Can I ask you a few questions?
Can you imagine you are being asked these questions by someone in the street with a clip board - that you haven't got time to look the answers up or cross the road!
1 What sort of work do the RSPCA do?
2 Roughly how big a part of their work (both nationally and at branch level) is the rehoming of unwanted dogs and other pets? Are they a significant rehoming charity?
3 If people are in serious trouble (about to lose their house, having mental health issues, about to enter prison for eg) and are aware they are not able to look after their pets and want to give them up, where can they go for help?
4 Do you donate to the RSPCA or are you planning to? If so, what are your reasons for choosing this charity?
Please email beverley@dogstodaymagazine.co.uk ASAP. More interested to know what the public perception is of the above rather than the reality!
1 What sort of work do the RSPCA do?
2 Roughly how big a part of their work (both nationally and at branch level) is the rehoming of unwanted dogs and other pets? Are they a significant rehoming charity?
3 If people are in serious trouble (about to lose their house, having mental health issues, about to enter prison for eg) and are aware they are not able to look after their pets and want to give them up, where can they go for help?
4 Do you donate to the RSPCA or are you planning to? If so, what are your reasons for choosing this charity?
Please email beverley@dogstodaymagazine.co.uk ASAP. More interested to know what the public perception is of the above rather than the reality!
Comments
http://rspca-cambridge.blogspot.com/2010/04/millennium-volunteers-big-society-et-al.html
I've NEVER included animals taken in as injured strays and reclaimed in my rehoming returns, and if I was fiddling returns by treating every hospital patient as an abandonment followed by an adoption my apparent rehoming figures would be staggeringly huge.
The original reason why RSPCA clinics were required to keep records of euthanasia was precisely to avoid the possibility of "hiding" euthanasia of healthy animals brought in by owners who didn't want them any longer.
The figures which keep being bandied about include the value of buildings - we cannot run our animal clinic from a tent!
The claim that we are putting down thousands of healthy animals is just not true - as I said earlier the figures which are repeatedly quoted are for all animals, including animals put to sleep in clinics and hospitals. Would you attack the PDSA because it puts down animals which cannot be saved?
f we doubled annual spending there would be no reserves at all in two years time. This means that spending can't be demand-led, which is why we have to prioritise requests for help and why it's not possible to say yes to everyone who phones asking for their pet to be taken in for rehoming or for help with the cost of veterinary treatment.
And that is where we came in, of course.
Do they rehome - yes. Do they rescue - yes. Are they perfect - far from it. The top brass get large pay packets just as those in private business. Yet those who do the mucking out and public work, get low wages. Do I support them - no.
I would rather give what I can to a local shelter who do sterling work and get very little press or recognition. By the same token I would not give to the recent Pedigree adoption drive - not once I read the small print that stated only minimal pence goes from each tin, with how much on advertising!
It's the fantastic that shelters are predominantly non destruction these days, but I fear the ratio is not stacking up, more needing homes with less available. Many more dogs are doomed to spend years in kennels.
Just ONE example from last year of what this actually means at the sharp end - a bitch who had been in labour so long that her uterus ruptured. If her idiotic owner had sought help earlier she could probably have had a caesarian and survived (at our expense as the owner couldn't pay anything).
Should we have told the vet we wouldn't pay for her to be put out of her pain that so our euthanasia figures could be reduced by one?
and I guess the RSPCA could have chosen to euthanase my mums little crossbreed, found 10 years ago under a bush, a small stray puppy with two badly broken legs. Did they? NO!
They fixed both her legs with hundreds of pounds worth of metal work and my mum gave her a loving home. Example 2 of how the RSPCA could have chosen to save money, reduce figures.