Episode 3 Animal Frontline

-Good afternoon, RSPCA Control Centre.

-Is the cat still breathing?

-'No.'

You don't think it's breathing.

Every 30 seconds,

someone calls the RSPCA about an animal that needs help.

I'll pass this information through to the officer.

From neglected pets to injured wildlife...

..where a trained inspector's every shift is a challenge.

It's disgusting.

We can't leave this situation as it is.

Now they tell us what it's really like

on the animal frontline.

No day really is the same.

We have pigs!

It never ceases to amaze me.

I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it.

What makes a good RSPCA inspector?

Nerves of steel, a stomach of iron and a sense of humour.

Today, the cat with expensive tastes.

The owner is in fact right. The cat swallowed a necklace.

A helping hand for the rabbits left home alone.

An inspector Anthony Joynes gets to set a buzzard free.

It just looked like a bird that was ready to go back into the wild.

It was fantastic, really.

Better luck second time round.

Last year, the RSPCA received an incredible 130,000 calls about abandoned animals.

It's a problem inspectors like Emma Ellis see everyday.

We often get called to abandonments

where people have been either been evicted, left, moved away.

Left animals inside, left animals outside.

It's a very common occurrence for us as RSPCA inspectors to deal

with those situations.

This latest call is to an empty house in Bradford

where the occupant has moved out, leaving two dogs and a cat.

-Hi!

-Emma is meeting colleague Nicki Cheatham who's been

investigating the complaint.

So what's going on?

We've managed to get some access round the back

of the house to see inside and the conditions are really not good the dogs are living in.

We've had a vet to come out and have a look

and he's really quite concerned about them.

My colleague had gone down there in the morning with the vet to try

and establish what the conditions were like and whether the vet

would say those dogs needed to come out of there, which the vet did.

DOG BARKS

Dogs love company, need attention and are pack animals,

so to leave a dog in those conditions without attending

to them is just unbelievable.

It's generally pretty disgusting.

I think they'll be a lot happier when they're out of that house.

Then the police were contacted,

the landlord was contacted so we could gain access to the property

to remove the dogs from the conditions they were being kept in.

As soon as the door was opened to the house,

the smell was unbelievable, absolutely horrendous.

Oh, my God!

It hit you immediately.

You ARE thin, aren't you?

The dogs came flying out of the door.

They were literally so relieved to be able to get out of there.

Faeces everywhere, they're walking around in it, there's urine,

it's wet.

It's just absolutely disgusting in there, really, really filthy.

Come on then.

They would have been stressed. They would have been hungry, thirsty.

You were keen to come out of there.

All the basic things she would expect in order to do,

this owner had completely failed to do with his dogs.

In you go, in you go.

There's no food, no water at all in that room, not even an empty bowl.

There's a packet of washing powder all over the floor which the

dogs could have ingested.

It's absolutely digesting. The dogs are covered in their own faeces.

Not good at all.

The conditions are so bad Emma and Nicki need to take

photos as evidence in case the owner is later prosecuted.

I have absolutely no idea what was going on in this property.

It just shows you - until you get in, you just don't know.

Yeah, exactly.

Amongst the mess, it's clear there's a cat living here too.

They just need to find it.

The litter tray is full to the point that the cat has started going

outside the litter tray, which is totally unacceptable.

Tins everywhere, just horrible.

I will never, ever understand how somebody can do that.

To leave them and not even

think about returning to check they're OK.

We certainly

won't allow that situation to continue

where animals are kept in those conditions.

Oh, hello, gorgeous.

The cat is located and put in a basket

so it can be taken away.

Yeah, he's massive!

Let's get this cat in the van.

The animals are all out safely

And Nicki's determined they won't be going back.

He won't get these animals back.

He's shown by the conditions in the house he's not

capable of looking after them, so no is the answer.

Not if I can help it.

But the priority now is to get the animals checked over

by a vet.

Come on then, gorgeous, let's go.

When they get there, it's clear

they're very dehydrated.

They were taken to the vets

and both were absolutely dying of thirst...

..to the point that you couldn't give them enough water.

They just drank and drank and drank and drank

which shows how long they'd been without it.

That's ridiculous, isn't it?

All the animals were examined and after a good feed

and a bath were fine.

Both dogs and the cat were later re-homed.

But the owner has yet to be found.

Unfortunately there's been no contact from the owner.

So we will pursue someone till we find them

so they CAN be disqualified and not do this again to another animal.

The RSPCA's Manchester Animal Hospital treats

27,000 pets every year.

And they see some very unusual cases.

Today an expensive necklace has gone missing.

And the prime suspect is behind bars.

The owner left a necklace on a table.

And put some food next to that.

They left the room, came back

to find the necklace had gone.

The owner of five-year-old Oliver is convinced her pet has turned

cat burglar and has eaten the jewellery.

But David Yates has his doubts.

Cats are quite discriminate eaters. They don't eat silly things usually.

A playful puppy might pick up an object

that belongs to an owner and swallow that,

but it would be unusual for a cat to suddenly decide

to take and eat the necklace in preference to the food.

As a precaution, David has decided to X-ray Oliver.

Whenever owners come in and say, "The cat's eaten something strange,"

we always take that with a pinch of salt,

cos they're generally quite selective about what they take in.

But the X-ray has thrown up a bit of a surprise.

This is a side-on view of the cat.

This is the chest area and this is the abdomen.

What we have here is the stomach

with a bunched-up necklace.

The owner is in fact right. The cat has swallowed a necklace.

This is the first time I've ever seen such a high-value item

swallowed by a cat.

The cat with expensive tastes

is now in a bit of bother.

What's cause for concern here is the fact that we got a foreign body,

an unusual foreign body.

It may open out.

We need to monitor the cat until we're certain it's past out through the back end.

David is hoping the necklace can be retrieved

without the need to for surgery...

Hiya. You OK?

..And puts vet nurse Sarah on the case.

We had a treasure hunt in his letter tray

to try and find...

We tried but we can't find anything. He's not passed

at all, whatsoever, yet.

But he is eating so hopefully it will be soon.

There's nothing at all there in his litter tray.

I'll just have a quick feel of his tummy,

make sure he's not in any discomfort.

All right, mate.

He looks like he likes his food as well, doesn't he?

This was quite a rotund cat.

It was difficult to feel the tummy.

There wasn't a great deal of obvious pain

so we were fairly optimistic on that front.

They decide to play the waiting game in the hope nature takes its course.

We've got time on our hands. I'll ask you to

keep a close eye on his litter tray over the next 24 hours.

Feed him little and often?

Yeah, and pay particular attention to the litter tray.

All right?

Thankfully I didn't have the task of monitoring the cat's litter tray.

I know the necklace has a long pendant on it

and is made of opals and diamonds. I think she said it had three opals on it.

Apparently the owner has been saving up for it all year.

So she's quite upset really.

Sarah must now keep watch and hope Oliver makes a move.

Two days later, though,

and there's been no jewels in Oliver's litter tray,

so the only option is surgery.

Just going to get his anaesthetic into his back leg.

For an overweight cat,

this is a dangerous procedure.

Because we're opening up his bowel, there is a risk with this kind

of surgery.

There's a risk the bowel may be damaged and the foreign body we have in there

and also a risk after surgery

that when we stitch his gut together it may not heal very well.

We've prepped up his abdomen.

We'll open up his tummy and then use a little hook

to try and scoop the necklace out.

We'll do an incision into the tummy

and we're trying to locate the stomach itself.

It will be quite a long incision,

just so we can lift the stomach up and have a good poke around.

The stomach could probably hold a couple of golf balls in size

inside the cat's abdomen.

It's fairly easy to locate.

I have the stomach in my left hand now.

The jewelled necklace is within touching distance.

David is nearly there.

Just a gentle, small incision if we can.

I'm touching against something firm and metallic.

The tricky part, which you always breathe a sight of relief

when you do locate the foreign bodies

is when you've found it inside the opening of the stomach

and been able to free it without damaging

any of the guts or vital tissues

inside the abdomen.

Keep going with that, just gently.

At last, the jewellery is freed from Oliver's stomach.

That's brilliant. Great stuff.

There was hair and undigested food

and the necklace looked a bit gruesome.

So we can see that's a fairly small incision I've done there.

We've closed it with five sutures.

That should heal fairly rapidly.

The procedure has gone to plan

and this precious pet, along with the precious necklace,

should soon be back with their grateful owner.

I'll just clean this up a bit,

make it more presentable and for the owner.

I think the owners were pleased primarily for the outcome with the cat,

and obviously it was a joy to retrieve the necklace

in a fairly unblemished state.

A few weeks later,

the surgery's success is celebrated at Oliver's home.

You worried us quite a bit, didn't you?

Owner Francine is still trying to work out how Oliver managed

to complete his jewellery snatch in the first place.

That's exactly how it was and come back, necklace gone!

How on earth he managed to eat THAT,

I have no idea.

And now she'll keep a much closer eye on the necklace.

Oliver, you're not getting your hands on that.

Having a pet is a year-round commitment.

When people go on holiday,

finding someone to look after their animals

should be as important as packing their parcels.

You have to make sure that if you leave your animal with anybody

when you go away, it has to be somebody knowledgeable.

Give them the information of the local vet.

If something happens, take it to the vet.

But all too often the RSPCA is called when the person

left in charge is ill-prepared.

In Birmingham, inspector Herchy Boal

is following up this latest call.

Obviously the big concern is that one's died.

I'm thinking, "Oh, God, is that because the owner's not been there for ages?

"What's the condition of the other one?"

The thing about rabbits are they have to have food all the time.

Herchy's first job is to find out if the rabbits' owner

is at home and if not,

who is looking after them?

When I got there and knocked on the door, nobody was in.

Nobody answered initially.

I went into the rear garden. The gate was open.

There were two rabbit hutches, one of top of the other.

There's three rabbits here.

I wonder where the dead one is, then.

There were no dead rabbits.

There was a space next to it which was empty.

That's odd, cos that grass looks quite fresh.

There may or may not have been a rabbit in that space,

but certainly we didn't find any dead rabbits.

Even though the complaint was wrong,

Herchy has other concerns.

The large rabbit in the bottom hutch looks desperately ill.

One of the rabbits

that was the largest had a really bad

kind of weepy eye.

It was quite inflamed and looked very sore.

It couldn't open that eye at all,

so that was an initial concern.

This rabbit's got quite bad eyes.

They're very sore.

I suspected at the time the rabbit had something called myxomatosis

which can kill a rabbit

and they do need treatment very quickly.

Myxomatosis is highly contagious.

And the conditions these rabbits are being kept in

increases the risk of it spreading.

They have no food at all, that's not good.

The bedding material in there was wet and dirty.

Oh, dear.

It certainly appeared

like they hadn't been attended to or cleaned out for a while.

It looks like the rabbits have been abandoned.

But then Herchy spots some movement in an upstairs window.

Hello!

Someone IS home after all.

I've woken him up. I feel bad.

He'd been asleep, having worked nights.

He then explained that these rabbits

belonged to his friend who'd gone abroad.

I appreciate you're having to look after them

for your friend and it was an emergency...

I didn't do...

He wasn't interested in rabbits and didn't know a lot about them

or what to do.

It's really important, especially as you're looking after them

at least another week,

you need to get some more of this. Yeah?

I was trying to explain to him,

and I gave the rabbit some grass, that it was hungry.

See, he's hungry, isn't he?

And rabbits bodies work in that they have to eat little and often

and quite continuously.

It should never be empty of this food.

Because rabbits will eat a small amount

often, all through the day.

If they have a long period

where they don't have any food,

that can cause problems with their gut.

All I'm saying is make sure they always have this food in a bowl

and they always have water.

I think he thought he could put food in like you might feed a dog.

Put some food down, leave it all day and then feed it 24 hours later

or maybe later that evening.

They eat that or just to...?

They will eat a bit of it but it's for bedding.

More importantly, they needed cleaning out,

because they really stank.

Look how dirty this is.

You haven't cleaned them, have you?

For one week, nobody clean this.

No.

With the crash course in rabbit care over,

Herchy turns her attention to the animal she suspects has myxomatosis.

The only concern I've got - see that one's eyes?

Both his eyes are completely closed.

Right? And this one's

got a little bit of discharge.

The eye's a bit weepy.

The eyes shouldn't be completely closed,

that needs to go to the vet.

Herchy decides to give the man a chance to clean out the animals,

get them some food and contact the owner to try

and arrange taking the ill rabbit to the vet.

I gave him a 24-hour window to do that

and I decided to return the next day.

The following day, Herchy's back to see if the rabbit owner's

friend has taken her advice.

See what he's done.

He's cleaned them out, that's a lot better.

He's even given it a bowl

and they have some straw and some food, all of them.

That one's having a good old drink.

I was really pleasantly surprised

when I went there the next day and he's done everything I asked him to,

in regard to cleaning out the rabbit.

He'd even bought another bag of food.

Very pleased with this.

Done a great, good job.

Thank you for doing that, excellent.

It's a lot better now, isn't it?

But Herchy is still worried the white rabbit hasn't been to the vet.

And it seems to have gone downhill overnight.

Yes, I'd managed to

sort out the living conditions of the other two rabbits.

They'd got food and water

and I'd badgered him enough to make him understand

that he needed to keep on top of the cleaning.

But what was quite sad for me was I knew that

the end for the white rabbit wouldn't be a good one.

The friend has contacted the rabbits' owner abroad.

There we are, he's all right. Look at that.

He's given permission for Herchy to take the rabbit

to see if it does have myxomatosis.

It doesn't take long for the vet to confirm

Herchy's worst fears.

-The thing with the sort of...

-Swelling.

Swollen eyes,

hot, lethargic.

It's very much like myxomatosis.

There is no treatment we can offer.

It's really sad.

But this is kind of...

..the horrible part of the job.

The only bit you can salvage from something

as upsetting and depressing as a case like that

is, OK, it might not have been a very nice end,

and the rabbit was put to sleep,

but at least it's not in a hutch,

living in dirty conditions

with no food and water and suffering.

That's the only way you can deal with something

as upsetting as that.

Thanks to Herchy's help,

the other two rabbits

were prevented from catching the disease.

And she's confident the owner won't leave them in that position again.

I think it was a situation

where there was genuinely a man living at the property who loved rabbits

and looked after them well,

but he'd given temporary custody of them cos he'd gone abroad

to somebody else.

There's another lesson there too in that, if you're going away,

you need to leave your animals

with somebody who will do what's necessary,

that will be interested and know how to look after them.

In Cheshire, it's an exciting day for inspector Anthony Joynes.

He's on his way to pick up and release a buzzard

back into the wild,

a job all RSPCA inspectors look forward to.

What had happened with the buzzard was

a fisherman had been fishing on the Shropshire Union Canal.

He'd seen the buzzard and it was all ruffled up.

When you see a bird that's quite ruffled in that way,

it usually demonstrates it's not very well.

He said it just looked really dishevelled, really skinny,

couldn't fly.

He picked it up, to his credit,

cos I wouldn't advise people to approach a buzzard,

cos they can be quite dangerous, and he took it home.

He's put it in his shower,

which is quite funny.

Put it in his shower and then has basically

kept it warm and fed it until I could arrive.

After the fisherman picked it up and then called the RSPCA,

Anthony took the bird to the local wildlife centre.

But it wasn't in good shape.

This fisherman had done brilliantly well,

cos I think, personally,

just with my experience,

the bird would have been dead

another day or two cos it was really weak.

Sounds a bit dramatic but he saved its life, basically.

Now Anthony is back to pick up the bird,

ready for its release back into the wild.

It's basically just needed 2½ weeks of R&R, really.

Some food and a bit of rest.

But wildlife assistant Richard

has got to catch it first.

It is difficult to catch them because

these birds are wild.

To try and catch any wild animal,

they're not going to want you to do it.

They think they're the prey and you're the predator, basically.

So you just have to do it as quickly and quietly

as possible

and to stop that animal from being stressed out.

I thought he was playing a joke,

I thought it was a different bird.

It looked completely different.

It was amazing to see the difference.

It looked like a bird ready to go back into the wild.

It was fantastic, really.

There he is.

Then it's basically get it into a dark, confined box where it will relax,

for transportation.

We just transport it

as quickly as possible

back to where we're going to release it.

We'll try and get that exactly right,

to give the bird the best possible chance.

To help him, Anthony's arranged to meet Billy,

the fisherman who first rescued the bird.

Got this buzzard we've just picked up from the wildlife centre.

I just want you to show us

-where you found it so we can release it back to the same area.

-OK.

-Is that all right?

-No problem.

He was really interested and wanted to know it would do well.

It's put on loads of weight.

What we initially thought was wrong with it was it was just skinny, wasn't it?

I had it overnight, fed it some steak,

and the next morning, to be honest,

it was like a different bird, but obviously it needs that bulk

before we release it, so

I think another day or so, it wouldn't have...

It would have become completely waterlogged, wouldn't it?

Feel the difference.

You can feel him now, can't you?

He's put on some beef, hasn't he,

so there we go.

Rescuing a bird of prey, personally for me,

birds of prey, I have a massive interest in them.

-So this is pretty much the area?

-Yeah.

You don't see them very often, so when you do,

it's quite a big deal

and you get quite excited about it.

I don't want him to blast out.

This job can make you question human nature.

Day in, day out, week in, week out,

situations like that,

where someone's gone out their way...

He didn't have to do any of what he did.

Looks like a different bird, doesn't it?

We're not having you on. It IS the same bird.

He looks amazing, doesn't he?

It does instil your faith in human nature

a little bit, yeah.

Better luck second time round.

Nothing better than that.

He'll wait now, I think.

He'll probably wait, get his bearings,

maybe have a fly round

and then he'll know where he's at.

Amazing. Good, really good.

I feel like I've done something now.

All we can do is get him back to this point and give him a second chance.

He wouldn't have survived if you wouldn't have picked him up.

That one little episode,

it just make sit all worth while when you've had, say,

two weeks of dealing with some of the worst people you can come across,

then you get to go and do something like that.

It's just absolutely fantastic.

I just want him to fly around, I want to see him.

There he goes.

He's flying well, isn't he?

I'd love to see him now soar back over.

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