The veterinary treatment crisis goes on...

Wood Green Animal Shelters are trying to publicise the dire situation of animals whose owners have no means of paying for necessary treatment:

Wood Green, The Animals Charity is being forced to turn away more than 14 pets in need of veterinary care every week because their owners have neglected to insure them.

The Charity is receiving daily requests to treat issues including broken legs, jaws, ear infections, skin disorders and dental problems of dogs, cats and rabbits because pet owners cannot afford the treatment.

We had a call this morning from someone in Sawtry (sadly well outside our clinic catchment area) who'd been given our details by Wood Green in the desperate hope that we could do something to help them, and another request via the shelter for help with neutering.

A collie was abandoned at another vet, almost certainly because her owners knew they couldn't possibly pay the cost of her treatment.

Personally I am haunted by some of the calls I've received where owners beg and plead for us to help their pets.

The bottom line is that we can't put the existence of our clinic at risk to help people who could have saved their pets by taking the minimal action of getting them registered and therefore making them eligible for low-cost out of hours treatment from our own veterinary provider.

Our of hours emergency treatment at private vets is now hugely expensive and we simply cannot currently afford even the comparatively small (£100-£150!) cost of emergency euthanasia if we're going to end up paying it two or three times each week.

Before we can consider reinstating help of any kind at private vets we have to raise enough funds to be certain of the clinic's long-term viability, and that means we have to build a proper fundraising team.

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

We're now gearing up for RSPCA week, which is our single biggest fundraising event of the year, when we have permission to collect outside all 7 major Tesco stores in our branch area. Every extra person willing to give a couple of hours to collect means £20-£40 raised to help suffering animals.

Please consider whether you can spare those hours this year.

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.

Cats, cats, cats

Patch had another checkup at the clinic this morning and she's doing really well, although it's worrying that she seems to be so allergic to fleas that even one bite means an itchy lump that she'll scratch.

She's still on hibiscrub baths twice weekly and is amazingly good about them—probably because they give immediate relief from itches.

In an ideal world she'd be kept in a home with no other animals where it would be relatively easy to make sure absolutely all biting parasites are eliminated. Being an entirely indoor cat would also help as she wouldn't come into contact with hedgehogs or other roaming cats. As things are, I'm upping the frequency of flea treatment for my own cats, and being rigorous about treating the pen she's living in, while being careful to air and dry anything treated with household flea sprays containing permethrin which is toxic to cats if they're directly exposed to it.

However the added complication is that she seems to be mildly incontinent and does sometimes wet her bed at night, which would make it more difficult to keep her entirely indoors. I'm hoping that it may be possible to work on the incontinence problem once her skin trouble is completely under control as the steroid treatment she's on for the allergies will also tend to increase thirst and consequently create a full bladder which then leaks when she's deeply asleep. She's less than a year old and a happy little soul in spite of her problems.

Sarah, the tabby found on Cherry Hinton road with very severe hyperthyroidism seems to have fallen on her paws as the helpful couple who noticed how ill she was and brought her in have offered to foster her for the moment. Younger hyperthyroid cats sometimes make an absolutely dramatic improvement once their condition is under control with medication, so let's hope this will be the case for Sarah.

Hayley, the other hyperthyroid cat, is probably quite a bit older and she seems to be anaemic as well which possibly means she has other underlying issues. She seems well and happy in herself (much brighter than Sarah was when she came in), so the vet's advice is to treat the thyroid problem; worm and de-flea her in case the anaemia is simply parasite related, and see how she goes.

The vets have advised amputation as the best option for the cat with a severe leg injury as they feel the chances of saving the leg are minimal so it wouldn't be fair to put him through surgical repair and possibly have to amputate at a later date anyway.

No news yet on the cat with head injuries sustained in a traffic accident.

If you might be interested in fostering cats (and sometimes other animals) who are recuperating after treatment, please emain rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk for more information.

Injured cat

I've just been contacted by the 24hour emergency vet to let me know one of the Animal Welfare Officers has brought a cat in for first aid there. She'll have pain relief and emergency care overnight then one of our volunteer drivers will transfer her to our own clinic for further treatment in the morning. They say they're pretty sure she has at least one broken leg, but I should have more details, including a description, by tomorrow evening.

If a cat goes missing it's important to phone round vets—including the emergency out of hours vet, who may be some distance away—as injured animals are normally taken to the closest available private vet for first aid. Depending on how busy they are and whether the cat is found during the middle of the night, there may be some delay before the local branch is notified.

After a fracture repair operation cats will normally need to be confined for several weeks to avoid putting further strain on the repaired section of bone, which could cause the ends to move out of alignment. They also need to come back to the clinic for periodic re-checks. We are always in need of foster homes where they can be kept during this recovery period as it's a waste of funds and a drain on the kennel staff time to put them into our cattery, and it's also much more pleasant for the cats to be in home-like surroundings where they can have more attention to help pass the time.

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

UPDATE:
Sadly she deteriorated in the next few days, and the vets took the decision to put her to sleep as they did not think she would survive an operation to amputate the leg with the worst injuries.

Good news on Riley

Her real name is Roxy and she's insured, so her owner is able to take on the cost of her treatment. We managed to get a definite ID as she's chipped, although there was some delay because they'd moved since registering the chip and the phone number listed was no longer active.

Let's hope Roxy makes a full recovery—she'll certainly be more comfortable in her own familiar home surroundings than in a cat pen in a foster home.

We always need to recruit more foster carers for animals recovering after treatment. If you might be interested, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Plasma cell pododermatitis

Poor Taylor and his sore feet enjoyed minor celebrity status at the clinic today with all the students gathering round to see them.

He's got plasma cell pododermatitis, an unusual problem, which fortunately doesn't seem to be as painful as it looks and is relatively cheap to treat. The picture below gives some idea what it looks like (image freely available under GPL from the veterinary dermatitis site).

The pads of Taylor's hind feet are almost completely healed now, and the sore area of his left fore foot is better than it was, but his right forefoot still looks horrible, although some of the swelling has shrunk.
Update (11th January 2012)
Taylor's feet are looking pretty good; slightly puffy and with thinner, softer skin than a normal cat, but no bleeding or splitting. He's been off medication for several weeks with no deterioration so it looks as though his condition can be managed by keeping him in an environment where he's not running on anything hard or sharp and monitoring his feet for any inflammation that indicates he needs another course of steroids.

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.

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.

More on the "feed-in" to the branch from RSPCA frontline activities

If you're following RSPCA_Frontline you'll have seen that the staff responded to 1,442 complaints and collections on 2nd November. One of these was in our branch area and was a concern over a pet that had been noticed limping. An inspector visited the owner and advised them that the animal needed to be seen by a vet. 

As it turned out that finance was an issue, the owner was given details of the veterinary services provided by our branch and told to contact us for help. They did this and the animal was seen and treated.

This is why it's so important for us to continue providing a service to local owners who may not be very organised or competent. It's far better to Prevent cruelty than prosecute afterwards.

Merlin's vet check-up

Merlin looking rather woebegone as he waits to see the vet

Merlin had his 9-day wound check yesterday and all looks good so far. You can just see the external fixator on his right-front leg in the photo. The green lumps are vetwrap self-adhesive bandage wrapped round the screws that join the splint to the pins which actually go below the skin and are attached to the leg bones, holding them in place so they can heal in the correct position.

There's a photo and diagram showing how external fixators work on the veterinary central website. Considering that the pins are essentially going into the leg through small open wounds which won't be able to close until the fixator is removed, animals are surprisingly unworried by them. The main risk is  the potential for infection, which is why the wounds need a periodic check.

Another action-packed Saturday, and not in a good way

Day started at 5.20 am with a call from a clinic client whose cat was in labour. At least she was responsible enough to have got the cat registered, so it was possible to ask one of the night-duty vets to give her an advice call back. Judging from my side of the call I think mother cat was probably OK, but I suspect the kitten she'd had trouble delivering probably had some kind of congenital malformation and didn't make it.

Usual morning routine of washing cat dishes and bleaching litter trays, then to the shops to do the banking and on to Arbury Court greengrocer's shop to exchange their collecting tin. THANK-YOU to all the customers and staff who fill it reliably as clockwork every three months!

The view heading towards Arbury over the river

Nearly there when the mobile went off with a caller who didn't know his dog was pregnant until she had puppies two days ago. Two of them had died in the meantime, and the bitch was now so poorly that he didn't think she'd survive the weekend without treatment. Considering that she must have been ill first thing, WHY couldn't he have phoned three hours earlier when our clinic would still have been open? Finally agreed to cover first aid at a private vet (which we'll try to get him to pay back) and told him to get her down to our clinic on Tuesday, if she survives.

Got into the greengrocer and it rang again; this time an elderly gentleman with equally elderly Westie who IS registered at the clinic and had had a fit. Took their details and asked for him to be given a call-back from one of the vets to discuss if she ought to be seen that day as an emergency. Life would be a lot easier if all pet owners were more like him. At least the people in the shop had an opportunity to see their donations in action.

Back for some lunch, then to the shop for the rest of the afternoon. Either Bettina or Anne has used her initiative and produced a home-made A-board to increase our visibility.

Busy putting out more donations to fill up gaps as items sell, but hampered by ongoing phone discussion about a mystery cat with a bad leg, which seems to have been signed over to us for rehoming, but nobody knows why or who authorised this. Unfortunately it looks as though it is definitely Our Problem, so Janine will arrange collection and transfer to the kennels. The bad leg has apparently improved with no treatment other than metacam (for pain and inflammation).

Pretty vase donated to the shop this week

I knew it!

More black propaganda from people who will not have to pick up the pieces if we go under.

When we got the original circular from HQ asking us not to include "beauty" classes in any official RSPCA fun dog shows I must admit I was apprehensive that it could be used against us. Of course if we did run classes where "cute" appearance was the main criterion, that could be used against us too. 

I'm not entirely convinced that the real problem with show dogs is judging by appearance so much as judging by distorted ideas of what is desirable appearance.

This picture is a modern Basset hound. 

This is one from 1915.

The older dog is much less exaggerated and has more normal back legs and less folded facial skin. That's no guarantee that he didn't have ectropion or any of the other ills that plague some  pedigree breeds, but I can't help thinking that selecting for dogs that looked more similar to him would be likely to improve the general fitness of Bassets.

I'm afraid we are seeing a pattern here.

The RSPCA is fundamentally a charity which provides services for animals (welfare law enforcement, veterinary treatment, rehoming etc.) and also campaigns on issues which affect animal welfare.

It's the services which make the campaigns credible: people with frontline experience of animal welfare work are likely to know what they're talking about and people who are putting unpaid effort into practical ways of improving animals' lives must genuinely care about animal welfare. The size and unified nature of the RSPCA probably impresses politicians with the likelihood that we're backed by substantial numbers of citizens with votes, but to some extent that's a secondary consideration.

Because of this credibility, virtually any person or organisation which wants to affect animal issues (whether to achieve change or prevent it) sees the RSPCA as a gatekeeper: government is likely to believe us if we say there really is a welfare problem, but it will also believe us if we say things are more complicated than other animal campaigners think. Many people who genuinely care about animals but have an overwhelming concern for one area, such as animal experiments, or factory farming, see us as the only thing which is stopping them from succeeding, because we're not giving unqualified support to whatever it is they want.

Add on those, like the kennel club, or foxhunters who see us as the organisation with enough clout to stop them going on doing what they like, and the result is that threats to our ability to provide the welfare services are used as blackmail to change the welfare policy. This is the, "I'll never give the RSPCA another penny and I'll tell all my friends unless you .... (abolish fox-hunting, bring back fox-hunting, say pedigree dogs are healthy, say pedigree dogs should be abolished—fill in the blank to taste)" route.

On top of this, we're never going to be able to provide the service level many of the public expect, so we have a constant background of genuine complaints plus spurious ones from people who are aware that the most effective way to strike at the RSPCA is to hit our ability as a service provider. None of this is helpful when we need to recruit volunteers to work at the fairly mundane jobs that are essential to keeping the services going.

That Channel 4 programme

Grim shop meeting this evening at 188 Mill Road. It's now long enough since the Channel 4 anti-RSPCA "documentary" to assess some of its impact and donations have been hit significantly. At least one commercial house-clearance agent who regularly gave the shop old books it was too much trouble for him to sell has stopped because he now believes we've got plenty of money and aren't spending it on the animals. The antique centre round the corner in Gwydir st is apparently telling customers not to give to the RSPCA: "because they've got loads of money and don't care about animals".

I'm sure the Channel 4 programme makers thought they were very daring and anti-establishment—it would be daring and anti-establishment to cut NHS funding (after all it's got a million times as much cash as the RSPCA) and just let sick people die, but that wouldn't make it a good idea.

Ironically Dogs Today this month is featuring the Animals Count party as "the political party that wants an NHS for dogs". It would be more useful if they hadn't done their level best to destroy the closest thing to an animals' NHS that exists, although I respect Beverley Cuddy for being willing to allow honest discussion in the comments of her articles.

Branch animal welfare statistics so far this year

Rehomed: 13 dogs, 23 cats, 4 rabbits and 6 miscellaneous animals.

Veterinary treatments given: 1,110 dogs, 505 cats 46 rabbits and 26 miscellaneous animals.

67 dogs and 57 cats neutered, 44 dogs and 52 cats microchipped.

Spitting tacks!

Why do people who can't afford any veterinary treatment choose to keep big dogs and breed from them without making any effort to find out beforehand whether any help is going to be available if things go wrong?

Yesterday our clinic had a phone call from an owner saying his dog couldn't stand up and he wanted one of our vets to go out to see her. The reception staff on duty persuaded him to find someone who could bring her to the clinic and fortunately he managed this before the duty vets were due to leave. It turned out that she had mastitis and high fever, which hopefully can be treated with antibiotics, but if he'd left it any later she'd very probably have died. We don't know the status of her puppies.

It's one thing if an animal has an expensive accident out of the blue, but to breed a bitch knowing that you can't afford to take her to a vet in normal surgery hours if she gets an infection and not make any effort to find out whether there is an RSPCA or PDSA clinic locally, or how to go about registering there, really takes the biscuit.

Cheering news all round

Still short of cash but animal related things are looking up a bit. The rottie who was vomiting blood stayed in overnight on a drip and hopefully will be fit enough to go home tomorrow. Being a sizeable adult she's got much more reserves to draw on than a tiny puppy would. 

Her owner spontaneously phoned to thank us for our help and to make arrangements to pay us back, so I'll forgive him for being a royal pain for much of the morning texting me at work to find out how she was. The branch contact phone is my own mobile and while I'm at work I switch it over to our chairman who works from home so isn't disturbing other people if she takes RSPCA-related phone calls. Unfortunately this only works for voice calls, not texts, so I still get the occasional  RSPCA client whose finances are in such a state that he doesn't have enough credit on his phone to make voice calls. It's quite difficult for people to understand that the branch is run by volunteers who have their own livings to make and that we're not actually inside the veterinary hospital, so we can't give updates on animals by popping down and taking a look at them and we don't have time for hugely involved conversations.

From a personal point of view, the other major good news is that Fern's biopsy results came through today and her thyroid tumour isn't malignant. She's still got a combination of problems which will mean she'll have to be on medication for the rest of her life, but anything more drastic seems to be out at least for the moment.

Poorly rottie

Absolutely fantastic, but exhausting, flat clearance, which we finally completed at 10pm today. I just hope I am as mentally alert at 90 as the gentleman who previously owned it, as he obviously kept up his varied interests right up to the point where he went into hospital with his final illness. His collection of books and DVDs will keep both the Cambridge shops well-stocked for several months at least.

Much less welcome was a series of increasingly frantic phone calls from the owner of a rottie bitch registered at our clinic and suddenly very ill with vomiting and diarrhoea containing blood. He lives about half an hour's drive from Cambridge and doesn't have a car or any money. The lack of money was fairly moot given that no taxi firm is likely to be happy to transport a large vomiting dog. Getting a vet out to him on a Sunday would have been astronomically expensive, and probably not a solution as the dog was ill enough to need inpatient treatment which would be even more astronomically expensive done privately.

Finally organised the Pet Taxi to drive the dog to our emergency care provider on the promise that the owner will pay us back by installments. 

I do wish potential pet owners with no funds would consider the charms of the Jack Russell! At least they are portable and the majority have cast iron stomachs capable of digesting the most horrible things.

So, enormous gratitude to the family whose generosity gave us so much stock to raise the funds we so badly need today.

Resolutions

"Raise more funds," has to be our motto going into 2010. Without money we can't pay vets to treat animals, or kennels to board them so that they can be rehomed.

You can help us by:

• Buying items from our charity shops at 61 Burleigh St, Cambridge, 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket.
• Donating items to our shops (textiles and shoes can be sold for recycling even if they are worn out, but other items need to be in saleable condition).
• Volunteering in our shops.
  
• Volunteering to help with our yearly collection in RSPCA week at the end of April.
• Adopting animals from us so that they spend a shorter time in kennels, costing us boarding fees.
• Donating a percentage to us when you sell items on eBay.
• Buying second hand books online from our Abebooks store
  

Holiday boarding and your pets' veterinary records

Had a nasty experience a couple of weeks ago (much worse for the owner of the dog concerned) which was really no-one's fault but could have been mitigated by preparation.

One of the clients who use our clinic was given the opportunity of a holiday away as a present from a relative. The relative also arranged, and paid for her dogs to be boarded at a commercial kennels. The kennels took notes of their normal vet (our clinic) and checked that their vaccinations were current, but didn't keep the vaccination cards or photocopy them.

Unfortunately, just before the end of their holiday, one of the dogs was taken violently ill and needed emergency treatment. Because of being outside normal hours he had to go via our emergency route, which normally requires the owner to show either their clinic registration card or their clinic vaccination card, neither of which the kennels had. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that the kennels knew the dogs by the surname of the relative who paid for their boarding, while of course all their medical records were under their owner's name.

The emergency service isn't owned by the RSPCA; we pay them a fee to cover out of hours treatment of animals who are registered at the Cambridge clinic, so they wouldn't normally see animals with (apparently) no computer entry and no registration cards. In the event, the kennels managed to contact the owner by phone and it was sorted out, but the worry must pretty much have ruined her holiday.

In these days, when out of hours cover is often provided by a different surgery from the one your pet normally visits, this sort of problem potentially might apply to anyone - the only added complication in this case was whether the dog was eligible to use care that we subsidise. If you're planning on leaving your pets in kennels, check with your vet and with the kennels what would happen if one of them was suddenly taken ill. Make sure the kennels know what name the animals are registered under at your vet, and check payment options (e.g. will the kennels pay and claim it back from you or will your vet invoice you?). If possible leave a mobile number on which you can be contacted (and if needed make a credit card payment for your pet's treatment.)

Animal welfare statistics for February

During February 2009, we treated 309 owned (199 dogs, 97 cats, 5 rabbits and 8 miscellaneous small animals) and 34 unowned animals (3 dogs and 31 cats) and rehomed six cats and one dog. We neutered 20 dogs 15 cats and 19 rabbits.