Owl eggstravaganza!

These are just a few of the delightful owl-themed objects which have been generously donated to our Burleigh Street shop.

There are also many other attractive pictures and ornaments of birds and other animals.

If you love owls, do come along and browse.

We'd also like to thank Debenhams for donating the glass display units which show off all the ornaments most effectively.

Slideshow from our rehoming gallery over the past few years

More pics from the Newmarket shop

Outside the shop just before the opening

Inside the shop looking outward

Mike Thompson welcoming the customers

Books for adults and children

Tabitha is Holly!

This pretty tabby girl was hit by a car and taken to the emergency vet last week. Fortunately it looks as though she'll make a full recovery, and her owner managed to make contact with us by phoning all the local vets asking if they'd taken in an injured female tabby.

Ideally all cats should be micro-chipped to make immediate identification possible. However, if your cat goes missing and is not chipped, do phone round vets, including ones that seem quite a long way away from your home. If an animal is found injured outside normal working hours, the closest available vet may be some distance away.

Also, remember that most "lost" cats have actually got shut in somewhere. Regardless of whether or not your cat is chipped, ask all your neighbours to check any sheds, garages, greenhouses etc. that may have been opened and later shut with your cat trapped inside.

Update
Sadly it turns out that Tabitha isn't Holly after all.  The lady who had lost a tabby cat came down and Tabitha has no white on her at all, while Holly had a very small amount. So Tabitha is still looking either for the person who has lost her, or for a new permanent home.

Update on Roxy

Roxy

This is Roxy, the Staffy who was brought in as a cruelty case. She loves everybody in spite of having been treated as a punch bag. Now fully fit and ready to go to a new home.

Pics from the Newmarket Shop opening

 Shopping here benefits the environment as well as helping animals

A smiling Mark Thompson welcomes the customers

Chief Inspector Mark Thompson cuts the ribbon

People were queuing down the street to get in

Volunteers getting a well-deserved cuppa

Slightly alarming severed hands display jewellery!

Shelves packed with something for everyone

We made over £700 on the first day and £329 today.

Please keep the donations coming, as with sales as good as this we need to keep the stock coming in.

Thanks and congratulations to Lorna and her team of volunteers who all worked so hard.

Ignore Valentine's Day: this is much more important

Don't forget! Put it in your diaries. Set your electronic calendars.

Chief Inspector Mark Thompson will be opening our new charity shop at 10A Market Street, Newmarket at 10 am on Monday 14th February: this coming Monday!

Please come and give us your support. The Newmarket group have worked their hearts out getting the shop ready; now they need your help to make it a success.

Extraordinary Dogs: book review

Extraordinary dogs is a collection of articles about dogs who assist human beings in an enormous variety of fields of life (and occasionally, as in the case of Scamp, who appears to recognise when nursing home residents are nearing the end of their lives; death). However it's much more than just a disjointed collection of anecdotes because each group of stories is introduced with a brief summary of the science that lies behind the dogs' abilities. It's not a book about dog training as such, but may benefit ordinary pet dogs by encouraging their owners to realise their need for mental stimulation and physical exercise. 

We tend to think that of working dogs as belonging to just a few specialised breeds, but this book shows that talent exists in breeds as unexpected as the little Chinese Crested, Yorkshire terrier and Miniature Schnauzer.

For anyone who wants to find out more, there's a useful list of organisations consulted, together with their websites, but I felt it was a bit of a pity that there were no other suggestions for further reading, or references to the science involved.

The Channel 5 series it accompanies is on now.

Interested in training as a vet?

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has a YouTube channel with information about veterinary careers. If you love animals and are wondering about the possibility of becoming a vet this is a useful source of reliable information.



The video series is produced in association with UK Vet Schools, including the Cambridge Veterinary School which provides clinical services to our clinic and uses it for training purposes.

Sheep rescue in Caernarfon, North Wales

RSPCA inspectors abseil down a cliff to reach a sheep trapped on a ledge.

Not suitable for anyone who doesn't like heights!

Another poor little mite

She's about three years old and was rescued by a policeman who saw her in the street being kicked in the head by her owner. Richard, our inspector, and the kennel staff, all say she's a lovely natured dog in spite of her background of abuse.

Of course, she is another Staffie.

Her owner would not cooperate by giving us any information which might help in rehoming her, not even to tell us her name.

10A Market St. starting to look good

Work in progress 

10A Market St - some work on the exterior still not quite finished

If you would like to help in the shop, or to drop off some donations, please email newmarket@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Never blog when your temperature is more than 100 degrees

Naturally readers who can do subtraction will have noticed that 14 minus 1 = 13 not 5.

Our new shop at 10A Market Street, Newmarket is opening on Monday, 14th February, 12 days from now.

Five days to go

Only five days now until our shiny new charity shop opens at 10A Market Street, Newmarket.

Many thanks to RSPCA HQ for demonstrating their confidence in us by giving us a loan of £18,000 to fit it out.

Lorna and Val have been working hard putting up the new rails and shelving, and the gift aid tills should be delivered on Friday.

So, you've joined an RSPCA Branch Committee?

The first thing that will probably strike you is that there's a lot of paperwork and that meetings are run to a fixed agenda that may seem bureaucratic until you get used to it. Meetings start by reading through the minutes of the previous meeting and checking that everyone agrees they are an accurate record. This may appear tedious, but it's vital to have written proof of what was actually agreed if there are problems later on.

A branch committee meeting is only allowed to make decisions if there are at least 4 elected committee members present.

The next thing is that really quite frighteningly large sums of money are involved. In our case the bill for animal boarding runs at roughly £2,000 each month. The basic fee to staff our animal clinic is £2,500 and on top of that there are costs for veterinary treatment of the animals we take in and general items like rates, heating and repairs. 

As a branch, our life is a constant balancing act between not going bust altogether and constant demands to find, "just another £200" in order to save an animal's life.

The trouble is that ONE payment of £200 is not much in relation to our turnover BUT £200 repeated every day would finish us off unless we can increase our income.

Is anybody out there?

I sometimes feel that way, and evidently RSPCA HQ are the same as that's the heading of their latest volunteer survey.

If you do volunteer for the RSPCA, I urge you to complete the online form - especially if there are things you would like to see changed or have irritated, annoyed or upset you. If we don't KNOW about problems we can't fix them.

If you are a volunteer and you complete the form you'll be entered into a draw to win a day out with one of the inspectors.

In some ways the people we really need to ask are the ones who considered volunteering and either never got started or else drifted away. It came up on the i-volunteer discussion board a few days ago and, allowing for the fact that this was just one person's experience, one problem that can be fixed seems to be an explanation of why volunteers can't automatically attend and vote at branch committee meetings or vote at the branch AGM and what they need to do if they would like to get more involved in decision-making.

RSPCA branches are registered charities in their own right, governed by the RSPCA Rules for Branches, and ultimately by the Charity Commission. We can't simply re-write the rules to suit ourselves, or the result would be chaos, and because large amounts of charity funds are involved there have to be set procedures to specify who is eligible to elect the committee. Committee members are personally responsible for proper management of branch funds (and could ultimately be made to pay them back if things went really wrong). If random people could attend committee meetings and vote there would be no way to hold them to account, and it would be very awkward if it was possible to come to a meeting, push through some hugely expensive project and then leave everyone else to cope.

If you are an existing volunteer, or a new one, and are interested in taking part in decision-making at local or national level, the first thing you need to do is to join the RSPCA. (Make sure you request that your details are passed on to the local branch and that you become a branch member as well as a national one).

Three months after your application has been processed, you will be eligible to vote and stand in branch elections. You should automatically be sent details of the date of your own branch's Annual General Meeting (which is where the elections take place) and a nomination form which you can use to submit yourself as a candidate for election to the committee. You need to get supporting signatures from two other branch members (usually if you contact the existing committee they will be only too delighted to arrange this as most committees are short of members). 

For a valid election the branch AGM must be attended by at least 10 members and each committee member needs to receive at least 50% of the votes of those present in order to be elected (members can vote for as many candidates as they like, but can only place one vote per candidate).

Once you have been elected, your troubles will be only just starting...

Dog foster home needed

One of our clinic clients needs to find a temporary or permanent home for a four year old Labrador dog due to health problems (partly hers and partly the dog's).

The dog is well-behaved, friendly and placid, but has begun having occasional fits - so far only 1-2 per month, which the clinic vets have advised should be monitored, but not treated by medication at this stage. When he has a fit he loses control of his bladder and threshes about in a way which means he would be a risk to small children because of his size and strength. For the same reason he probably ought not to be left alone with other dogs. He's never shown any signs of aggression other than reflex snapping when actually having a fit.

Ideally he needs to be placed in a home where he can be restricted to areas where the seizures won't do any damage (to him or to furniture and carpets) and where he can be left to recover quietly in his own time. 

If you might be able to help, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Snap?

If you've been following the discussions about "Big Society" and the rôle of charities, you may be aware of Parliament's Public Affairs Select Committee investigation on the Funding of the Voluntary Sector. The minutes of evidence are rather long, but I was very interested by the asides about the distinction between "campaigning" and "service" charities, with some of the questioners being quite hostile to the idea that charities should try to bring about changes in the law or in the way people behave.

The Chief Executive of Marie Curie Cancer care rebutted the claim as follows:

"It seems to me that it’s a pretty fundamental principle that free organisations and free associations can campaign-that’s important. I think there needs to be a balance between campaigning and service provision, and often charities will use their experience of providing services to influence public policy. They will say, "Look, we realise that caring for people with cancer requires a different approach, and we’re going to campaign to ensure that different approach." There wouldn’t be a hospice movement if there hadn’t been both the provision of hospices by the charitable sector and also arguments on the need for more of them. It’s a combination that often takes place. Different charities will make different decisions about the balance of that. I think the best charities combine the provision of direct services and the use of knowledge to influence policy. That’s the important principle I think."   

Fired by his example, I'm cross-posting from a piece I did a few months ago on our i-volunteer page about campaigning and animal charities.

Some animal protection organisations see their primary role as the direct provision of welfare services (for example rehoming animals), while others are primarily orientated towards campaigning, or education. A few combine the two, and this may cause them some problems.

On the one hand they may be accused of diverting funds intended for animal welfare services into "political" activity (with a small p). Or, on the other, of failing to tackle basic questions of how we ought to treat non-human animals in favour of "safe" options which are acceptable to the general population.

I think this idea that providing services and campaigning are somehow natural opposites is false and actively harmful. "Speaking out for animals" may be all very well, but it isn't likely to do them very much real good unless it's backed by knowledge (which animal welfare practitioners are more likely to possess than purely theoretical campaigners). It may do them actual harm if the campaigns are based on wrong, outdated or incomplete knowledge.

On the other hand if the practitioner sees recurring problems which could be solved by education or changes in the law, it makes no sense to say, proudly: "All our money is spent on direct provision of services."

So far as I'm aware, the RSPCA is unique in providing a free service which the State would have to spend money to replace if we collapsed. The PDSA provides services which effectively top up the benefits of very poor people who depend on pets for companionship, but there would be no statutory requirement for any kind of replacement. So long as anti-cruelty laws are on the statutes there would have to be at least a minimal amount of enforcement, even if many cases would simply be disregarded as not a priority. So, in a strange, back-to-front way we're almost the ideal "Big Society" organisation, raising our own funds to provide a better service than the state would do, but at the same time saving public money by funding work the state would have to do if we weren't there. The network of RSPCA branches was doing things locally nearly a century before the Big Society Network was thought of. "Mending our communities" may be a little too ambitious, but we are providing local services for low-income families with pets. 

Charity Shop opening date February 14th

We now have a date for the opening of our new charity shop in Newmarket. 

10A Market street will open for business on Monday 14th February. This will give the volunteers a chance to practice with the new tills during the relatively quiet weekday period ready (I do hope) for a really busy Saturday.

There will be staff and volunteers in the shop working on setting up from 29th January onwards and they will be more than delighted to take in donations of items for sale. Market street itself is pedestrianised, so if you are dropping off donations by car it would be best to contact us first for directions to the access road at the back of the shops. Email newmarket@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or phone 07766 502 032 (note that the location on Google maps correctly identifies the access road, but shows the back of the wrong shop.

If you are interested in volunteering in the shop, please download and complete our shops volunteers form and bring it with you. We need to keep a record of who to contact in an emergency and whether our volunteers have any health conditions which mean we need to make adjustments to their work patterns (for example avoiding standing for long periods).

Newmarket Shop will be opening in February

The shopfitters are due to hand the refurbished shop at 10A Market Street over to us tomorrow, although there are some minor jobs still to do. We then have to put up the rails for clothes, install the new Gift Aid tills, and stock the shop.

From Wednesday onwards there will be staff and volunteers in the shop for most of the day and they will be delighted to take in donated items. Unfortunately the phoneline is not yet connected, so it's not yet possible to phone ahead. Market St is pedestrianised, but if you want to drop off donations by car there is access to the rear of the shop from the service road off the A142.


We need more volunteer, for a variety of tasks, not just staffing the till.

We need people to help with sorting and cleaning donated items (a good wash in soapy water can vastly improve the saleability of ornaments and bric-à-brac). Also, people to fill shelves, put clothes out on the  rails and help with moving larger items.

We also need people who would be willing to distribute leaflets and help with publicity to ensure that the opening is a success as first impressions are so important.

Car drivers willing to collect donations from elderly or non-driving donors would be a great help.


If you would be interested in volunteering, please email newmarket@rspca-cambridge.org.uk