Identifying a wheaten terrier

The Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier Club are circulating a helpful guide on identifying Wheatens who have been neglected to an extent where it's difficult to guess their breed. I have to admit that my best guess for some of these pictures would have been a neglected Tibetan terrier or some kind of cross-breed.

Little tabby cat

We've just taken in a tabby kitten with head injuries. He's about 6 months old and has no chip or collar—he's young enough that the lack of a chip may simply mean someone was intending to get it done when he was neutered.

Sadly, he's another perfect illustration of the added complications caused by the unreasonable antipathy some people have towards the RSPCA and the way this makes sensible decision-making more difficult for us.

He may not survive, whatever we do. Head injuries are unpredictable and there's little that can be done to treat them except provide supportive care and medication to keep the patient pain-free and to reduce swelling and inflammation. 

He has a broken jaw and will need to be tube-fed, which means inserting a feeding tube under a general anaesthetic. To avoid subjecting him to two anaesthetics it makes sense to wire his jaw at the same time, although this will be wasted money if the head injuries kill him in the end. Anaesthesia always involves some risk, so it's possible that he may not survive the treatment intended to help him, but there's no way to avoid this as he can't be left without food.

Because he's so young we want to give him a chance, and if he does survive he should be easy to place in a home, even if his current owner doesn't make contact with us. However, his chances are probably not much better than 50/50 and arguably the funds needed for his treatment might be better used to help other animals. It's possible that an owner may turn up, but choose not to continue his treatment or request to sign him over to us.

Basil was not much more of a hopeful prospect when he first came in, so let us hope giving little tabby his chance was the right thing to do.

If we had opted for euthanasia and his owner then turned up, there are people out there who would have made use of the situation as propaganda to discourage donations to the RSPCA and knowing that doesn't make decision making any easier.

Sad update
Unfortunately little tabby didn't make it. He deteriorated during the night despite being given iv fluids and the vets advised that it would be wrong to attempt to put him through surgery the following day.

More freakonomics

• One of the most common reasons people give for not supporting the RSPCA is that we're not doing some task they think we ought to be—and often the reason we're not doing it is because we don't have enough support.

• The second most common reason is probably an objection to one of our campaigns (or conversely objections because the campaign isn't being pursued sufficiently vigorously!)

Update

Tony Woodley has a blog entry in the Huffington Post and the comments illustrate exactly what I mean.

Cats, Dogs and freakonomics

Freakonomics is basically about the use of ideas from economics to investigate how incentives shape the way people act—including perverse incentives that trap them into behaviour that benefits nobody, including themselves. I picked up a copy of the book in our charity shop recently, and I've been thinking about the ways in which these ideas apply to the world of animal welfare.

Lots of the issues we face are very clearly freakonomics-type problems:

• The person on very low income who buys a £2,000 puppy and doesn't have £20 to pay for vaccinations, or £55 to pay for neutering.
• Whether it's better for rescues to charge an adoption fee and lose some potential adopters, or charge nothing and risk rehoming to people who can't even afford the cost of a single veterinary consultation if the animal gets ill or injured.
• If rescues don't rehome to people who can't afford veterinary treatment, what happens when those people get animals through other channels?
• Does provision of low-cost, or free veterinary treatment for pet owners on low income mean some of them acquire more animals until they still can't afford treatment costs? What proportion of them?
• Pet owners who can't afford the cost of spaying and are then faced with the cost of a caesarian or emergency hysterectomy, which can be at least five times as expensive.
• Cat owners who put off spaying because of the cost and end up with five cats to feed instead of one.
• Pet owners who simply assume free or low-cost veterinary treatment will be available in an emergency. What proportion of pet owners does this apply to?
• Does provision of low-cost spay/neuter reduce the numbers of unwanted pets? It seems obvious that it should, but maybe it's not true for all species—for example most pet rabbits seem to be acquired from pet shops, and the primary reason for them becoming unwanted seems to be lack of knowledge about the amount of work and expense involved in keeping them. (It is very important to spay and neuter rabbits in order to be able to keep them in pairs which is vital for their individual welfare.)
• What effect does education about spaying and neutering have on the proportion of dogs and cats belonging to pedigree breeds? Are the effects the same for both species? 
• How do you avoid education replacing one problem by a different one? For example discouraging purchase of exaggerated pedigree dogs leading to a fad for crosses which may have their own problems.
• Fads for particular breeds (during my lifetime German Shepherds, Border Collies, Lurchers and now Staffordshires have all suffered the effects of excess popularity, or popularity for the wrong reasons.)
• Breeds becoming attractive to certain types of people precisely because they have a bad reputation.
• Is there a way to encourage pet owners who would otherwise be a drain on the resources of animal welfare societies to contribute by taking part in fundraising, or other useful activities, thus potentially changing a vicious circle into a virtuous one?

Update

Checking the link to the Freakonomics site, I came across this economics blog post which is horribly relevant to the problem of the family with maxed-out credit cards and a sick pet who won't make it through Christmas without treatment.

Clinic opening hours over the holiday

Tuesday 27th Dec: Closed
Wednesday 28th Dec: Closed
Thursday 29th Dec: OPEN
Saturday 31st Dec: Closed

The emergency out of hours service will be available throughout the holiday period - please phone the contact number on your registration card.

Basil off to his new home

Excellent news for Basil the little terrier who was found with terrible injuries to his front legs some weeks ago. Not only has he made an almost complete recovery, but he has a beautiful new home for Christmas.

All the family members are adults, so Christmas is a fairly quiet occasion for them and there should be no problems settling Basil in during the festive season.

The rather large plastic collar is to stop Basil licking at the scab on his right leg and he should be able to do without it fairly soon.

Late Night Shopping

As an experiment, we're going to open our shop at 61 Burleigh Street for late night shopping every Wednesday from 5-8 pm until Christmas.

Crossed fingers for good results.

We have lots of beautiful RSPCA cards and calendars, as well as plenty of items that would make really unusual presents - anyone interested in an antique earthenware hot water bottle?

Or a limited edition print of a racing car signed by Damon Hill.

A glimpse into the canine underworld

We've been concerned about the large numbers of animals being advertised on "Gumtree" and similar sites for a long time, and a call I took over the weekend gave me a very nasty insight into what can happen.

The caller wanted to find out whether the RSPCA could prosecute a man who bought a dog from him, and had the dog put down as dangerous within a few days of the transaction. Of course this wouldn't be possible because it's not illegal to have a vet put an animal to sleep—it's illegal to cause an animal to suffer, but not to kill.

If all the details of the story are correct, it appears that the purchaser changed his mind about wanting the dog, and possibly expected to be able to get his money back in order to buy a puppy (also, incidentally of a "status" breed). The seller couldn't have taken the dog back as his original reason for selling was friction with an existing dog (although he seems to have several other dogs and I wonder whether he is also breeding). He does appear to have left the purchaser a contact number when he sold the dog and offered to try to help solve any problems.

Background details of the various dogs involved are complicated, but there appears to be a whole ecosystem of people breeding dogs at home. Their motivation is probably a combination of the attraction of "cash in hand" income and a fairly genuine interest in dogs as a hobby. I wonder how much of it is driven by a desire to find a substitute for meaningful work that they can take pride in and whether an improvement in the job market would make things better.

An awful lot of dogs seem to be traded around like so many packets of sugar, with not much common sense about the presence of small children, or suitable facilities. Against this background our messages about not getting animals you can't afford to care for probably aren't going to make very much of an impact. 

The people we're trying to persuade are being lectured all the time—don't drink so much, don't smoke, eat more fruit, lose weight ... it's not hard to see why they're not going to pay attention to us.

Pics from Mill Road Winter fair 2011

Ben (in the dog suit) got rather too hot, while poor Pat was frozen running the tombola outside the shop for most of the afternoon. Grand total raised was £354.91, £22.86 of this from  the collecting boxes, just over £50 from the tombola and the rest from shop sales.

It just goes to prove that this shop can make money if we can only persuade people to realise we are here and come in.

Many of the people who visited on Saturday said how impressed they were by the shop and the interesting books available and that they hadn't realised we had a shop here (this roughly ten years after we first opened!)

We need more volunteers so that we can open six days a week. If you might be interested, please call in on a Saturday, drop in at our larger shop at 61 Burleigh street, or email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

6 am this morning...

Yet another call from the purchaser of a new puppy that's now very ill. At six weeks old the pup is too young to leave the mother and the seller very obviously did not tell the truth when he said it had been wormed as pup is passing huge quantities of them as well as bloody diarrhoea.

The RSPCA has an online guide with useful tips about getting a puppy to help prospective adopters avoid some of the pitfalls.

Veterinary treatment again

Maddeningly it appears that people are still not paying attention to our plea that they get their animals registered at our clinic so that they will be eligible for low cost treatment outside normal clinic hours in an emergency. Combine this with the fact that others are still allowing animals to breed without considering what will happen if something goes wrong, and yet another group are buying young animals, and you have a nightmare situation.

To give some idea of what this means: on Monday we had a frantic call from someone whose new puppy was now vomiting repeatedly and becoming unresponsive. Nearly all her spare cash seems to have been spent buying the puppy and she had no idea that intravenous fluids at a private vet would cost around £200. On Sunday night we had a call from someone with a litter of kittens who'd accidentally knocked over a video-player on one of their siblings. Last Thursday evening someone who did know about the clinic called us as an emergency because his dog was very ill but he hadn't taken him to the normal clinic session because he didn't have any money. The previous week we had another instance of a person with a  giant dog so ill that she could not stand simply demanding that we should pay to get a vet out to her because she couldn't be got to the vet.

If we don't help, animals like these will go without any treatment, and it's not their fault their owners are so thoughtless.

If we do help, it risks simply perpetuating the problem of people with not enough to do acquiring animals they can't afford.

There's a separate problem that's almost a mirror-image of it. When we rehome animals, we do careful checks of the suitability of the home. In fact it's comparatively rare for us to turn homes down; it's more about trying to steer people towards suitable animals. However we do sometimes tell people they simply don't have suitable facilities and/or arrangements for what they'd do if the animal was ill or injured, and it's highly probable that some of those we refuse do go out and buy instead. When they do, we may well end up providing veterinary treatment for the purchased animal or, indeed, end up rehoming the animal if the purchasers really cannot cope.

In many ways, what we ought to be doing is trying to draw in more of the people who desperately want animal companionship, but don't have enough money or skills and involve them in working to provide a comprehensive support service.

Update
Sadly the puppy died two days later.

Animals In War Memorial on StreetView

View Larger Map

Spend at our shops and help keep animals in homes this Christmas

Reports of animals being abandoned or relinquished by owners who can't afford to care for them are coming in from all sides.

It seems that a toxic spiral is building up in which owners put off vaccination, spaying and neutering because of cost and then are faced with sick animals they can't afford to get treated, or with litters of unwanted babies they can't rehome.

Pumpkin, Little Owl and the three Shepherd cross puppies were all probably abandoned because they were ill and their owners were afraid of the cost of seeking treatment.

Some owners are so neglectful or so incompetent that  their animals are better off without them, but in the vast majority of cases it is far better to help animals to stay in their own homes than to spend funds keeping them in boarding kennels until they can be found new ones.  If animals are being relinquished because they are ill and the owner can't afford a vet, it's much more efficient to spend money on treatment than to spend money on treatment and boarding.

, 

Times are tough, and we all need to spend our money as efficiently as possible. Over the next months—probably years—there are going to be more demands on our ability to provide help with veterinary care than ever.

Can you help us by diverting some of the spending you would be doing anyway in the direction of our shops? Most of us are going to spend something on Christmas cards and presents in the next few weeks. By purchasing some of them from our charity shops you'll be helping to keep our welfare services in action.

In the Alice in Wonderland times in which we live, prices for rags are good—to the point where we have to keep a sharp eye on the bags we're hauling out to the rag collector's van or they get nicked! If you're having a clear-out, we can turn clothes and other textiles into useful funds even if they are too worn to sell in the shop. Don't throw them out; drop them off to us. 

Pumpkin's Progress

When she came in

Now

Hasn't she improved? The white, hairy mop is Marion's little Bichon, looking on.

Christmas is coming!

These are the pics from the Burleigh Street shop today.

Many thanks to Ben for providing superb publicity for our new Christmas display: all the children (and the grown-ups!) loved the dalmatian costume and it was a fantastic attraction to draw people in.

Ben will be visiting us again for the Mill Road Winter Fair on 3rd December, probably in a Border Collie costume this time—look out for him at our shop at 188 Mill Road.

These photos are a bit dark because I was taking them from inside the shop; I hope to get some better ones on the 3rd.

Christmas cards, Advent Calendars and 2012 calendars are now on sale at our shops, also lots of items that would make wonderful and unique presents.

Look out on Burleigh Street tomorrow!

Ben Pettit, who kindly collected for us at our dog show, is supporting us again this Saturday at our Burleigh Street charity shop. The picture below was taken at our dog show - those costumes are VERY HOT!

He'll probably be bringing the dalmatian costume this time and, depending on the weather, will either be in the shop welcoming customers inside, or walking up and down Burleigh street to drum up trade.

Watch out for Ben again at our Mill Road bookshop for the Winter Fair on 3rd December. Winter Fair collecting is usually very chilly, so Ben may be glad of his dog costume then.

Welfare assistance

The Wirral News reports that RSPCA Wirral and Chester branch is having to cut staff at its animal centre.

"THE RSPCA’s Animal Centre in Wallasey is making further cuts and asking staff to volunteer for redundancy as its financial struggles continue. 

Last November the charity’s Wirral and Chester branch closed its clinic in Birkenhead – which was running at a loss of £20,000 a year – after trustees decided to focus resources on its centre in Cross Lane. At the time the branch, which has been in existence for around 120 years, was said to have just a year’s worth of running costs in reserve. 

Now trustees have decided their only option is to reduce staffing costs and an animal welfare assistance scheme. From this week the scheme, which gives treatment for pets owned by people on low incomes, will be replaced by an emergency vet consultation. ... read more..."

Clearly the "newsworthy" aspect of this is the possible closing of the animal shelter and the effect on the branch welfare assistance scheme is glossed over in a way that suggests the reporter didn't understand that the branch previously offered help with the cost of treatment for pets of low income owners and now can only cover the cost of a consultation (meaning the owner must find the whole cost of the actual treatment). 

In many parts of the country RSPCA branches are the ONLY source of help available to people who can't afford to pay a private vet. In Cambridgeshire, our animal clinic is the only low-cost veterinary treatment centre for an area of 125 square miles, but in most cases a branch will support access to treatment by providing financial help for owners to use private vets. This is much more low-profile than having a facility of your own and something that's harder to publicise and fundraise for when times are tough.

Very few people allow their animals to starve—but I'm afraid quite large numbers of them simply do nothing about sick animals and justify it to themselves by saying they're not neglectful because they would take their animal to a vet if there was one whose charges they could afford.

Chaos!

Phone call yesterday evening from someone concerned that a neighbourhood cat seemed to be unable to stand. She very helpfully offered to transport him to a vet herself, rather than wait until an RSPCA driver could get there. Then, about an hour later, there was another call, this time from the vet's surgery, to say they had the cat and also a stray kitten who'd been handed in.

Sadly the adult cat didn't survive, but the kitten improved over night although she's very snuffly still and anaemic because she had so many fleas feeding on her blood.

Then began what you might think was a straightforward process of moving her for further treatment. Being so small, kittens can improve or go downhill very fast. Yesterday evening, the vets were doubtful whether she'd survive the night, but by mid-morning she was perky enough not to be really in need of inpatient care. Because of the snuffles, there was the added complication that vets don't really want a potential source of cross-infection to other ill patients unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

We don't usually end up calling round our foster homes while an animal is actually in a volunteer's car wondering where to go, but I'm afraid our new volunteer driver had some anxious moments wondering whether he was stuck permanently in transit with a sniffling kitten.

Thank you VERY much to our domestic bird fosterer for stepping in at about 5 minutes notice to provide a safe place with no animals likely to be susceptible to cat germs, and thank you to our wonderful volunteer driver for coping with something we don't normally land on new volunteers!

It does show how essential our volunteers are to making it possible to save animals, and also the importance of having as many individual foster homes as possible to minimise the risks of cross-infection.

If you might be interested in fostering animals for the branch, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

What a week!

We put out an appeal for help raising the final part of the £10,000 needed to safeguard the future of our animal clinic on Saturday. 

George the three-legged cat is looking for a  home

Thanks to the combined efforts of the Cambridge Evening News and Radio Cambridgeshire and the generosity of the public we've more than met our target, meaning we won't default on the agreed payment deadlines. Especial thanks to John Grieve and the staff of Cambridge Veterinary Group, who donated £3,000.

This doesn't mean our problems are over. We're now in a position to be certain we can pay the flat rate basic fee to keep the clinic open and that we will be able to carry on paying it in the next financial year.

We still have the awful dilemma of what we can do to help animals whose owners can't manage even the subsidised rates our clinic charges and animals who need emergency treatment outside normal hours but are not registered.

Fees for operations are paid direct to the University Vet School, who provide hospitalisation facilities for us. Charges are roughly a third of what the owner would have to pay at a private vet, but this may still represent an awful lot of money for someone who is on benefits of £70-odd pounds a week or already in debt.

Unless we can increase our fundraising really substantially, we dare not offer to provide extra help to cover the cost of operations because we can't justify putting the future of the clinic in doubt.

Our agreement with the Vet School means that registered animals can be seen outside normal working hours in an emergency, but animals who have never been to the clinic can't be seen and the only available treatment is at private vets. At the moment we will help in a real emergency that can't wait, but all we can do is to offer to cover the cost of a consultation — the owner must find the money to pay for first aid to stabilise the animal until they can go to the next clinic session. Again, we simply cannot do more than this, and we may have to say we can only cover part of the cost of a consult if fundraising dips again.

Many pet owners on low income seem terrifyingly unaware of how little help may be available if they can't afford to pay vet fees. Our clinic is the only one of its kind in the whole of Cambridgeshire, and the PDSA's arrangements with some private practices all require the owner to register before their pet becomes ill. Callers to our branch help line almost always say, "Can you tell me where to take him?" expecting that there will be free facilities in every town, and there just isn't. Getting this across to a frantic owner is incredibly stressful for the volunteers who run the helpline. Many vets will do their best to avoid putting down treatable animals, but at the end of the day they have to safeguard their businesses' viability or no-one's pets will get treatment.

I'm afraid no government is going to see pets' healthcare as something they are prepared to fund—if communities want their animal members to have treatment available they are going to have to organise and work to fundraise for it themselves.

This is why our shops are so vital, because the income they bring in is something we can increase by our own efforts. Please support them by using them when you shop for clothes; by donating saleable items and remembering to sign a gift aid form if you pay UK income tax.

We need more volunteers, to increase the rate at which we can process donated items and prepare them for sale, and to enable us to increase the shops' opening hours. If you might be able to help, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or drop in at one of the shops for a chat with the manager.