Suits for May Balls

Why hire a suit when you can buy one for a similar amount?

Now available at our charity shop, 61 Burleigh St.

Re-reading

Re-reading Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series as I'm much too tired to focus on anything new.

If anyone tells you the RSPCA "doesn't do rehoming"

From our rehoming co-ordinator:

My goodness it's going beserk.

Just to keep you in the loop we have as follows:

• Ginger tom taken to Vet 24 after RTA - they spoke to Claire and because of neurological problems he's going to clinic on Saturday.

• Black tom at Arbury Rd vets which has bad pelvic injury - also to clinic on Sat.

• Fluffy black female (Maria) about 6-8 months taken to Pet Drs Burwell. I collected and have her with me at moment booked to be spayed at Lidas next week and finders are keen to adopt pending home visit

• Ginger and white nervous tom taken to pet Drs Burwell with a wound which they've treated. They say he has to come out before bank holiday weekend as no cover so I'm going to try and bring him here tomorrow. But as I have un-spayed Maria too, I will have to try to keep them a distance apart so they don't drive each other mad especially as she appears to be calling. I have him booked in next week to also be neutered at Lidas and have his staples out of his wound at same time.

The 3 new cat fosterers are now full so I've got a bit of a problem that one of them goes away sometime soon and will need her mum cat and kittens to be looked after elsewhere. Didn't really want them to go into the cattery.

West Suffolk branch did have a cat space looming that we could use but it might now be taken. If not I had a very desperate member of public who is about to move and a friend who promised to take his cat has let him down at last minute. So I have put him in touch with them to avoid our numbers getting even more inflated.

If you would like to foster or adopt a cat, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Garden Open Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th June

Many thanks to local author and garden designer Twigs Way for making us this year's charity beneficiary of her annual open garden event.

Did you know you can see live bands at the Flower Pot, Derby. Such as Midge Ure last week.

Last Friday, 21st of May we went to see Midge Ure play a solo acoustic set at the Flower Pot, Derby.
This was the first time I had been to a gig at this venue. I'm sure you know who Midge Ure is, if not then shame on you. Watch THIS video to see if it reminds you!
The Flower Pot has lots of live bands on through out the year.

For more info please visit there website :
http://www.rawpromo.co.uk/

Tickets also on here :
http://www.ents24.com/web/venue/Derby/Flower-Pot-2111.html

You can also get tickets direct from The Flower Pot, so why not go and have a beer in the beer garden at the same time.

The Flower Pot pub is located at 25 King Street, Derby,Derbyshire, DE1 3DZ.
Phone 01332 204955

View The Flower Pot Pub, Derby in a larger map

Have a look at my Google Streetview image of the Gig poster wall of the Flower Pot. As you can see Google Streetview must have driven past the Flower Pot in March 2008.

There is a rather handy multi-storey car park just a few feet away from this venue on Chapel Street which is open 24 hours a day and has 524 spaces so you should have no problem parking here. I have marked this car park in red in my map above. The Flower Pot pub is marked in Green.

More info on Midge Ure:
http://www.midgeure.com/

Midge Ure last played a gig in Derby on 29th April 2005 in the Darwin Suite of Derby Assembly Rooms.
If you are a fan of 80s music then perhaps you were there at "The Hitmakers Tour" on November 15th 2006 when ABC, Howard Jones and Toyah Wilcox played in the Great Hall.

Hope you found this blogpost of interest.
Cheers
Andy

Get your May Ball gowns here!

Our shop at 61 Burleigh St. has lots of very attractive ball gowns and faux fur coats (good for those chilly June mornings!)

We'd also be glad to hear from any kind souls willing to donate gowns they no longer want.

Why we help people with veterinary treatment costs

I'm sometimes asked why we spend money helping people with the cost of veterinary treatment; the implication being that we're really just enabling owners to have more money to spend on themselves. Frankly I sometimes feel that way myself when I have conversations with owners who can't manage appointments we've set up for them because they've got holidays booked (what are those? I seem to remember having one sometime in 1982).

Unfortunately the fact that owners ought to have put at least some money aside for emergencies doesn't help an animal who needs a vet now. Most of the people we deal with genuinely don't have £100 available to spend on a visit to the emergency vet late at night, let alone another £200 or so for actual treatment. At the moment this is quite likely to mean that an animal who's been hit by a car may have to wait to see a vet at our clinic the following day as the only alternative to being put to sleep by the emergency vet with no attempt at treatment.

If our clinic wasn't there, the only alternatives would be euthanasia that night or euthanasia the following day, depending on the goodwill and ethics of the closest private vets, which might well start to run dry if it was happening every day.

As well as this, we also have to consider that the RSPCA does eventually prosecute people who neglect their animals by not taking them for veterinary treatment when it's needed. This implies that the owner can access a vet within a reasonable timespan, and for some people the only way that's going to happen is if someone else stumps up the money. When we do that we try to get the owner to pay at least something; there may be more delay than we'd like, and we may not be able to fund more than palliative care or euthanasia. What isn't acceptable is if we do nothing.

Thoughts on work experience

We get lots of requests for work experience placements, and have to disappoint most of the callers because we don't really have anything suitable for people who want to work directly with animals. Most of our rehoming is either via private boarding kennels or foster homes and neither of these is suitable to meet the fairly stringent checks which are required by local authorities before placements can be approved. 

Our clinic is approved by the LEA, but doesn't really give a very satisfactory placement opportunity because work experience students can't have contact with the animals due to confidentiality requirements (because most of the animals have owners). This means they're limited to helping out at the reception desk, and the staff area there is tiny, so really they don't get do do much besides helping with filing and watching animals being booked in. If we had more than one person at a time, the area would burst!

I suppose it does give the placement students an opportunity to see an animal welfare clinic in action and get an idea just how pressured it all is.

The shops are really much more suited to giving placement students a genuine experience of the adult world of work (and possibly an understanding that most people's jobs are rather mundane for most of the time). I'm also happier that they're offering a more realistic view of employment, as I have real concerns about young people being encouraged to choose supposedly vocational courses because they love animals without any understanding that there may be very little chance of getting a job at the end of it.

Realistically, society needs a pool of people earning money in jobs that aren't particularly exciting in order to be able to afford animal carers (either for our own animals or ones in rescue).

I'm not sure the emphasis on students choosing jobs they're going to enjoy even does them many favours if they do get an animal care post because a lot of the work is still going to be repetitive, dirty, hard and poorly paid and they're going to need to learn perseverance to get through it.

Further thought: I suppose what bothers me most about some of this is that it's all about encouraging the kids to think you can cause things to happen by wanting rather than by setting your goals and working towards them. Fundamentally that's the root of a load of the problems we face here: there are tons of people who want to tell us what we ought to do, and very few who are willing to help us work to achieve it.

New RSPCA shop in Newmarket

Just back from our branch committee meeting and hopefully we're on track for a replacement shop in Newmarket in a busier location than the old one.

View Larger Map

This streetview pic shows the entrance to Market street, where the shop is sited, although the actual building is further in on the pedestrianised section where the Streetview cameras couldn't go.

View Larger Map

This is the back area.

It could still fall through, though, as it all depends on a satisfactory second survey demonstrating that the various problems shown in our first survey have all now been dealt with. If there's still a problem with damp and possible rotting timbers we'd be mad to take on a lease that committed us to keeping the building in repair.

More kittens and two pet rats!

Thanks to our dedicated fosterers, we were able to help a caller whose new landlord wouldn't allow pets and another who had found a litter of kittens in her garage. 

The kittens should be ready to go to new homes in a couple of weeks as they were old enough to be running about. If you might be interested in adopting one or a pair, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk The mother cat is friendly, so once the kits are weaned, she will be spayed and up for adoption as well.

The increasing number of animals needing help makes it even more urgent that we raise more funds, so please keep on supporting our shops at 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh Street by shopping there and donating items for sale.

Staggering on

Spent most of yesterday steaming incoming donations at 61 Burleigh st (hence pic of steamer). The cylinder that looks a bit like a Henry vacuum cleaner body is actually filled with water and then heated by an electrical element like an ordinary kettle. Steam comes out of the nozzle at the top of the flexible tube and is run over clothes hanging on a rail to freshen them up and remove the creases.

By the end of the day we had two rails of clothes ready for the Monday team to price and put out in the shop, but the tub of incoming donations was starting to look lower than I'd like.
If you're having a wardrobe clear-out, please bear us in mind. Even if you think most of your purge isn't good enough for anyone to wear again we can still sell it for recycling and the same goes for shoes. We can also make use of things like bed linens, curtains etc.

If you are interested in volunteering I've now put up a downloadable copy of the shops volunteer form. We are required to ask for information about next of kin and medical conditions so that we would know what to do if a volunteer was taken ill while on duty at the shop. Just complete the form, bring it in to the shop at any of the times we're open and ask to have a word with the manager. Our greatest need is for people who can help on weekdays, but we can also use more people on Saturdays when the shop's very busy. Ideally we'd like to have one person on the till, one filling up spaces on the shop floor and one sorting incoming donations on every shift.

Anyone for My Little Pony?

Looking much more cheerful

Maisie looking much happier now her nose isn't so bunged up. The quick response to antibiotics makes it hopeful that her problem is just that the damage to her facial bone structure makes it prone to bacterial infections, which is much less of a worry than the possibility of a permanent viral infection that's always going to be there.

Greyhound Pub, Friar Gate - A 360x180 degree VR photograph outside.

Following on from yesterdays post on the Greyhound pub reopening I thought I would make a 360x180 degree virtual Reality photograph so you can see what it looks like and its position on Friar Gate.

I have created an interactive 360 degree high resolution photograph in front of this pub so you can see exactly where it is located on Friargate and what it looks like, click the link and then use the mouse to look around and zoom in :
360 view of The Greyhound Pub, Friargate. <-- Click link for a great 360 view of The Greyhound pub.
It is like google streetview image, its an interactive 360 degree photograph that you control using the mouse.
To move the view around simply click with the mouse and drag the viewpoint to where you want to look. You can look in all directions including up and down. As well as the mouse, you can use the control buttons at the bottom of the viewer or even the keyboard cursor keys and +/- keys to zoom in/out.
Here is my VR photograph of the Greyhound Pub, Derby :


I photographed this at 06:52 on 21st May 2010, the day after it reopened.

If you like this VR photograph then you might like to view my High Resolution FullScreen version of it by clicking this link here (need broadband and fast pc) :
High Res/fullscreen VR photograph of Greyhound Pub.
This one has a button at the bottom that toggles the viewer so it fills the entire screen (same as youtube videos do, Hit esc to exit fullscreen mode or click the fullscreen button)


I hope you like it.
Andy

Case dog fostering

If an owner who is being prosecuted refuses to sign their animals over for rehoming before the case is heard in court, the animals may be "in limbo" for many months, sometimes for more than a year.

This is very bad for the mental welfare of companion animals like dogs, and there is a new project to recruit foster homes where they can have a more normal life.

If you think you might be interested in fostering, please email R4RHQ@RSPCA.org.uk to ask for more information.

The Greyhound pub in Friar Gate, Derby re-opens tonight.

I have created an interactive 360 degree high resolution photograph in front of this pub so you can see exactly where it is located on Friargate and what it looks like, click the link and then use the mouse to look around and zoom in :
360 view of The Greyhound Pub, Friargate. <-- Click link for a great 360 view of The Greyhound pub.

The Greyhound dates back to 1734 and is at the heart of the "Derby Mile" pub crawl of which several pubs have been lost over recent years. Four years ago, it closed after falling victim to the recession, which has shaken the pub trade.
The pub will be opened by Dino and Pete from Ram FM at 8:30pm Thursday 20th May 2010, why not go along and show support for this newly reopend pub.

The Greyhound pub is located at 76 Friar Gate, Derby DE1 1FN.
You can see how the Greyhound looked in 2008 when the Google Streetview car captured it by clicking my link below :

The Greyhound Pub, Derby on Google Streetview.

iPhone Push Pin

If you have an iPhone and are viewing this blog with Safari, click the link below to get a drop pin placed on the Maps app which you can use for precise directions....

iPhone Maps drop pin.

I hope this pub does as well as the Brewery Tap on Derwent Street. There is also a VR photograph of the outside of this pub which I made, click the link to view my new blog post :

Greyhound pub, Derby VR photograph.

Andy

New local webcam - Broomfield Hall college Birdbox, watch the newly hatched birds live.

Another new live streming webcam has gone live for Derbyshire.
This webcam is located inside a nesting box at the Broomfield Hall campus of Derby College.

This webcam allows you to see the daily life of a new family of Bluetits. This webcam requires Java to work. This can be installed for free by visiting here : Java




If you would like to have a look at the newly hatched eggs then view this new webcam on my Derby and Derbyshire webcams page. On this page you will find many local webcams to view around the City and county.

I have also updated my Derby webcam page detailing which webcams are compatible with the iPhone, some webcams use Adobe Flash which at the moment is NOT compatible with the Safari browser on iPhone.
What did surprise me when I was checking the webcams was that the Controllable viewpoint webcam at Broomfield college works on iPhone and you don't have to install a plugin. you can control the view by a single tap on the camera view.
I have removed the Kestrel webcam at Broomfield as thats no longer online.

I have removed the Carsington Reservoir webcam as that seems to have been removed after all these years online. I tried to find it again but looks like it really has gone completely, if you find it then please let me know so I can add it back in.

I also updated the Buxton streaming webcam as the URL had changed.
Keep an eye on the many webcams for Derby by visiting :
Derby and Derbyshire webcams.

Thanks
Andy

One step forward, two steps back

Maisie's been doing very well apart from her absolute refusal to eat anything except Feline AD (appetite diet) made up with hot water. She's been chipped and had her first vaccinations and someone is tentatively interested in adopting her.

The vets were pretty convinced the food behaviour is mostly psychological, but now she's definitely got a bunged up nose and doesn't fancy anything much. Took her down to them again this evening and she's back on antibiotics on the assumption that some of the damage to the bones around her nasal passages, done in the original traffic accident, has left them prone to infection. Her temperature is normal and she's bright and lively, so they think the infection is localised to her poor nose.

Aww! A Furby!

Had to go back to the shop today to drop off some old newspapers for wrapping china as we were nearly out of them yesterday and it's wasteful to use new bags just to protect breakables that buyers are going to wash anyway before eating off them. While I was there I thought I might as well tidy up some of the chaos from yesterday; then someone phoned to ask if they could drop off a large donation of children's toys, and with one thing and another I ended staying for most of the rest of the day.

While we're so short-handed at the shop, this may be the way to go as I got a lot more done with the shop closed. Basically running a charity shop is like painting the Forth bridge: hopefully people will be buying stuff every day; but then the gaps they make have to be filled up. If you're aiming to take £500 daily and the average price of what you're selling is three to five pounds, then you have to put out at least a hundred individual somethings every day.

In practice, you need a fair bit more than a hundred because not everything will sell.

Your hundred items come out of the stock room, and that has to be continually refilled by donations or the shop will fold. At a very rough estimate I think I got just about a hundred items priced and put out to fill the gaps made by shoppers on Saturday and there were at least a hundred individual toys in the donation that was dropped off. I'm not a toy expert, but most of them looked in good condition and saleable — although someone will need to check that the jigsaws have all their pieces and that the battery operated toys do work. 

One of the toys I did recognise was a Furby, which did its stuff very cutely when I figured how to switch it on. 

There's also a rather alarming mauve skipping rope which counts how many skips the unfortunate child manages and also seems to be in working order.

What a day!

Up at six; wash up cat bowls; bleach & re-fill litter trays; wash floors; bath to render self acceptable to respectable human company; feed cats; feed self. Tablets for the five cats who need them.

Drop off Fern, who is one of my own cats, to the vet for an ultrasound check of her heart condition. Then back home. Decide no point moping about waiting for the vet to call, so into the shop early. Hardly had time to start discussing plans for next week when the call came to say F. was ready to collect, so turned round and zoomed back to the vet.

Results were not great, but better than I'd been fearing. Fern's heart condition is worse, but not dreadful and they think putting her on beta blockers should get her heart rate down enough to make it possible to think about tackling the underlying problem, which is that her hyperthyroidism has stopped responding to carbimazole treatment. Back home with F. and a packet of tablets to add to her collection of medication.

Then back to the shop again. We've no volunteers to cover Saturday afternoons at the moment, so I did the till while Bettina (shop manager) carried on with pricing and refilling gaps where items had been sold. Ideally we'd have at least three people, so that one could do the till; another keep moving new stock out onto the shop floor, and the third sort, steam and price stock ready to be put out.

It was a fairly busy day, although most people weren't going for the more expensive things. Ffiona and Bettina have just put out all the really good ball gowns that they've been saving up for the May Ball season, so let's hope those go when that kicks off at the end of the month. Right now the students are in the middle of exams, so probably not in the mood for retail therapy.

As often happens, there was a surge of activity just before five, so I couldn't bail out until just past the hour. I hared off to the clinic as I was supposed to be meeting a work experience pupil at five and got there at five twenty with no sign of the pupil. I hope he either couldn't make it or forgot, but he was ever so keen on the telephone, so I rather fear he arrived on time, found everything locked up & went away disappointed.

Hung around for another hour dealing with post and emptying the rubbish in case he went back home and phoned my mobile when he got there, then decided to call it a day. Back home; quick shop run for weekend food; then cat food and litter to one of our fosterers.

We really, really need more volunteers to cover the shops.

Reference Book- The Illustrated History of Derby's Pubs.

The Illustrated History of Derby's Pubs by Maxwell Craven is a great reference book for anyone who is interested in the history of Derby Inns. ISBN-10: 1859833306

It was published by Breedon Books Publishing in Sep 2002, this book is a an updated version of the 1992 book called Inns and Taverns of Derby which I also have in my Derby book collection. The orignal book has a yellow cover (ISBN 1 873626 21 5).

Inns and Taverns: The Illustrated History of Derby's Pubs is a book I often refer to as its seems to have pretty much every pub that has ever exisited in Derby along with lots of historical information on each.
Some pubs often change their names several times over the years so you may remember a pubs name as something different to what its called today.

Many pubs in Derby have closed down in recent times but also some have been restored such as The Brewery Tap on Derwent Street, formally The Royal standard. Another pub which is just about to reopen on Thursday 20th May ay 8:30pm is The Greyhound on Friar Gate both of these pubs have had new life brought into them thanks to http://www.derbybrewing.co.uk/

If you love Derby history and want a great reference book on Derby's pubs then this is the book for you:

Originally priced at £16.99 and hard to track down, If you have problems finding this book for sale then you may have to resort to ebay or car boots, happy hunting.
Andy

Volunteers email list

We now have a Google Groups list for volunteers in an attempt to make it easier to keep in touch with everyone. You can view the web version of the list or sign up to get new messages by email.

If you'd like to be added to the list, but have trouble signing up, please email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk and I'll add you in.

Fostering animals for the branch

We had a fairly typical call on Sunday from an elderly lady who'd been feeding a stray cat in her garden and watching with alarm as Kitty's pregnancy became more and more obvious. Her little dog was scared of cats and she herself was allergic, so she couldn't bring the cat indoors to have the kittens, and in any case she was very worried what she would do if urgent veterinary attention was needed. She was convinced that Kitty might be about to give birth at any moment, so was desperate to get her into a safe home. 

From our point of view this kind of situation is an emergency because, once the kittens had been born outside it would be very hard to find them and give them enough human contact to stop them growing up wild. In a year's time any female kittens would be able to have kittens of their own and in no time at all there would be a colony of hard-to-home cats and complaints about mess and smell.

So many thanks to one of our fosterers for coming up trumps and taking mother-to-be in at 30 minutes notice. The elderly lady had obviously been feeding her well and handled her enough to get her tame enough to settle comfortably indoors, so we should have no difficulty finding her a home provided all goes well with the birth.

Would you be interested in fostering animals for us?

You need to be living in premises where animals are allowed, but a garden is not essential as most fostered animals are either very young or recovering from injuries and need to be confined inside. 

Typically we try to get puppies, young kittens and/or their expectant mothers into foster homes so that they can benefit from social contact with humans and other animals. Kittens and puppies who spend their first weeks in kennels tend to grow up shy and have more difficulty adjusting to life in a normal family home.

We also try to use foster homes for recuperating injured or sick animals so they can get more TLC than in busy boarding kennels and to avoid too many trips between the kennels and our clinic.

The need for foster homes is fairly unpredictable, so we try to keep a roster of people who don't mind being contacted when an animal needs to come in. Families with children are ideal for socialising young animals because it means they get a broad experience of different types of people and are more likely to be friendly with everyone. If you have children who are going to be very upset if the fostered animal doesn't survive, it might be best to be selective about taking on injured animals.

All foster homes are visited by our homing co-ordinator before animals are placed with them. Basically this is a similar visit to the ones we do before placing animals in permanent homes, except that the homing co-ordinator will also discuss the practicalities of caring for injured or very young animals (e.g. loaning the foster home a suitable cage for animals who need to be confined).

The branch will cover expenses such as food and cat litter and any veterinary costs involved.

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

Join the RSPCA

If you've ever grumbled that, "the RSPCA doesn't do...." you should consider joining so that you have a vote in the selection of the governing council.

If you join now you won't be eligible to vote in this year's ballot, but you will next year, and you will also be eligible to stand for election to your local branch committee and to vote at their AGM.

You can apply to join online via the National RSPCA website  and unless you specify that you prefer NOT to join your local branch, a proportion of your membership fee will be given to the branch where you live.

Ten of the 25 National RSPCA Council members are elected by the branches on a regional basis, so branch membership also feeds back into National policy making.

And handover to the newly elected Council is, well... rather more rapid than after the other election.

Volunteering at our charity shops

We urgently need more volunteers at our shop at 61 Burleigh street. This is a big shop, now taking over £300 every day, but high turnover means that we need lots of helpers to keep donations moving out onto the shop floor.

Basically the process goes like this:

• Unsorted goods come in, either brought to the shop by individual donors, or collected via house-clearance runs or "trawling" (which is where we drop off collection bags in a street and return next week to pick them up, hopefully containing lots of things we can sell).
• We empty the bags into a large sorting bin, separating any obviously unsaleable items. Unsaleable textiles, shoes and metal items are bagged up for sale to recycling merchants. 
• The remaining items are checked again (e.g. for missing buttons, rips, stains). 
•  Any out-of season clothes (e.g. heavy winter coats in summer) are put into storage for their correct season.
• In-season clothes are hung on coathangers on a movable clothes rail, and items like crockery, bags, hats, shoes etc. are sorted into storage boxes.
• We use a steamer (basically similar to a large kettle with a flexible plastic spout ending in a bar like a vacuum cleaner attachment) to iron out creases and generally freshen up the clothes so that they look attractive.
• Each item of clothing is checked for size labels and the correct "size cube" is attached to its hanger. A price tag is completed and attached using a "pricing gun". Items like crockery and bric-à-brac are priced using sticky lables.
• As items on the shop floor are sold, the sales area is continually "topped up" from the clothes rail and the storage boxes in the back room. It's essential to keep up the flow so that the shop never looks bare and customers will keep on being attracted to come back.

At present we don't have enough volunteers to ensure that there is always at least one person to work in the back room as well as the one sitting at the till in the shop. Most of the time it would be useful to have at least two backroom helpers, so that one can be preparing goods and the other putting them out, as well as giving the person on the till cover for breaks.

If you might be interested in helping, please drop in at 61 Burleigh Street any day Monday-Saturday between 11 am and 5 pm.

Our shops are our only good source of regular income, and by supporting them you would be giving a real boost to our ability to provide local animal welfare services. It's also fun and a wonderful way to meet like-minded people

Lara Croft Way opens Tuesday 11th May, part of Derby inner ring road.

Lara Croft Way opens to traffic on Tuesday 11th May 2010, This new section of Derby Inner Ring Road was named Lara Croft Way after an online poll by Derby City Council. The decision was revealed by Derby City Council on Friday, February 26, 2010.

This section of the inner ring road is 942 foot (287meters) in length. and connects the top of Babington Lane, Green Lane, Normanton Road and Burton Road (via a new roundabout) and then travels though the former streets of Sacheveral Street and Wilmot Street and connects at an exisiting roundabout at Osmaston Road, Leopold Street, Bradshaw Way. Once Mercian Way opens later in the year it will connect with the Lara Croft Way roundabout at the top of Babington Lane.

Lara Croft Way is only open in one direction at the moment so its currently not possible to drive from the Osmaston Road roundabout to the Babington Lane Roundabout. The outbound section of Lara Croft Way  is due to open in two months. Charnwood Street will then become a cul-de-sac.

I was one of the first few to drive along Lara Croft Way on Tuesday morning at 7:10am, It felt strange being able to cut out the bit down Normanton Road and Leopold Street, It was about 3 minutes quicker than going the old route. At busy times it would probably save even more time than that. All we need now is for Mercian Way to open and that will help make it quicker still.

Here is a map showing the exact route of Lara Croft Way in Derby :

View Derby inner ring road - Lara Croft Way and Mercian Way. in a larger map

Mercian Way will be the next section to open up, looking at how its going I would imagine that the section from the top of Babington Lane down to Abbey Street will be the next to open to traffic.

Dereliction of duty?

I wasn't planning to blog about the media criticism of the way we have to prioritise need when deciding which animals we can or can't accept for rehoming, but something that happened yesterday annoyed me so much I felt I had to mention it.

At present our branch funds are too low for us to afford to run our animal clinic, care for injured strays and other animals taken in via the inspectors and help owners with the cost of veterinary treatment at private vets. Paying part of the cost at private vets is the least cost-effective way of getting animals treated, so, sadly, we have had to decide that we can only help low-income owners via our clinic. This has open sessions on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, and, after an animal has been registered at one of these, our service provider will treat him/her outside normal hours in an emergency provided registration is kept up by annual visits to the clinic for booster vaccinations.

Of course, this leaves the insoluble problem of animals whose owners have absolutely no money and haven't been registered. Vets are supposed to have a professional duty to relieve pain and suffering, so, in theory, it should at least be possible for any owner to have their animal put to sleep rather than live on in misery. Veterinary surgeries are businesses (and have to be), so it's not reasonable to expect them to go beyond this at their own expense, because they'd simply go bust, which would help no-one in the long term.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, yesterday morning I had a phone call from a tearful owner whose pet needed to be put to sleep. The veterinary practice concerned wouldn't see her at all unless someone was prepared to put up some money. In the circumstances, as someone who's not being paid by anyone, it makes me very cross to have talk about "dereliction of duty" when the RSPCA, which is after all a charity, tries to stretch funds so that they cover the cases of most need.

Volunteer Meetings: change of date and venue

We've decided to move the monthly volunteer meetings to our shop at 61 Burleigh st. as most people seemed to prefer a more central location.

The regular meetings will now be 7.30-9.30 pm on the third Thursday of each month (try saying that quickly!) They'll be fairly informal, so people can arrive and leave to suit themselves between those times. Please drop in if you're interested in finding more about RSPCA Cambridge and what we do locally.

Parking at the Adam and Eve Street public car park is free after 7 pm. Map below shows the shop location on Burleigh Street and the pedestrian access from Adam and Eve Street.

View RSPCA E61 in a larger map

Fiona has just pointed out that the next meeting, on May 20th, is the day following the training session for potential bookshop volunteers  on 19th May. If you are interested in volunteering at our bookshop (188 Mill Road), please go to the training session in preference to the general volunteer meeting if you can't do both. The general meetings will be a regular feature, so you won't miss out if you have to skip one or two of them.

The June meeting will be combined with the branch AGM and will be at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge on 17th June (same times). Subsequent meetings will be at the shop again.

Flash Forward TV series, FBI building location.

Are you a fan of the TV series Flashforward? I was wondering where that building is located that is used as the FBI building, it seems to be floating on water.
I have found the building, its actually The Department of Water and Power and is located at 111 North Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012-2607.
You may remember episode 15 "Queen Sacrifice" where Marcy and Janis have a fight in the water around this building when they uncover her as a mole in the FBI.

Here is a map location of the building :


View Flash Forward TV Series - FBI Building location. in a larger map

You may also like this nice angled view of the building :
Flash Forward - FBI Building angled view.

If you have not seen Flashforward and are into Sci-fi stuff then try and check it out. The basic plot is..
A mysterious event causes nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future. This tells the story of those trying to uncover what happened, with very unpredicatable results.
The next episode is on Sunday 7:00pm 9 May 2010.




 Hope you find this of interest.
Andy

RSPCA Week 2010

As usual I don't feel we made as much of RSPCA week as we could have done if we'd had more volunteers and hadn't already been maxed out with other things that couldn't be abandoned to make time to organise it properly.

Ideally we need to recruit someone who isn't already doing something else that's "mission-critical" to branch activities who could make it their sole project. Collectors don't just need to be recruited; they need to be contacted with reminders a few weeks beforehand; issued with their tins and badges, then finally thanked and told how much was collected after the event. It just isn't possible for someone to do this effectively on top of other major volunteering commitments. It's also much better for volunteers' morale if the person organising RSPCA week is collecting too, so they don't feel they're being bossed about by someone who's not pulling their weight in the actual work.

Staffordshire Bull Terrier Questionnaire

When the pilot Staffordshire bull terrier adoption/neutering campaign ran last year I put up a questionnaire for owners as part of the publicity activities. 

Results below:
Where did you get your current Staffordshire?

At least a third of dogs had been adopted from welfare organisations, and relatively few seemed to have originated from professional or semi-commercial breeders.

Is your current Staffordshire male or female?

Interestingly there doesn't seem to be any suggestion at all from the response to this question that male dogs might be any more difficult to control than bitches.

Is he/she neutered?

Most of the 21 no's said cost was a barrier (a few had puppies not yet old enough for the operation)





If no, would you consider getting him/her neutered?

Three no's expressed health concerns and desire not to put their dog through unnecessary surgery when he did not exhibit any behaviour problems.






Is your dog microchipped?

Interestingly, much less resistance to this than to neutering. Some of the no's mentioned cost as an issue and some planned to get their puppies chipped at the same time as they were neutered.



Would you consider adopting another Staffordshire?

The four no's included some who expressed concern about the risk of a future breed ban meaning they might adopt a dog only to have him/her put down and some who simply said that no other dog could replace their present one.

This probably wasn't a representative sample as those motivated to respond would be likely to be knowledgeable and concerned about the welfare of dogs, but it does demonstrate that many Staffordshires are living happy and well-adjusted lives in normal pet homes. It does suggest that more low-cost neutering would reduce the proportion of bitches who might have accidental litters and that more low cost microchipping would increase the proportion of dogs who are chipped (of course it's still likely that it would be the responsible owners, not the problem ones, who got their dogs chipped).

The questionnaire's still open for responses if anyone viewing this has a Staffordshire or other bull breed and would like to complete it.