Focus group

Spent Thursday afternoon at East Regional HQ being part of a "focus group" of RSPCA volunteers as part of BDO Stoy Hayward's strategic planning review for the society. I don't think I've ever been a focus group before.

I have to say that, from an initially sceptical position, I was very pleasantly impressed that they had obviously done a lot of background homework and had structured the session to work around the limitations of the fact that we were a fairly un-representative, self-selected group. Once again, I think it's a case of getting what you pay for, and it was probably right to go for quality advice that's useful rather than something that gets binned.

We won't know the final outcome until all the group sessions have been completed and the complete result has been presented to Council. 

Some points that came out of the session:

• Nearly everyone felt management of the Society had improved over the past few years, with a better relationship between HQ and the branches and less of a tendency for HQ to try to micro-manage everything we do.
• The inspectorate is very thin on the ground in relation to their workload. We need more inspectors, animal collection officers and animal welfare officers.
• Inspectors' time may not be being used to best advantage, one example of this being the requirement that an inspector should periodically visit and examine any animals taken into care as a result of his/her investigations. This enables the inspector to report on any improvement in the animal's condition as something seen at first-hand, but might be as effectively done by an animal care assistant or vet at the centre where the animal is kept.
• Urgent attention needs to be given to the position of case animals, taken into care as a result of a prosecution, but not signed over by the owner to the Society. In some cases legal proceedings can drag on for as much as two years. This may not be a problem for some species, but it is unacceptable for dogs to be routinely kennelled for that long. We urgently need to press for changes that would permit them to be put into foster homes.
• Everyone felt there is a degree of isolation between the geographical regions, with branches only meeting within their own area.
• Everyone felt there is a need for reappraisal of the role of the Branch Development Advisers (BDA). BDA's officially act as liaison between HQ and the branches, but they also have an enormous and unmanageable workload being expected to provide advice on all sorts of things and also to step in if a branch is unable to attract enough volunteers to form a committee. The general feeling was that the work they do should be separated into the advisory role (which should be reassigned to a team of experts with special knowledge rather than expecting one person to know everything), and the mentoring/management role which is most significant for assisting very new committees or recruiting a committee from scratch.
• Everyone was concerned that we are not succeeding in recruiting young committee members at branch level to replace us when we dodder off into the sunset.
• There was a general feeling that Council is possibly too large and needs to be reduced to no more than 15 members, but strong disagreement about how they should be appointed. Possible methods were: 

1. Entirely by a national ballot of the membership.
2. A mix of regionally and nationally elected members (the current situation); 
3. A mix of nationally elected and appointed members (with the appointed members being co-opted by the elected members for their special skills or knowledge).
   

Personally, I would be very reluctant to see the regionally elected council members disappear. The argument against them is that the sitting candidate is rarely opposed because people are very unwilling to displace someone they know and like personally. So elections are generally only contested when the incumbent has retired and several people stand, or when there is a point of principle at stake (e.g. if the sitting candidate has taken sides in something contentious). Arguably this isn't democratic, but I'd say that the counter argument is that it means that people are kicked out if they're doing a poor job (or if there's serious disagreement with the stand they've taken on some issue), but there's no incentive for "political" point-scoring for the sake of it. Above all they are elected by people who know something about them and have knowledge of animal welfare work at the coal-face.

Ballot of the membership would be a more democratic option if the members had more genuine interaction with the candidates. As it is, in most cases all the only evidence ordinary members have to make a decision is the candidate's printed election address. The regional members do at least have an electorate with the knowledge to hold them to account if necessary.

No Meat World Day

World Day for the Abolition of Meat

The 31 January 2009 will be the first World Day for the Abolition of Meat ever declared.

What does it mean and what will happen?

Local groups of activists will stage various events, with information stands, street leafletting, conferences, vegan dinners in restaurants, presentations, “mourning” demonstrations, photo exhibitions and nutrition pyramids in several cities in Europe and the rest of the world, in particular in France (Paris, Montpellier, Lille, Marseille, Besançon, Rennes, Millau - Aveyron, Metz, Mens, Die, and others), Italy (Milan and Florence), Switzerland, Germany, the Bahamas.

The purpose is to inform the public of how much suffering meat eating causes to non-human animals and how unnecessary it is to human beings.

A concerted effort of organizing events of the same kind in various parts of the globe is an effective way to draw the public attention to the subject.

The organizers’ intention is twofold: firstly to encourage vegetarianism and veganism as forms of boycotting the products of the animal farming industry, thus decreasing the demand for these products and as a consequence, as the market laws dictate, their supply; and secondly to explicitly request the abolition of meat production.

So the stress is both on the economic forces that are at the root of animal farming through the powerful means of consumers choice pressure and on the political and legal change.

The public are invited to reflect on this both as consumers and as citizens.

Cat facial recognition software?

Webomatica have been playing around with iPhoto and found that its face recognition component can apparently also identify cats from pictures of their faces. As you might expect, it doesn't work for all-black cats, but I wonder if there are potential uses for people managing large feral cat colonies or shelters trying to identify lost cats, and keep track of animals they've taken in. Taking a digital photo at the point of booking-in a cat would be a low-stress, un-invasive way to track that cat through the system.

Rat brothers (slightly experimental)

Some videos of the rat brothers who came in over the weekend. Not very good quality as they're only from my phone and I think the eco-bulb in my living room isn't bright enough. They are up for rehoming, but this post is mostly intended as a test to see whether video works at all.

Updates on Santa and Joshua

Unfortunately Joshua had quite a serious setback last week, due to slippage of the repair to his pelvis, which caused constriction of his pelvic canal, making it impossible for him to pass faeces normally. This means he's back in the Vet School and has had another operation to put the pelvis back and create what's known as a "false joint" to stabilise his damaged hip, which had dislocated again.

They've just phoned to say it looks reasonable so far and he's now more comfortable.

Better news on Santa, who had another operation to close his collar wound last week, and so far it looks as if the skin graft has taken. He's not out of the woods yet, as it could still break down again, and we won't know for sure for another two weeks.

Why we tell you to keep cats in for at least two weeks after adoption

Cats are not like dogs (which is probably not news to most people). A settled group of cats will recognise one another and bond socially, but they do not roam around together like a wolf-pack. Individual cats will leave the group's resting area to hunt singly, and, if something traumatic (like noisy fireworks) makes the group scatter and run they will re-group by returning to their familiar area. They get to know where there are safe hiding places and will run for them in case of danger.

By initially confining a new cat in one room, until confidently eating, using a litter tray etc., then allowing her to explore the house, and only letting her outdoors after several weeks have elapsed, you are establishing that your home is the safe core area where your group lives. This means your cat's instinctive reaction will be to attempt to flee indoors if anything outside startles her. If something prevents her from entering the house, her instinct will be to hide reasonably close at hand, rather than running away. Once the house is accepted as home, a normal adult cat will cautiously explore the surrounding area and won't get lost. A cat who is released before the house is seen as home, will tend to wander seeking familiar surroundings and will get lost (or return to their previous home).

This is why "indoor only" cats who accidentally get out can usually be retrieved without too much trouble (because they hide close by) and why cats who escape during holidays or trips to the vet really are lost.

Bit of good news for a change

Delighted to hear that the Rabbit Residence has had its planning permission renewed for another year. Everyone who volunteers there will still need to be cautious to avoid noise, obstructing driveways etc. as permission might not be renewed in 2010 if the local residents can prove the rescue is causing a nuisance to them, but it's a great relief.

Improving our fund-raising in 2009

We urgently need to increase our fundraising. If we had not received a substantial legacy last year, we would have been in very serious trouble — and we cannot expect a similar windfall this year. 

Last year's legacy will see us through 2009, but we will then have to start cutting back our services unless we can scale up our fund-raising efforts.

If we can succeed in opening a shop in a busier part of Cambridge that will help, but we cannot hope to do this instantly, and it will take time for sales to build up, even if the general economic climate picks up.

One way in which we can make more money without any extra setting up costs is to increase the amount of textiles which we sell on for recycling. Prices per ton are now actually higher than they were this time last year, and the recyclers will take even worn or damaged clothes in order to recover their fibre content. 

If you live near to either of the shops (188 Mill Road, Cambridge or 156 High Street, Newmarket) and are thinking of clearing out your old clothes, please don't throw them out with the rubbish. 

Providing they are clean (so they're not unpleasant for our volunteers to sort), we can use almost all textiles, including curtains, sheets etc, but not duvets or carpet. 

Cash flow figures for 2008

Just finished the spreadsheet of the accounts for 2008. The final figures in the branch Annual Report will be a bit different because these are adjusted for money owed by us (e.g. invoices for work done during the year not sent until the following month) or to us (e.g. VAT rebates not yet received). However the "raw" cash flow figures give an impression of the financial situation:

Total income: £378,880

Total expenditure: £242,877

Of this, £66,549 was spent on running the animal clinic, £40,515 on veterinary treatments at private vets and £33,237 on boarding animals until they could be rehomed. £61,860 was the overheads of running our three shops (including rent, rates and staff wages). 

Shop profits suffered a drastic fall to just a tenth of the amount we made in 2007. Considering the terrible general state of retail sales, we may have been lucky not to have actually made a loss.

On encouraging people to get their pets neutered

This topic can become very heated, as some people feel the problem of homeless pets is so serious that we should simply refuse help with the cost of veterinary treatment to anyone who lets their animals breed. Others would like to see us offer universal free neutering; or campaign for legislation to enforce neutering; or refuse to work with any person or organisation involved with pet breeding. 

One possibility would be to follow the stance of the Dogs Trust scheme for dogs belonging to homeless people. This scheme does not pay for any costs associated with whelping or pregnancy and requires owners to get their pets neutered within a set length of time after registration for help with veterinary treatment. The trouble with this is that it's not an awful lot of help to the pet who's brought to us already in labour. In fact, like mandatory spay/neuter programs in other countries, it falls down because any sanctions for non-compliance are quite likely to hit the pet much harder than the owner. 

In practice, we do the best we can. We offer low-cost spay/neuter at our clinic and by voucher at private vets. We won't help with the cost of vaccinating litters of puppies which are clearly going to be sold on, as that's just increasing the potential profit per puppy and encouraging the owner to breed another litter. 

RSPCA Week 2009

Once again Tesco stores have kindly given us permission to collect outside their main stores during RSPCA week, which this year will run from 27th April to 3rd of May.

We need as many collectors as possible to get maximum benefit from this opportunity, and this year it will be particularly important because of the generally gloomy outlook for fund-raising.

In past years the public have been very generous—this is not one of those events where you go home thinking it would have been quicker and easier to stick a tenner in your own tin and go home to put your feet up. Even a few hours collecting typically raises a useful amount, and is all money we otherwise would not have had.

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

It would be helpful to know approximate numbers as soon as possible as we need to order tins, badges etc.

The map below shows approximate locations of the stores in our branch area.


View Larger Map

National Rabbit Week 24-30 January 2009

See the National Rabbit Week website for more information.

Staffy neutering campaign

David Grant, of Animal Hospital fame, is profiled in the Independent today.

In my opinion, the root cause of most of these cases seems to be the worrying trend towards owning these dogs as accessories, and as weapons. Because of the demand for certain types of dogs for such purposes – primarily on inner-city housing estates – there has been a huge increase in dog breeding for undeclared profit. As a result, we are seeing a lot of puppies who are diseased due to poor breeding. The number of dogs being dumped is at an all-time high, and Battersea Dogs' Home can no longer take in Staff-type dogs. The problem is seriously out of control.

Fortunately, in our more rural area, things haven't reached this pitch, but there's still a huge problem of irresponsible breeding of Staffordshire and other bull terrier dogs.

And, of course the puppy with parvo died

Just had the bill for last weekend's rottie puppy - euthanasia and cremation.

PLEASE, if you take on a puppy or a rabbit: get them vaccinated. You wouldn't think it was OK not to feed them, "because I can't afford it."

If you live within our branch area and are on state benefits (including working tax credit, but not child credit on its own), you can get your pet vaccinated at our animal clinic at the reduced rate of £18 (cat or dog) or £7 rabbit.

More rabbit woe

Two weeks into 2009 and Caroline has already taken in fifteen rabbits, homeless for a variety of reasons. 

Owner emigrating (5), moving into rented accommodation where no pets allowed (5), child lost interest (2), owner died of heroin overdose (3). 

Unfortunately it seems bunnies are not exempt from the effects of the current state of society.
On the bright side she has eleven booked to go out, so at least there is some movement on the rehoming front.

Caroline urgently needs more committed volunteers to help with caring for the rabbits. Even a few hours each week would be helpful—for example it would free her to do other things if she had some volunteers able to take over the job of shutting the rabbits in for the night occasionally.

If you might be interested, please email rabbit_residence@hotmail.com

Due to planning restrictions on the field where the rabbits are kept, volunteers need to be prepared to park some distance away and walk down the private road that leads there, and also to keep noise to a minimum.

Coming up in April

Region East will shortly be launching a campaign to encourage owners of "bull breed dogs" (i.e. mainly Staffordshire bull terriers, but also English bull terriers, American bulldogs etc.) to get their pets neutered.

Each branch in Region East will be supported by up to £1,000 matched funding from the Regional Fund. This will be in addition to the normal low-cost spay/neuter we offer for dogs belonging to owners on state benefits and will probably be free to owners registered with one of the local homeless charities. Owners on benefits, but not homeless will be expected to pay part of the cost, but less than we ask for other breeds.

The campaign will aim to educate owners about the large numbers of bull terriers we are asked to take in each year, and the need to reduce irresponsible breeding, but also to promote the image of well-trained, properly cared for staffies as wonderful companions in the right situation. 

Please spread the word by sharing the "staffy neutering" widget. Click "menu", then "share this widget" and copy the code to paste it into your own myspace page, blog etc.

Cat updates

Gizmo, our longest-staying cat, is booked to go to a home this weekend.

Joshua's various fracture repairs went well and he's due to go out to a foster home (with a view to permanent adoption if he gets on with the resident cats) today.

I picked up Sox yesterday evening and Janine's fostering him for a few days, and has a possible permanent home lined up.

Unfortunately Santa's collar wound has been giving some problems and the vets are planning to do another surgical repair once they get back the results of a bacterial culture of the infection. If these are OK, he'll have a graft from the fatty tissue near his gut to provide a basis for blood vessels to supply the (hopefully) now healthy skin flaps. This sounds pretty drastic, but generally does result in proper healing although it does leave the cat with a palpable lump in the area where the surgery was done, so a future owner needs to be warned that it's not a tumour.

Animal Welfare Statistics for 2008

Just finished the spreadsheet for 2008. During the year, RSPCA Cambridge rehomed a total of 190 animals, neutered 277 animals and provided 4,069 veterinary treatments (some animals had more than one treatment, so this represents less than 4,000 individual animals).

Rehoming email address

Apologies - there is a problem with the rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk address at the moment. If you email rspcacambridge@aol.com that will work. There's a problem with the redirect from our email domain to AOL, but using the direct address will work.

Interested in becoming an RSPCA trustee?

Would you like to use your skills and experience in becoming one of the RSPCA's charity trustees? The Council discusses plans for the RSPCA and makes the decisions that will affect how the RSPCA deals with animal issues in the future.

The RSPCA Council comprises up to 25 volunteers elected to serve as the charity trustees of the Society.

Fifteen national Council members are elected by the votes of the whole RSPCA membership and serve for three years, retiring on a rotational basis... [read more on the National RSPCA website]

RSPCA branches are also directed by trustee bodies: each branch elects a minimum of seven and a maximum of fourteen committee members at its Annual General Meeting each year. Branch trustees normally play a more "hands on" rôle than members of the RSPCA Council, because branches rely less on employed staff, so the committee members are responsible for carrying out the board's decisions as well as making them in the first place.

To stand for election to the committee of your local branch you need to be an adult member of the society of at least three months standing at the time of the AGM, and to have been nominated by two other adult branch members. It is important that committee members are "team players" and willing to learn. Most people will have their own particular areas of interest, such as pet rehoming, veterinary treatment or campaigns, but it is important that everyone is prepared to take a balanced view and accept that all aspects of branch activities are important in fostering animal welfare locally.

If you might be interested in standing for the Cambridge branch committee at our next AGM, please email secretary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk. If you're not already a member of the Society, you will need to apply to join, and you can do this online using the link at the side of this blog.

Another vomiting puppy

Yet another owner with no money and a 10 month old rottweiler puppy, "rescued" from someone else, and never vaccinated. Puppy has had vomiting and diarrhoea for three days, and the diarrhoea now has lots of blood in it.

I've agreed that we'll cover the cost of an initial consultation, but it doesn't look good.

Holiday planning

Amazon will pay us a small commission on all book purchases which start from this web page.

Evictions

I hope this morning's call from someone who is due to be evicted from her home and needs to find somewhere for her animals is not the first sign of an avalanche. We've already noticed that the rate of rehoming seems to be slowing as people think twice before taking on new commitments. If this is accompanied by significantly increased numbers of emergency requests to take in animals, then we are looking at real trouble.

We always need more volunteers willing to foster animals (mostly cats, but some dogs and smaller animals too). If you might be interested, please email rspcacambridge@aol.com. 

We will reimburse costs for pet food, litter etc. to fosterers. 

Rabbit Residence featured in Cambridge Evening News

Cambridge Evening News's video section has a piece on Rabbit Residence. Good write-up and very cute video of groups of bunnies hopping about in the snow.

If you might be interested in adopting a pair of rabbits from Caroline, please email her at rabbit_residence@hotmail.com

Progress report on new charity shop

Not an awful lot, I'm afraid. We are trying to purchase the remainder (5 years to run) of the lease of a shop on Burleigh street. This is turning out to be more complicated than we had thought, because this is an underlease (from Coral, the bookmakers), who in turn lease the shop from the Prudential Insurance, the freeholders. Because so many entities are involved, all of them need to agree before a final lease agreement can be signed—and we need to be satisfied that we aren't risking branch funds by making ourselves liable for unexpected costs.

Renting commercial property is rather different from renting a house or flat to live in because the landlord isn't normally the one who pays for any repairs—these are either done and paid for by the tenant directly or else the landlord does the repairs and charges the tenant. It's also different from buying a house leasehold, because a shop lease is basically just an agreement to pay rent for a certain number of years—the only "resale" value it has is the worth of any fittings put in by the previous tenant. So we have to take advice from a local surveyor about the value of the fittings and the probable cost of repairs during the term of the lease, and what we will need to spend at the end of the lease in order to return the unit to the condition it was in when Coral originally took it out. 

We also have to get confirmation from the ultimate landlord (the Pru) of the rent they will be charging. This is what we're waiting for at the moment, as we daren't take on the shop without knowing for certain what the rent is going to be over the next five years. 

We do know the current rent (we are not completely daft), but the sticking point is that this rent was due for review in February 2008. At that point shop rentable values were still fairly high in Cambridge, and it would be legitimate for the landlord to set the rent at an amount which would have been fair a year ago (i.e. more than the current value, and more than we could afford to pay in the current conditions). 

Another cat

Not very full details yet as Vet24 phoned immediately after the finders had brought the kitty to them. The cat is all (or almost all) white and about four or five years old. No collar or chip, and I don't think they'd definitely confirmed the sex, although they spoke about "him" which suggests they think this is a neutered male. He's apparently fairly bright, but has a probable pelvic fracture, so "the other Rosemary" is going to pick him up from them early tomorrow morning on her way in to do reception at the clinic.

Horses and ponies

A few RSPCA branches have facilities for caring for horses and other large domestic animals or have arrangements to board them in private livery stables, but in general the National Society takes responsibility for finding suitable accommodation for equines if they are taken in as a result of rescues or cruelty investigations. 

In the case of very large incidents, like the one at Amersham, other equine rescue organisations will usually chip in so that animals can be distributed among centres which have available space and suitable facilities. 

Rescues and cruelty investigations are always done by the Inspectorate in conjunction with vets and often with technical advice and help from experts such as the World Horse Welfare field officers. This means that it is important to contact the National Control Centre, rather than our branch, if you see horses which are neglected, injured or in danger, as this avoids delay.

The contact number for the Control Centre is 0300 1234 999. You may report incidents anonymously if necessary, but it is very important to give an accurate location for the animals, and preferably a contact phone number so that an inspector can call you back to get further details if needed. 

Be aware that if a case goes to prosecution it may be as long as a year before it comes before the courts—so the animals may be removed from a site, but you may not see any reports in the local media until very much later.

Held together with 'laccy bands and bits of string

Many of the people who come into contact with us for one reason or another get very frustrated because they feel we're not delivering the standard of service they expect. Conversely, many of the people we pay to provide some of those services aren't at all happy about the degree of pressure they're working under and the way the public often expect them field complaints about aspects of the RSPCA that aren't anything to do with them.

Clinic this morning was a case in point. One of our clients had bred some puppies from his bitch and one of them had diarrhoea. As the puppy was only three weeks old he was a bit reluctant to bring it to the surgery and he'd got it into his head that we ought to be able to diagnose and prescribe on the basis of a stool sample. He phoned in; argued with the volunteer receptionist about this and she took his number so that one of the vets could call him back. They were horrendously busy that morning and didn't get finished seeing patients until mid-day, at which point they still had several animals needing to be admitted to the hospital as in-patients and a string of other telephone call-backs to make.

By this time, Mr X. was pretty peeved that he'd not been called back yet, and decided to phone me on the out of hours number. All I could do was reiterate that the puppy really needed to be seen (otherwise there's no way to tell whether it's getting dehydrated) and that I would leave a message asking the vets if it was possible to call him a.s.a.p. Strictly speaking at this point I was asking them to bend the rules as the puppy a) could have been taken to the morning session and b) wasn't registered with the clinic (although its mum is) so isn't covered by our agreement with the Vet School to see registered patients outside normal hours in an emergency. Twenty minutes later he still hadn't got to the top of the urgent call-backs and phoned me ranting and raving that we didn't care about animals and why should he have to wait when his puppy was ill.

I am afraid that the answer is that you get what you pay for. Our annual turnover is around £200,000, which is a frighteningly large amount for a group of volunteers to raise. It relates to an annual demand for help for around 3,000-4,000 individual animals—less than £100 per animal. That means we have to do things on the cheap wherever possible. Our value to the University for student teaching means they charge us a lot less than a commercial rate for veterinary services, but it does mean consultations take longer (because the qualified vet needs to discuss the animals' conditions with the students). If we could pay the University enough for them to employ an extra vet at each session that would decrease waiting times, but that would mean raising at least another £40,000 every year. Similar considerations explain why our telephone availability is less than perfect (we're mostly volunteers taking calls in our spare time, not paid reception staff).

Experimental new pages for our rehoming

As an experiment, I've set up a second blog to display photos of the animals we have up for rehoming. I think this layout is easier to view than the current photo gallery, and Blogger's tagging system makes it easy to search for animals with particular characteristics, such as being used to living with cats.

Note that we don't always get photos of animals immediately they come in, because it depends on Janine travelling down to the kennels to take pictures, so if you don't see what you're looking for it's always worth emailing rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk to ask.

Post-Christmas clearouts?

Our charity shops at 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket are back in action after the break and can make good use of any unwanted presents or other saleable items you may be clearing out. The old retro/vintage clothing shop at 184 Mill Road is now closed, but clothing and bric-à-brac donations are still very useful to us at 188.

We will be saving any really good items for our new shop in central Cambridge and selling lower-value items at our jumble sales at the Mill Road Baptist church. There is still a fairly good market for textile items for recycling, so even worn or damaged clothing, curtains etc. can help our fundraising efforts.

Plans for the new year include increased online sales of books. This will mean some re-organisation of the basement stockroom at 188 because the books we list on the internet must be shelved in order so that they can be located easily when purchase requests come in. This is very important because failure to fulfill orders which have been placed means a negative mark against us and might cause us to be delisted as a seller.

Hope this isn't an indication of things to come...

Aggravating message on Janine's answerphone wanting us to take in a nine year old labrador because the owners have now got a kitten and the dog is not getting on well with her. As it happens we're absolutely full up now and couldn't have taken the dog in any case, but it illustrates how the "Christmas Present Pet" problem has morphed over the years.

It's now incredibly rare to have requests to take in animals who were given as unexpected Christmas presents to families who didn't want them, and I think that educational message has got through. What we do see appears to be a kind of "holiday stress" effect whereby people want to give up animals because disruption of the normal routine makes keeping them more difficult; visiting grandchildren or children from a previous relationship are a common reason.

Hello 2009!

Hopefully not starting as it means to go on, with a 6.30 am call from the 24 hour vet to say they'd been phoned by one of the clients registered with our clinic, whose 16 year old dog was suddenly showing alarming symptoms of some kind of generalised allergic reaction.

The owners were evidently in such a panic that they'd forgotten how to make contact with us outside normal hours, by phoning the number given on their registration card. Instead they'd phoned the National Control Centre, who'd naturally said that our clinic is closed on Bank holidays. They'd then phoned the 24 hour vet and been horrified to find that the consultation charge alone for 6.30 on a holiday morning is £130.

Fortunately the receptionist at Vet24 was on the ball (one of the advantages of running on a shift system is that that staff are awake and in their right minds at peculiar times of day) and thought to contact me, so I was able to get them into our own out of hours cover via the University vet school, which is still reasonably expensive at that time of day, but nothing like £130.

I can't reiterate enough. If you are very strapped for cash it is more vital than ever that you make sure you understand how your own vet's out of hours cover works. If an animal is off-colour just before a holiday, don't hope for the best; get it checked out while the surgery is still running on normal charging rates. If you can't afford a private vet because you are on benefits, get your animal registered with the PDSA, Blue Cross or RSPCA before something happens.