to work quite like this, but they've effectively evolved into an annual referendum on whether the branch should be run by local volunteers or by the paid staff at Horsham. If you're an RSPCA member and you don't take part in the local democracy of your branch you're voting with your feet for the Horsham option.
If you love animals and want to keep the "local" aspect of your RSPCA branch: get involved! By joining the RSPCA you'll gain the right to vote to elect the members of your local branch committee and the National Council members who govern the RSPCA. If you can spare a few hours each month to attend meetings, do consider standing for election to your local committee. You may not think you have fantastic business or admin skills, but many important committee jobs don't need a huge amount of  prior experience and training is available. The most important things are willingness to work as part of a team, love of animals and being prepared to learn.

If you might be willing to join the committee of RSPCA Cambridge, email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk