Animal shelter management books

Shelter Medicine, by Lila Miller and Stephen Zawistowski, is a comprehensive textbook on the veterinary aspects of running a successful animal shelter and as such it's quite heavy-going and technical. It's organised as stand-alone chapters on various aspects of shelter management and is a book to dip into repeatedly rather than read cover to cover. That said, it's much more than just a textbook for veterinary staff with an interest in animal centres and would benefit anyone working in, or on the management committee of, an animal rescue organisation. In addition to purely veterinary aspects of animal care it also includes chapters on cruelty prosecutions, foster care, spay/neuter clinics, animal behaviour, feral cat control and animal rescue in disaster situations. 

It's written for use in America, so readers need to be aware that the legal situation will often be different in the UK, and there will be differences in the prevalence of some animal diseases (we are extremely fortunate that rabies is not normally a concern over here). If there's a similar book designed for the UK, I've not yet found it, so this is probably the best available text in spite of that drawback. 

Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters, by Lila Miller and Kate Hurley is a more narrowly defined book than Shelter Medicine and focuses only on control of disease in shelters. 

More dog accidents

Caution about leaving children and dogs together works both ways. Very young children don't know their own strength relative to small puppies and they can very easily drop them because they're not as co-ordinated as an older child or adult.

Last night's staffie puppy with difficulty breathing turned out to have several broken ribs, probably because he'd either been dropped or helped onto something like a high table and then fallen off. Staffies often don't react to pain by squealing the way other breeds might, and this one's owners only realised there was a problem because the little fellow was gasping for breath because half of his lungs wasn't working any longer.

This sort of thing is also why rats and hamsters aren't really suitable for very young children. Being dropped can badly hurt or kill them, and they will bit really hard if little hands clutch them too tight. Adult cats who like children are probably the best bet with toddlers as they're robust enough not to get hurt (and fast and strong enough to get away from an excessively enthusiastic child).

Vet School family fun day: 21 March 14:00 - 17:00

Come and see a fully functional hospital for four-legged patients. Visit the Imaging Department, Small and Large Animal wards, Intensive Care Unit, theatre suite and much more. Guided tours available. There will be plenty of 'hands-on' displays but remember the patients are sick so you won't be able to play with them! No dogs, please.

Location:
The Queen's Veterinary School Hospital
Madingley Road
Cambridge
CB3 0ES

View map

All ages, no booking required. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

The Vet School provide our clinic's veterinary services, so this is an opportunity to take a look "behind the scenes". The family fun day is part of Cambridge University's Science Festival

The Feral Cat Manual

Published by the Feline Advisory Bureau, The Feral Cat Manual is probably the best and most comprehensive guide to helping feral cats available in the UK. It's used by SNIP International and other groups for their training workshops.

Puppies and dummies

This happens more often than you might think. Also here, here and here. The victims are usually puppies, presumably because larger dogs are either more cautious about what they swallow or more likely to pass something relatively small and soft through their intestines without getting a blockage. 

Unfortunately if the puppy does get an obstruction as a result of swallowing a baby's dummy or a bottle's rubber teat it will die if not operated on as an emergency and the operation is likely to be very expensive.

Another one this morning; a Jack Russell terrier. The puppy's too ill to wait for the clinic session tomorrow and isn't eligible for our clinic's emergency cover because he's not registered. Even with our maximum level of help the owner's now got a bill of £500 to cover. She may get some help from the Blue Cross and has now filled in a form to register with the PDSA (I don't know whether they might help retrospectively). 

Parvo again

Yet another rottie pup with parvovirus. Village Vets think there's a chance of saving him, so he's gone to their 24 hour surgery at Milton as an inpatient where they can quarantine him from other dogs. Blue Cross and PDSA are also chipping in as this kind of isolation nursing is horribly expensive.

Members and Supporters?

One of the links at the side of this blog goes to the page where you can apply for membership of the RSPCA. Adult members receive the society magazine Animal Life several times a year and have voting rights at both local and national level. Local branches are sent lists of members within their areas so that they can send out notices of their Annual General Meeting.

Confusingly, it is possible to have signed up to make regular donations to the RSPCA without ever having filled in a membership application. Unfortunately this means that significant numbers of people think of themselves as RSPCA members but don't get any of the papers which would keep them in touch with what's happening at grassroots level. 

If you make regular donations, but don't get Animal Life then you're not listed as a member and that's why your local branch has never tried to contact you. If you follow the link to the RSPCA membership page, you'll see that there are two types of members: ordinary and friend. "Friends" used to be the term for donors who hadn't registered as members. If you know you are a Friend and you'd like to become active in your local branch but they've never been in touch, you probably became a donor before the change. If you contact HQ at Horsham, they should be able to convert your status into voting membership.

Stray rabbit

ACO Kathy has just picked up a stray rabbit from Cambridge. She (the rabbit, not Kathy!) is a very pretty white and black Netherland Dwarf - looks young and is quite friendly. Janine is looking after her for the moment, but hopefully her owner will turn up.

Branch committees

If you think you might be interested in standing for our committee this year there's still time. Branch committees are elected each year by the local branch members at the Annual General Meeting. In our case, this is normally late June, as branch accounts and an annual report on the previous year have to be available at the AGM, and ours haven't usually been audited by our accountants until early June. 

To stand for election, you need to have been a member of the RSPCA for a minimum of three months prior to the AGM (this is mainly to make it possible to ensure there's time for everyone eligible to have got onto the membership lists and been circulated with the correct AGM papers.) Before the AGM the existing committee circulate a notice of the time and place to all branch members and include nomination forms so that members can put candidates forward for election. Members of the RSPCA automatically become members of the branch where they live, unless they ask to join a different one - for example the branch where they work.

To form a committee the AGM must elect at least seven and not more than fourteen people. As it's quite hard to get as many as fourteen volunteers willing to stand, most of the time we want the meeting to vote in everyone who comes forward and is prepared to work. It's not absolutely unknown for elections to be hotly contested, but it usually only happens where there is some point of principle at issue - for example whether or not to keep a particular branch facility open.

If you think you are a member of the RSPCA and have never been circulated with AGM papers it's likely that you are actually a "supporter" instead. In this case, if you want to become involved with your local branch, the best thing to to is to contact RSPCA HQ at Horsham and ask to be switched from the supporter category to the adult member one.

Working for change

There's a growing movement in the US and Australia to press animal shelters to adopt the principles of "no-kill": basically a rejection of the idea that the majority of "unwanted" pets will have to be killed because there are far more strays than potential homes. 

One element of the strategy is to encourage voluntary animal welfare organisations to relinquish what we in this country would refer to as "the stray dogs contract" unless they can realistically aim to place all, or nearly all, animals capable of being adopted. In other words, animal welfare organisations ought not to spend funds doing society's dirty work by killing unwanted pets and so diverting money from saving animals.

This became RSPCA policy in the UK some two decades ago, and is the default position for all its branches. It was possible because of our peculiar organisation structure which means that animal welfare policy decided by the national governing council can be imposed on the branches countrywide.

It hasn't meant that no healthy animals are ever killed because they are unwanted, but the evidence suggests that a much higher percentage of animals are successfully rehomed than in the US. The 2007 Animal Welfare Indicators report collating statistics on a range of animal issues records that the RSPCA (overall) rehomed just over 70,000 animals and put down just under 4,000 for non-medical reasons (the lowest figure for five years). [Pet animal welfare indicators]

Working at arms length from the local authority pounds and shelters has its critics and means that some people will be very unhappy because there is a group of very visible animals in need and the RSPCA is not taking all of them. 

Unfortunately this can result in a vicious circle in which the branch limits its intake of animals because it has limited resources but has difficulty recruiting helpers to increase its resources so it can take more animals because people are angry about the animals who weren't taken in. Two members of the Sheffield forum say:

Q. "Looking at this thread and the earlier one about the RSPCA do I assume that we the people of Sheffield, who support the local RSPCA branch have no say in its running, or how they spend the money that we donate, does this place not have a committie that leads/gives direction to the staff ?. could we not as either a group or as individuals, contact this committie and ask them to change their direction, does the overall RSPCA headquaters at Horsham direct the local branch to this course of action ?.

How does one get onto the local committie, to try and change things, or is it a closed shop like most of these societies seem to be, anyone know ?"

A. "I wish i did know Shytalk. All i know is that people should become aware of the things the RSPCA do and DON'T do before supporting instead of just what they DO do. I am not saying they shouldn't support the RSPCA but theres many small rescue centres out there that save 100s of dogs each year from being put to sleep when they have been in pounds for a long period of time on very low funds due to people not knowing about them as most of the time the rescues are only small and arent pleading for support on television, they make do with what they have and ask around for help, they get it and make the most of it.

I would love to know how to persuade them to help pounds and rescue centres. There's been no luck so far."

Ultimately if you don't like the way your local branch is being run, you can join the RSPCA and stand for election against us. Or you can join and stand for election to work with us. We're not a closed shop and no-one will object to newcomers who want to work to increase the number of animals we can help. What can be a problem is if new recruits have a very limited agenda and want to close down existing services to release funds for their particular pet projects. There isn't much point increasing rehoming if you abandon animals who already have owners but will have to be put to sleep if there is no available veterinary help.

Can a vet refuse treatment because an owner has no money?

Yes, and No. The RCVS (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons) which sets standards for vets in the UK states:

17. A veterinary surgeon or a lay member of staff accepting telephone calls must not refuse veterinary attention because the caller is unable to make immediate payment for the treatment. Arrangements for payment should be discussed at an early stage, but immediate first aid and pain relief should not be delayed while financial arrangements are agreed.

18. The RCVS is aware that it may be appropriate to advise euthanasia to relieve suffering, if the owner is unable to afford the fees and is ineligible for charitable treatment.

19. The RCVS has no power to set the fees that a practice charges.

Basically, this means that a vet shouldn't refuse to relieve an animal's suffering in an emergency situation BUT they are under no obligation to provide expensive life-saving treatment if there is no likelihood that they (or their employer) will be paid.

In the old days, when most vets were self-employed, many of them would do what they could for an animal and hope the owner would eventually settle up. It is much more difficult for a young vet who may not have a job next day if he costs his employer money. Add in the crippling levels of student debt which most young vets will have after qualifying and you'll see that they are in an enormously difficult situation if a client turns up with a dog who really needs £800 worth of investigations and treatment but has no money at all.

One of these turned up at 3 am this Sunday morning. The client's dog had collapsed and was pale and shocked. They weren't registered with our clinic, so they had to go to a private vet. Because of the time factor they'd run up a bill of about £130 simply by virtue of walking through the door. They'd got no money at all, and at this point the vet phoned me. Sadly there's just no way we could cover £800 for investigations that might well just reveal treatment would be futile. I offered to cover £200 in the hope that symptomatic treatment might do some good — basically this would mean starting some supportive fluids and antibiotics, but about an hour later they phoned to say the owners had decided the best thing was to put the dog to sleep.

Traffic to our main website

 If you came to this page searching for a PDSA clinic near Cambridge, please read the information about using the Cambridge RSPCA Animal Clinic. There is no PDSA clinic locally, but the RSPCA clinic is available to help pet owners on low income.

The list of keywords which brought readers to our main website's page with our policy on help with veterinary treatment costs tell an interesting story. Here's the list in full. (I think the first one really wants the University of Pennsylvania Vet School, but can't spell it.) 

The search "why do people give up their pets to the rspca or pdsa" confirms my belief that the average animal-loving member of the public has really very limited knowledge about animal charities—in this case, not enough to know that the PDSA is a purely veterinary charity.

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More genetics and animals

Studies of the damaging effects of small populations and loss of genetic variety in threatened wild animals illustrate why the loss of genetic variation in dogs is potentially such a serious welfare problem:



"Conservation genetics focuses on understanding the role and requirement of genetic variation for population persistence. Can extinction be explained by habitat destruction alone or is lack of genetic variation a part of the explanation? It is now more important than ever that we ask relevant questions about the evolutionary fate of endangered populations throughout the globe and incorporate our knowledge of evolutionary processes and the distribution of genetic diversity into effective conservation planning and action." (From the back cover).









And a cute and very readable history of genetics with special reference to tortoiseshell cats:

Pedigree dogs again

The Independent has a long Crufts article, in places a little odd:

When it comes to the health of breeding dogs, Carol is a little ambivalent. Clumber spaniels tend to be affected by a genetic deficiency called PDP1, which can retard the body's metabolism and make the dogs too exhausted to exercise. Many dogs carry the PDP1 gene and lead long happy lives without being affected. But should they be used for breeding? It's a question at the heart of the Kennel Club controversy. "If they were affected with the disease, you wouldn't breed with them," said Carol. "But you can use a carrier for mating purposes, provided it's mated with a clear dog, so you can breed it out."

She is a fan of the Kennel Club, who gave her a £4,500 grant in 2004 to test 100 dogs for the virus. [my italics]

A genetic defect isn't a virus and, if the comments to the article are anything to go by, a large part of the fury over the whole pedigree dog question stems from people not understanding the basic science. 

Every one of us has some deleterious genes, but most of the time nothing catastrophic results because of genetic diversity —  bad genes are rare, so it is unlikely that two parents have the same problem genes and hence their children won't often inherit two bad copies and suffer the actual disease. Cystic fibrosis is an example: the gene is recessive and 1 in 25 members of the population carry it. However the chance that a baby's parents will both be carriers is only 1 in 625 (1 in 25 x 25) so it is uncommon for children to be born with the disease.

1 in five clumber spaniels is a carrier for PDP1, so there is a 1 in 25 chance of both parents being carriers if breeding pairs are chosen randomly, and this is why health checks are so essential — and are rightly encouraged by the Kennel Club.

However: 1 in five is an astoundingly high frequency for a gene that will make you very ill if you inherit two copies. That kind of frequency would only happen under natural conditions in two possible scenarios.

1. The population size was reduced to a very few individuals at some point and, by chance, some of those individuals happened to be carriers (for example if a few animals were carried to an island on a floating log).
2. Animals with one "bad" and one "good" copy of the gene had some survival advantage; as in the case of human Sickle Cell Anaemia

In Clumbers, the most likely cause is that humans inadvertently caused an artificial analogue of the first option; either because a very small number of dogs were used to create the breed originally, or because at some point a very popular sire happened to be a carrier. 

Independent of the danger that harmful recessive genes may become abnormally frequent if some dogs sire huge numbers of puppies, inbreeding means that both a puppy's parents are likely to carry the same copies of any harmful genes. It doesn't cause bad genes, but it dramatically increases a puppy's chances of inheriting two copies and suffering the actual disease rather than being a carrier.

So - some of the furious argument about cross-bred dogs is actually a red herring, because the need for sophisticated health checks before breeding is, at least partially, an artifact of the abnormal population structure of pedigree dogs.  

The Dogs Trust/Kennel Club Independent enquiry into dog breeding now has a website.

Legal confusion?

Local PCSO [Police Community Support Officer] phoned us asking for clarification of the law on fatal dog attacks on other dogs. This is definitely above my pay grade, so I'm afraid I simply put him on to the NCC, but I subsequently tried Google search to see if I could find more information.

Answer seems to be a very definite "not sure". Woking council say very firmly that this is a civil matter between the dead dog's owner and the owner of the other dog. Hertfordshire council say the owner of the attacked dog can report the incident to either the police or the dog warden for action. DEFRA's leaflet says an offence "may have been committed" if a dog attacks another dog. Bournemouth council say dog attacks should be reported to their Animal Welfare officers.

I'm afraid the answer is probably that this is a policy issue that's decided very locally on the basis of available resources.

RSPCA Week 2009 27th April to 3rd May

We need as many collectors as possible to maximise our fundraising from this opportunity kindly provided by Tesco. We have permission to collect during the week outside all the main Tesco stores in our area (Bar Hill, Ely, Newmarket, Fulbourn, Milton, Cambridge and Royston). As in previous years, the Royston collection will be used to help fund rabbit fostering at the Rabbit Residence.

If you could help, even for just a few hours, please email secretary@rspcacambridge.org.uk or rabbit_residence@hotmail.com (Royston only), or leave your name at the Newmarket or Cambridge charity shop.  Tins, badges etc. will be available closer to the actual date.

Still time to register for a place on the home-visitor's training day

Val from RSPCA Regional Headquarters will be carrying out the training which gives a really helpful overview of the homevisiting procedure. Janine will add to this where she can to show how the info is specifically put into practice in our region.

Homevisits we carry out are for our own branch animals (kept in a boarding  facility or foster homes) and also for other RSPCA branches or Headquarters  centres where people within our branch territory have found an animal they want  from further afield.

Our branch has drawn up checklists of the information we aim to obtain on  our homevisits. These used to be filled in & given to the homing co-ordinator. Nowadays, we don't tend to bother as it's quicker to give the results by phone or email. However, they do provide a useful reminder list and some visitors like to fill them in to keep for their own records.  

Ideally a follow up visit should be done a few weeks after the animal is adopted (usually by the same person that does the pre-adoption visit). So the forms provide a useful aid to refresh your mind on the details of the home before the follow up.

In addition to the training day, we try to take new homevisitors on a few visits with us (usually 2 cat and 2 dog ones) — before they go on visits alone. Although this is ideal, we always have a big problem, being such busy people and spread out over a large region, liasing with each other and the homeowner to organise these very quickly. Thus there tends to be a long delay getting our valuable new volunteers up and running. We would really appreciate any ideas on how this can be improved. Maybe not everyone needs to do four  visits with us. 

If you would like to book a place on the training day (Sunday 1st March, at Cherry Hinton Village Centre, Colville Road, Cherry Hinton), please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Trapping and neutering feral cats

I noticed that the RSPCA policy on feral cats doesn't appear in searches because it's in a PDF document, so maybe it would be of interest to post it here.
The policy says:

"The RSPCA recommends that, where the welfare of feral cats is ensured and their presence is accepted by the owners of the site, the animals should be humanely trapped whereafter veterinary advice should be sought regarding their health status and attempts should be made to rehome very young kittens or other cats which are not totally feral. Euthanasia should be carried out on those cats which in the opinion of the veterinary surgeon are seriously ill or which are injured to the extent that returning to the site would result in continuing suffering and the remaining cats should be neutered. While under anaesthetic for such neutering, the left ear of the cat should be "tipped" to enable the cat to be easily recognised as having been neutered and the neutered and identified cats should be returned to the site and any further suitable advice given.

The treatment against fleas and round and tape worms of all cats selected for rehoming or for neutering as above is considered necessary.
"Tipping" means the removal of 6 mm, by a straight cut, of the tip of the ear.

The RSPCA recommends that, where the welfare of feral cats cannot be ensured or their presence is not accepted by the owners of the site, the contact should be told of the RSPCA policy given above and be given the opportunity to reconsider. If this fails to resolve the problem, or where the presence of feral cats cannot be permitted because of legal reasons, the RSPCA recommends that all cats are humanely trapped, treated and neutered, then rehomed or re-sited wherever possible, or humanely euthanased.

The RSPCA cannot guarantee that animals trapped by pest control firms will be destroyed in accordance with methods approved by the RSPCA."

We need more volunteers who would be willing to help with trapping and neutering cats. You would need to have the use of a car and to be fairly physically fit as the traps are quite large. If you might be interested in helping, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk
We don't get huge numbers of requests to trap and release feral cats, more a recurring trickle, but it is quite time-consuming, because several journeys are usually needed for each cat trapped.

Cats Protection will also help with neutering feral cats if they can. Click here to see their policy.

Rabbits Campaign

Make Mine Chocolate!™ now have posters to download. Please support them by printing out a poster and displaying it in the run-up to Easter to discourage the giving of rabbits as pets.

If anyone thinks their claim that thousands of rabbits die from neglect each year is an exaggeration, remember:

• Pet rabbits die because their owners don't know they need to be vaccinated. Every year our group euthanases dying rabbits whose owners didn't vaccinate against myxomatosis in order to save them further suffering. Multiply that by the number of RSPCA branches in this country and the result is over a thousand from that cause alone.
• Pet rabbits die because their owners don't know how to feed them correctly. Rabbits must have a diet predominantly based on large quantities of grass (not lawn-clippings!), hay or dried grass. Without correct feeding they are liable to painful tooth and gut problems.
• Pet rabbits die because their owners don't know to treat them against parasites. Regular vet visits are an essential.
• Pet rabbits die because they are kept in restricted conditions where they cannot exercise.

Rehoming Gallery

Just to flag up that we've now switched our rehoming pictures entirely over to the blogger format, which looks nicer and is probably easier for most people to read. You should be able to use the labels on the right to select particular classes of animals to view—for example clicking the "cats" label will show just cats available for adoption. We're still experimenting with tags, so any comments on what you find most helpful would be appreciated.