Where do the RSPCA statistics come from?

The RSPCA's welfare statistics are produced as the result of over 200 people (many of them unpaid volunteers like me) each completing a spreadsheet recording animal welfare activity over the past month in an Excel workbook. At the year end, the workbook automatically summarises 12 monthly sheets to generate figures, which are sent in to Horsham and used to generate the final statistics which are published in the Annual Report and Accounts of the Society.

The independent Branches, nationally-run centres (like Block Fen and the large animal hospitals), and the Inspectors all generate spreadsheets to feed in to the final report.

Our own branch return for 2012 is shown below to give you an idea of how one is made up.

Points to note:

• We have an animal clinic, so we provide an unusually large number of welfare treatments for owned animals in comparison with branches who can only offer vouchers to use at private vets.
  
  
• We don't have our own animal home, so any inspectorate "case" animals (animals in care as the result of a prosecution) only come into our care once the case is completed or they have been signed over by their owner.
  
  
• Animals with no chance of survival, for example a cat with a broken back, would normally be put to sleep by a vet during the initial emergency treatment period which is funded by the national RSPCA and would be recorded in the statistics kept by them.
  
  
• Dogs are most likely to come in direct from an owner because of a welfare concern, while cats are relatively more likely to come in as sick/injured strays. This is because stray dogs are legally the responsibility of the Local Authority. Dogs may sometimes be taken in as injured strays if they need immediate help and the Local Authority animal warden can't be contacted.
  
  
• Animals are sometimes in care because their mother was heavily pregnant when she was brought in.
  
  
• The "non RSPCA-Generated" category represents animals taken in because they were unwanted but in the absence of any concern that they would be made to suffer if not taken in. It is RSPCA policy to give priority to "RSPCA-Generated" animals so that they can be kept as long as is necessary to find them a home provided this will not cause them suffering.
  
  Some branches with animal homes who take in stray dogs from their local authority, so they can be rehomed instead of euthanased, will have a lot more non RSPCA-Generated than we do.
  
  
• Feral cats will be trapped, neutered and released if possible but would be put to sleep if the only alternative was to keep them permanently caged and in distress.
  
  
• Reasons for euthanasia are aggregated in the final published totals in the Annual Report so that the distinction is only between homeable and unhomeable animals (for wild animals between animals fit to be released if a site was available and animals who can't be released). Arguably feral cats should be reported like wild animals (recording any healthy cats who were put to sleep because no release sites could be found).
  
  
• To collect meaningful results from so many individuals the form has to be straightforward enough to be completed. Over-complicating it would probably mean some volunteers submitted late or not at all (because it is difficult to convince people that a return with some errors is preferable to no return at all). This means it probably isn't going to be possible to collect some data which would potentially be very useful—such as comparative euthanasia rates for large dogs vs small ones, animals of different ages or cats who are timid but not feral.
  
  This is probably already an issue for some of the reasons for euthanasia (e.g. "behaviour" vs "aggression" is probably trying to capture the distinction between the dog who might kill someone and the cat who sprays indoors) but I would be surprised if no-one was ever confused by this and aggregating the data probably produces a more accurate result.

		Period covered:				Year		2012			Branch:							Cambridge & District
		(1) Animals in branch care									(4) Microchipping
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Balance at start of year	4	24	3	6	37				Rehomed animals	11	94	0	4	109
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	45	13	0	0	58
	IN	Reason for entry								Welfare micro-chipping events	71	46	0	0	117
	RSPCA Generated	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Total	127	153	0	4	284
	Inspectorate case animals	4	10	0	0	14
	Welfare concern	12	33	4	19	68				Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
	Unowned sick and injured via NCC	2	51	4	7	64
	Pet Retreat and home for life	0	0	0	0	0
	Transfers from RSPCA centres	0	0	0	0	0
	Returns	2	2	0	0	4					(5) Neutering
	Born in branch care	0	11	0	6	17					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Total in - RSPCA Generated in	20	107	8	32	167				Rehomed animals	9	76	4	13	102
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	73	11	7	3	94
	Non-RSPCA Generated	1	0	0	0	1				Welfare neutering events	31	2	0	0	33
										Total	113	89	11	16	229
	OUT	Reason for leaving
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
	Rehomed	12	95	9	36	152
	Died	0	2	2	2	6
	Transferred out	6	16	0	0	22
	Other	0	1	0	0	1					(6) Welfare assistance
	PTS	2	7	0	0	9					Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
	Total out	20	121	11	38	190				Branch clinic	2592	1058	76	49	3775
										Welfare/Vouchers redeemed	14	7	3	0	24
		Animals in care at end of month								Welfare events	0	0	0	0	0
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Total	2606	1065	79	49	3799
	Balance at end of year	5	10	0	0	15
										Welfare/Vouchers issued	0	0	0	0	0
		(2) Homevisiting											(7) Feral Cats
		Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				No. of Feral cats neutered & released					0
	Pre-home visits	47	93	4	2	146
	Post-home visits	8	23	0	0	31
											(8) Length of Stay of animals currently in care
											Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total
		(3) Animals in Branch care and								0-3 months	2	8	0	0	10
		subsequently PTS								4-6 months	2	2	0	0	4
	Reason	Dog	Cat	Rabbit	Misc	Total				Over 6 months	1	0	0	0	1
	Vet Advice	2	7	0	0	9				Total	5	10	0	0	15
	Animal's best interest	0	0	0	0	0
	Aggression	0	0	0	0	0
	Behavioural	0	0	0	0	0
	Unwanted/unhomed	0	0	0	0	0					(9) Wildlife Information
	Orphaned	0	0	0	0	0
	Feral	0	0	0	0	0				Accepted	0		Died		0
	Legal	0	0	0	0	0
	Total	2	7	0	0	9				Transferred	0		PTS		0
	At owners insistence	0	0	0	0	0				Released	0

What can be done? Part 2

182 healthy dogs were put down last year by the RSPCA.

So one apparently simple solution would be for every branch or animal home to take one extra dog. (In terms of Cambridge that would represent us managing to sell about half a ton more second hand books, which is hard work, but do-able).

However it's not as straightforward as it looks. If there was an incident meaning 182 dogs had to come in tomorrow, it would be easy to appeal to all branches to work together to spread the load. 

What's actually happening at the moment is more complicated and explains why "RSPCA generated" (giving priority for admission to welfare cases) didn't succeed in bringing about zero euthanasia of healthy dogs as everyone had hoped.

1. Giving priority to animals who have to come in because their welfare is at risk (by refusing to take animals who are someone else's responsibility) inevitably means some kennel space is tied up for longer periods (because sick, injured or very thin animals have to recuperate before they can be offered for rehoming). This means there isn't a straightforward 1:1 gain in places for the priority dogs for each lower priority dog refused admission.
   
2. Requests to take dogs in go up and down depending on the number of welfare incidents and in an unpredictable way. This means any given branch can't simply resolve to take in one more dog compared with the previous year; their local inspector might not need as many places or he or she might need twice as many.
   
3. If the branch responsible for the area where a welfare incident occurred knew space was guaranteed elsewhere if they didn't admit a particular dog that would remove their sense that "the buck stops here". At present they know animals they refuse to take might have to be euthanased and it means they don't refuse unless they really do have no other option.
   
   So any emergency short-stay kenneling or system for distributing animal intake might take pressure off individual branches without succeeding in increasing rehoming overall.
   
4. If an inspector has a dog in need and the only available space is 500 miles away there needs to be an effective system to locate that space and then transfer the dog there.
   
   It would probably be better all round to move shorter distances by a "chain" system before there is an emergency (i.e. branch A has space so takes some dogs from branch B who takes some from C and so on rather than moving an unlucky individual dog from Z to A).
   
5. Branches without animal homes (like Cambridge) who rehome using a combination of private boarding kennels and foster homes may actually be more able to rehome the high-priority dogs if they do accept small numbers of the lower-priority ones but are selective about which ones.
   
   This happens because:
   
• It's easier to recruit foster homes for small dogs but larger dogs are more likely to fall into the high-priority group (so there's no point refusing to admit a low-priority small dog if there's a detriment to the small dog without any corresponding benefit to the large one).
• If the branch only has a few dogs at any one time it's hard to maintain local interest in the branch as a rehoming organisation, meaning those dogs will be more difficult to rehome.

Euthanasia of healthy animals: what can be done?

In 2012 less than 1% of dogs handled by the RSPCA were put to sleep in spite of being healthy and potentially rehomeable. By far the majority of those dogs who were euthanased were either very ill or injured, had behaviour problems which made them dangerous, or belonged to breeds which cannot legally be rehomed in the UK.

Sabre, shown here, illustrates what this means in practical terms. He's fairly elderly for a GSD; when he came in he had skin trouble and problems with his ears because his previous owner hadn't been coping.

If we'd been in the business of fiddling the figures to save money we could easily have justified putting him down on the basis that he wasn't a healthy dog.

We didn't do that and he has a new home, hopefully for whatever time he has left.

The structure of the RSPCA with its high involvement of very committed volunteers probably explains why such low euthanasia figures can be achieved in an organisation that is driven by events—if there is a serious welfare incident animals cannot be left where they are.

The RSPCA is not open-access and it will refuse to take in animals where some other organisation is legally responsible (stray dogs) or where a competent owner should be responsible (where animals are simply unwanted). It can't refuse to take in animals who are in a situation where they are suffering and will continue to suffer if they aren't removed and where no-one else will help.

I believe that any euthanasia of healthy animals is never something we should be complacent about (nationally the RSPCA certainly is not complacent and one of the five pledges is that it should be reduced to zero).

What can be done?

I suspect the decentralised structure that makes low euthanasia levels possible also creates barriers to achieving zero. Individual branches are responsible for animals on their "patch" and work extremely hard to save every animal. Where a branch really can't take an animal from their local inspector, that inspector will pull out all the stops to get the animal in somewhere but there's a limit to the amount of time he or she can spend on this because other urgent calls will be backing up all the while.

There isn't any formal system for transferring animals from branches that are under stress to ones which are in better shape and "networking animals out" is nearly all based on personal contacts between individual homing co-ordinators. 

It would be very difficult to get branches to agree to any kind of compulsory transfer system precisely because there is so much misinformation about RSPCA euthanasia policies. Each branch knows they are not putting down huge numbers of healthy dogs and that the individuals personally known to them aren't either but there's a huge fear factor about transferring animals to people they don't know.

On top of that, it takes a lot of time and effort to arrange transfers and people who are already running near their physical limits may simply not be able to find the extra spurt of energy needed to get it done. 

Frankly, nearly everything that would make things better in the long run (training more foster carers, recruiting more home-visitors) can feel like an intolerable burden to people who are very close to the edge of not being able to cope.

The national RSPCA could increase the size of yearly grants to branches but that would only be putting a patch on the problems.

Another option might be for the national RSPCA to fund more temporary boarding in private kennels to give a breathing-space while local branches and inspectors make arrangements for foster care, transfer to an RSPCA shelter or longer-term private boarding.

And I can just imagine the stream of Mail, Times and Telegraph articles claiming all the animals were put down at the end of the temporary boarding.

In some ways, what we do need is someone external and honest going round all the branches and animal homes and reporting on what's actually going on at grass roots level. At the moment we get plenty of one-off journalist visits to individual sites, but never a really comprehensive survey of what the whole RSPCA does.

Factcheck No. 3

Again, clippings are taken from the RSPCA's Annual Report and Accounts 2012       

Note that, because of the time-lag factors, numbers of animals rehomed or released will often relate to animals taken in during the previous year, and some animals will still be in the care of the RSPCA or other welfare organisations at the end of the year.

Figures for treatments, neutering etc. include welfare treatments given to animals belonging to owners on low income.
                                                                                                        2012                            2011

Factcheck continued

This story seems to be dragging on, so here are the relevant clippings for 2008 and 2009.

Major points to note:

• The passage of the Animal Welfare Act in 2006 altered the criteria for animal welfare prosecutions (from "causing unnecessary suffering" to "failure to meet welfare needs"). 
• There's a significant time factor which means that a cruelty complaint in any given year is not likely to lead to a conviction until the following one.

Fact check: RSPCA Prosecutions

The real news story about the RSPCA statistics for 2012 is the huge (57%) increase in the numbers of animals who had to be taken in.

The Times (and the Telegraph copying them) are confused about the differences between the number of cases [separate investigations considered serious enough to warrant passing to the Prosecutions Department], the number of people reported [one case might lead to several people being prosecuted if they were all involved in the incident] and the number of convictions [one person may be convicted of several offences, for example if all their dogs have been neglected].

Less than one per cent of cruelty complaints made to the RSPCA ended in someone being prosecuted — most situations were rectified by advice and practical help to animal owners.

Only 13% of calls to the RSPCA are cruelty complaints: most contacts are requests for help or advice.

I've clipped the relevant tables from the 2012 Prosecutions Report, the 2011 Annual Report and the 2012 Annual Report to show this in detail below.

In 2010 1.15% of cruelty investigations resulted in cases being sent up to the RSPCA's Prosecutions Department by the Inspectorate.

In 2012 1.39% of investigations resulted in cases being sent up: an increase, but a fairly modest one.

In 2010 the number of animals taken in by the RSPCA (for all reasons, not just cruelty) was 123,922.

In 2012 it was 194,695 - an increase of 57% and a huge extra strain on RSPCA resources.

Conclusions:

• In 2012 the Prosecutions Department made a decision to prosecute 53% of all people whose cases were sent up to it by the Inspectorate (in 2010 this was 48%). So the percentage of forwarded investigations resulting in prosecution has increased in percentage terms, but only very slightly over the 2 years.

• The number of individuals whose cases were sent up by the Inspectorate rose by 14.5% between 2010 and 2012 (number of individuals is greater than the number of cases because a single case may involve several defendants).

• The number of cases sent up to the Prosecutions Department rose by 14.4%—roughly in line with the number of individuals whose cases were sent up; i.e. the Inspectors weren't inflating the number of individuals by (for example) including more family members than they were in 2010.

• The number of individuals who were convicted rose by 42% between 2010 and 2012. An increase of 26% would be expected from the combination of the increased percentages of individuals being referred to the Prosecutions Dept. and the increased percentage of decisions to prosecute, so it's not clear what is happening here; possibly increased willingness of the courts to convict people who are involved in cruelty cases but not the main instigators.

• The number of convictions in the Magistrates Court rose 71% between 2010 and 2012 — apparently reflecting an increased number of convictions per individual prosecuted — and probably a greater number of cases where multiple animals were owned and hence where individuals were committing multiple offences.
   

Special appeal for Apple's operation

Apple came in to us last week because she was found with a bad leg injury and her owner could not be contacted.

Initially we thought this would heal up with treatment by antibiotics and dressing the wound but it's now looking as if we have the choice of amputating the leg (cost around £200) or spending around £800 on surgery to graft some of her healthy skin to the injured area.

The underlying problem is what vets call a "de-gloving injury" which literally means that the limb's skin has come away like someone peeling off a glove. Obviously we would prefer to save her leg if possible as she's a young cat with, hopefully, a full life ahead of her. 

We've set up an online appeal page on JustGiving to raise funds specifically to go towards the cost of an operation. If we do better than we expect and overshoot the target we'll use the excess to pay for the treatment of other injured strays.

Appeal for Apple: https://www.justgiving.com/RSPCA-Cambridge-Apple

If you would like to donate by text message, you can do this by texting the code CLIN88 £1 to 70070

(to donate more than £1 just change the figure after the pound sign).

Branch AGM: 20th June

Cambridge branch's Annual General Meeting will be held at the Friends' Meeting House, Jesus Lane in Cambridge on 20th June. Meeting starts at 7:30 pm and normally finishes around 9:30.

The main purpose of the AGM is to elect a committee to run the branch for the next 12 months and there are a two essential rules we have to satisfy in order to do this:

1. At least seven branch members need to be willing to stand for election.
   
   Barring accidents we have our seven, however there is still time for any other branch members who might be interested to get in touch in order to be added to the ballot paper. A committee can have up to fourteen members and seven is a little on the low side to cover all the work that's involved in running a branch.
   
   
2. Enough branch members need to turn up at the actual AGM to cast their vote to hold a valid election.
   
   So, even if you don't think you've got time to join the committee, your presence is important. Aside from the need to hold the election, this is the one chance in the year for you to meet the people who work on the ground during the rest of the year and ask questions.

I've you're not a branch member, but you're interested in the work of the local branch (maybe you already volunteer for us) you are also very welcome at the meeting, but I'm afraid you can't vote.

The other side of the fence...

The BVA's Animal Welfare Foundation has an absolutely fascinating video of a discussion at their 2013 meeting on what happens when vets are faced with a scenario where an owner either can't or won't take responsibility for their pet's needs.

It's nearly an hour long, but full of things that we in rescue need to think about:

• Chipping — is it a way to identify a particular animal (this is Fred who is vaccinated against rabies and that is Trigger who can't be eaten as he's been treated with Bute), or is it a way to make it possible to contact a human who accepts responsibility for an animal (this is Fluffy Jones; Mrs Jones will pay to fix her broken leg and can be contacted on this mobile number)? Both the Pet Passport and the Horse Passport schemes were designed only with the first option in mind and it makes their welfare value much less useful than it could be.
• What happens if an un-chipped stray dog is badly injured? Theoretically the Local Authority is responsible for the dog's welfare but they will almost certainly refuse to pay for treatment.
• The need to educate vets and their staff that healthy stray cats should not be "kidnapped" probably removing them from a satisfactory home and possibly meaning they will be put to sleep or other cats will be put to sleep to make space for them.
• Owners don't budget for vet bills because they hope the worst will never happen — when it does they expect the vet to make an exception for them, but the same scenario may be playing out in the vet's premises several times a week. We have to educate the public to understand it is impossible to treat hundreds of sick or injured animals without a reasonable amount of financial input from their owners.
• Horses may be in a field somewhere with no indication at all of the location of their owner if something goes terribly wrong.
• Payment plans largely don't work as a solution to the owner who can't pay as the owner either doesn't meet the payments or sends a series of cheques which bounce. The owner who can't save also probably won't be able to set aside a certain amount each month to pay the vet back. This is pretty much our experience of trying to run payment plans at the Cambridge RSPCA clinic.
• Dealing with the problem of the owner without enough money is complicated by the law on credit, intended to restrain loan sharks but adding an extra worry for anyone wanting to offer interest-free credit for vet bills.

Welfare Statistics January-April 2013

So far this year we've rehomed three dogs, twenty-four cats and six miscellaneous "small furries". 

We've provided 801 low-cost treatments for dogs, 272 for cats, 35 rabbits and 12 "small furries" and micro-chipped 55 dogs, 43 cats and 2 rabbits.

Visits to our clinic are slightly down compared with 2012 and it's concerning that some people may be putting off getting vaccinations and treatments for minor ailments as a result of the economic situation. 

This is a particular worry because visiting our clinic and being registered gives an individual animal access to the Vet School's out of hours service for the following two years (after which they need to be registered again by attending the clinic). I can't stress enough how important this is because emergencies by their very nature are likely to be much more costly to treat than the run-of-the-mill things. Not being registered might cost an animal their life because we cannot pay £1000+ to enable them to be treated at the commercial 24 hour vet if their owner has no money.

Some things can be dealt with by first aid and pain relief to tide the animal over until the next clinic session, but there are many acute conditions which cannot wait for treatment. Just two weeks ago I was phoned late at night about a mastiff with gastric dilation (GDV commonly referred to as "bloat"). Although I managed to get the dog seen by a vet she was probably put to sleep because her owner had no funds to pay for the operation she needed. If she'd been registered by attending our clinic she would at least have had a chance.

I'm afraid the only solution is a combination of publicity to drum into owners that they must get their pets registered instead of putting their heads in the sand, and fundraise, fundraise, fundraise so that we can subsidise the clinic enough to make it more attractive to owners whose finances are teetering on a knife edge.

Hunting Act again

Yet another article on badgers and hunts.

In a democracy there isn't any reason why the Telegraph and the Times shouldn't print articles campaigning for the repeal of the Hunting Act every day of the week. What is objectionable is the way they "play the man and not the ball"; trying to discredit us rather than replying to our arguments, and that they are trying to stop the law being enforced rather than to get it repealed. It appears they don't much care whether their efforts to do this mean other welfare legislation stops being effectively enforced as well.

Badgers, unfortunately, are in the frontline because their setts provide convenient refuges for foxes (who don't have any way of knowing hunts aren't supposed to be chasing them and probably don't find it much comfort to be killed by accident rather than on purpose).

In the most recent incident, the RSPCA prosecuted after a hunt "terrier man" was found digging up a badger sett to retrieve a dog who was underground and (on the evidence of his bite injuries) engaged in fighting a badger.

The defence case was that they were not badger diggers (who would be found digging up setts in pursuit of dogs sent underground after the badgers) but were innocently trying to retrieve a terrier who had gone into the sett under his own volition.

In the event they were found guilty of the lesser charge of disturbing a badger sett (for which the evidence was incontrovertible) but not of intentional cruelty.

Would it really be a good thing if no-one dares to prosecute badger diggers so long as they claim to be rescuing dogs they accidentally allowed to enter a sett?

In some ways I think this is all part of a much bigger picture. Mainstream newspapers have become less able to generate the revenue needed to pay for proper investigative journalism. Animal welfare was already seen as a high-interest but low-importance topic so press-releases from interested parties are reproduced with not much attempt at fact-checking.

Fundamentally, I'm afraid, very few people in power think the welfare of animals matters much, which makes it all the more important that everyone with a genuine concern for animals puts aside their differences and works together. It's also essential that we all take part in the internal democracy of the RSPCA and encourage a large and involved society membership to counteract the forces of disinformation.

Cruelty Stats published

No apologies for showing this upsetting photo of a horse who was dumped with her dead foal in an Essex lane last week. She must have suffered extreme pain and fear as she died trying to give birth.

It's highly unlikely that the person who allowed this to happen will be brought to justice as she was not chipped.

If the person responsible was successfully traced they would be prosecuted unless there were very unusual extenuating circumstances — highly unlikely as someone who was incapable to an extent which made them not responsible for their actions would not have been able to arrange transport to dump the animals.

Sad, and fortunately unusual, as this is, it isn't rare for similar fates to happen to other animals whose owners have allowed them to become pregnant without giving any thought to the cost of dealing with things if the worse happens.

An emergency caesarian for a large bitch can cost as much as £700; something that a completely thoughtless owner may not have budgeted to cover in any way.

What possibly happens to bitches on puppy farms, who are seen as mere "livestock", when they get into difficulties giving birth doesn't bear thinking about.

In a typical year our branch provides just over 4,000 low-cost treatments to help owners who do care, but can't afford the full cost of a private vet. The other 169 branches which together cover the whole of England and Wales are responsible for similar services in their own areas.

No single activity can tackle the job of making life better for animals in our country; we need the whole set: low-cost veterinary treatment to help caring owners in genuine need, rehoming for animals who can't stay with their current owners, education to change behaviour, campaigns to change the law and prosecutions to enforce it. 

If those who don't care at all know there will never be any sanctions no amount of education or provision of services will help their victims. We persuade if we can; offer help when needed, but compel if we must.

What do we do all day?

I thought it might interest people to get an idea of what our volunteers actually do all day (and how very hard they work!)

The details in this post are extracted from the productivity targets for our bookshop at 188 Mill Road in Cambridge.

 

 

  

Daily

• 100 fresh items put out, either by filling up spaces and gaps made by sales or by replacing some of the items which have been on the shop floor the longest.
• Mark down the items taken off which were priced under £5 to 30p (paperbacks) or 50p (hardback) and put in one of the sale boxes. Put items which were priced over £5 items in the basement store to try again later or put online.

Weekly

• “Fresh this week” shelf books rotated off and shelved in correct sections, replacing the oldest of the books already in a section (either mark these down for 30p or 50p box or store in basement). This adds roughly 100 more fresh books to the shop floor.
• Window display books changed and and shelved in their sections, replacing older books which should be rotated off.
• 7 boxes of paperbacks rotated off the shelves, replaced with fresh and marked down for 30p sale.
• 3 boxes of hardbacks rotated off the shelves, replaced with fresh and marked down for 50p sale.
• 10 World of Books crates filled with books previously offered in 30p or 50p boxes and damaged books unsuitable to be offered for sale.

(World of Books are the book wholesalers who purchase unsold and damaged books from us to be either sold on or recycled if they are too damaged to read).

Monthly targets

• No more than 5% lost trading days due to lack of volunteer cover (out of potential 7 days per week).
• 25% gift aid sales.
• Monthly takings (including revenue from sale to World of Books) £1,900

The aim is to crank these targets up gradually so that income rises and we can help more animals.

If you are in Cambridge, please visit the shop and support our hard working volunteers. We also need your book donations;  please bear us in mind if you are having a sort out or disposing of books your children have grown out of.

Not on the telly

THANK-YOU to the anonymous RSPCA officers mentioned here for their unsung, hard work.

David Heath (Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)

I also want to put on record the strong impression that I had in Cumbria that the farming community and the wider rural community have responded in a positive and big way. A lot of mutual support went on and continues to go on. People helped one another, and farmers who were not affected searched for sheep on their neighbours’ holdings when they realised that they were in trouble. That is the country way and it is what we expect, but it was happening.

People who were not connected with farming also lent their support. I will mention one group of people, an organisation that occasionally we have differences of opinion with. It was pointed out to me how profoundly helpful the RSPCA officers in the area had been, lending a hand and getting stuck in, not in strict pursuance of their duties as RSPCA officers but because they cared about the animals and the farmers and wanted to do their bit. 

(Hansard debates: Upland Sheep Farmers, 23rd April)

Start RSPCA Week with a THUNDERCLAP!

RSPCA Week is our major annual fundraising event and we need your help to make it stand out.

Help us start RSPCA week with a bang by showing your support with the Thunderclap app

This basically acts as a virtual "reservoir" that saves a Tweet or facebook status update from you until a specified time when it will release all the stored updates together.

The point of this is that it makes much more impact if 100 people show their support at the same time than it would if the same people tweeted or updated over a few days.

To help the project succeed, follow the steps listed below:

1. Login FIRST to either your twitter or your facebook account.
2. Go to https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/2004-time-to-care-time-to-act
3. Click either the "Support with Twitter" or "Support with Facebook" buttons (NOT the link further down which just shows you more information).
4. You will be offered a standard message which the app will send on your behalf on Monday 29th at the start of RSPCA week. By default this is "It's #RSPCAWeek - #TimetoCareTimetoAct for animal welfare. I've taken an action to support the RSPCA. You can too: thndr.it/ZhzSSV" but you can customise it if you don't like the message although it's most useful if you don't change the words marked by "#" as this makes them stand out on Twitter.
5. Click the "Add my support button"
6. Twitter or Facebook will put up a dialogue box asking your permission to let the app view your PUBLIC details and post a message to your timeline on your behalf. It WON'T give access to your direct messages or password.
7. Click the "Authorize app" button
8. This will add you to the list of supporters and send you back to the app
9. You can choose to share the fact that you've signed up at this stage, but you don't have to - steps 1-8 are enough.

(Wearing my IT support hat, can I point out that you should NEVER give your Twitter or Facebook password to a program or app. The steps shown above are safe because Twitter is responding to a request from you to send some information via Thunderclap and Thunderclap never gets to know your non-public information).

Draft amendments to Dangerous dogs Act

Watch the committee discussion on Parliament TV.