Fermin writes.
As many of you know, the Scooby shelter grew organically from doing the best we could with limited resources and still
making tangible improvements for our rescued animals, nursing them back from the brink to overcome sickness and
adversity to become dogs and cats well enough to go to loving adoption families. Yes we had tragedies but our small team
shared the work and helped the animals to a better life. I still remember a volunteer vet from Scotland, in the twilight of his
career, telling me to welcome volunteer vets but crucially to make sure they had solid experience because in a ‘field’
medical setting, she said we’d need people who were skilled to work with what’s available, rather than the early career medical professionals who would not yet be ready to work in a situation needing ingenuity and technical resourcefulness. I still remember this vet stitching by candlelight when we were blighted with power cuts.
Of course we have worked to develop the shelter and its hospital facilities. We have evolved to become way more sophisticated. Gone are the days when I’d jump in my car, drive over 1000km to rescue theIrish greyhounds from Barcelona track, return to the shelter with them in time for Karl the vet to do the castrations on his next visit. Everyone knows my Renault Laguna of those days should have been preserved in a museum, it was so rescue mission scarred and beaten up. We have a couple of vehicles, skilled vets and equipment we could only have dreamt of many years ago.
It is a new world for our animals. But it has come at a cost. The cost is authority regulation. A lot of administrative red-tape which may well be necessary but it zaps our resources and time. Now when I look at the staff budgets, both in terms of time and Euros, I need to factor in a significant slice for office systems, processes, record-keeping, local authority compliance and petrol between our regional official vets for paperwork submissions. It is a back-office overhead without which we could not do our practical, rescue and veterinary work. But one cannot happen without the other. The shelter’s office output is an important feature of our everyday and our most challenging life-saving and homing missions. Certainly the administration has to be kept as lean as possible but it is a fact of life if we are to continue unimpeded with our activities.
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