Rolfe
Adult human female
Not the RSPCA, please. Princesspoppy, you live in the same county as me by the way. I work in the shadow of the RSPCA HQ.
They're nothing like PETA and so on, of course not. But they have a very strange structure. Much of their money comes from legacies (even from Scotland, where they publicise themselves but do no work, as their role there is covered by the SSPCA who are entirely separate). This money is considered to be for central funds. There is lots of it. Their HQ building is huge and lavish and luxurious, makes my place in its shadow look like a sparsely-appointed garage.
HQ funds the inspectors whose job is to get prosecutions. Sometimes they get on to real cruelty and do a great job and some bastard goes to jail. But lots of time they simply get on to people with no money and fewer brains who don't really realise their animal ought to be seen by a vet. In fact, sometimes the victims are quite capable people - I know one solicitor who hadn't realised that his undersized spaniel gundog was more than just small for her age, but they broke into his kennel when he was out and seized the dog and charged him with starving her. (She in fact had a chronic heart complaint, which even his vet hadn't noticed when he'd given her her booster vaccine a month earlier!) Often old people with an ailing pet seek help for the pet when things have gone a bit far, and instead of getting the help the animal is seized and often killed, and the owner is prosecuted. Because it's great publicity for the RSPCA to trumpet how many successful prosecutions they've mounted. They spend thousands on prosecuting an owner, when spending a couple of hundred on offering the help the owner needed would have saved all that. But no, it's the owner's responsibility to pay for veterinary care, we can only afford a small contribution to help at the beginning then if longer treatment is needed then it's up to the owner. And then the RSPCA is watching, and if the owner stops the treatment, they pounce.
Sorry, I'm not against them in principle, I do prosecutions for them if I agree they have a good case. It's just that they are too good at pursuing not-good cases, and even what seem to be malicious cases, as well.
All this time, while the HQ is shelling out tens of thousands in legal costs, the individual branches who are financially "self-sufficient" (that is they raise all their own funds and get no share of the legacies) are strapped for cash to do real rescue and rehabilitation work.
I just wouldn't give them any money. Unless it's to a local branch, and you can see what they're doing with it.
The PDSA can do with support too by the way. And the CPL.
Rolfe.
