Bristol city’s longest standing and largest local animal charity. The team has been caring for Bristol’s animals on Albert road and in the community for a long time. And it all started with one lost puppy…
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00:00Bristol Animal Rescue Centre, which is just behind me now, is the main local
00:04rescue centre in the city of Bristol and they take on a plethora of animals from
00:09rabbits to cats, from guinea pigs to dogs. We help heal and home hundreds up to
00:16thousands of animals per year through our outreach programmes where we support
00:20people in the community as well as taking in animals from people that maybe
00:24won't be able to look after them anymore, straying animals, ill and injured animals
00:28and those through the RSPCA inspectorate. And we cater for dogs, cats, rabbits,
00:33ferrets and all small furries, also including birds. We have our on-site
00:38veterinary clinic which doesn't run a public service but we do a lot of sort
00:42of neutering campaigns. We go out into the community in Lawrence Weston and
00:46Noel West every single week, supporting people with their veterinary care and
00:51ongoing veterinary care, also supporting with like pet food to assist people.
00:57But the Bristol Animal Rescue Centre has a team of specialists on call to
01:02help make them better. Let's chat to one of these specialists to find out more.
01:07Well when I come in, first thing I feed all the cats, I clean up their litter
01:12trays. I say cats, it is mostly just cats in clinic, come on then! But we have all
01:17other animals as well, any animal we have in I immediately feed clean and then
01:25general cleaning day-to-day, making sure all the washing is done and then
01:29socialization really, just making sure they are happy. There has been like
01:35increase in a lot of the animals that we're cutting in are ill or injured and
01:40you can often you know feel very sorry for somebody who, you know, what can I do?
01:44And you know it's they don't necessarily need to be reported to the RSPCA. In a
01:49lot of cases they're really trying, they just don't know what the answer is. So we
01:53see a lot of animals come in that need kind of either prompt veterinary care or
01:57care maybe for just an eye infection or something. So Molly for example, she's
02:03clearly very confident but she came in with cat flu so she was treated for that
02:09whereas lots of them they come in quite scared, they've never really trusted
02:13people. So you build it up with them and you start by just walking in the room
02:18and talking and then you put your hand in and you let them smell, just until
02:23they trust you enough that you can be their friend. I never needed to worry
02:27about that with her. What could be quite a simple thing but they've left it a
02:31little too late. So in some cases their only option is to give up the animal
02:36because they just simply can't afford it, which is where we're coming in with, you
02:39know, we're expanding our community work over the next couple of years. We've
02:43recently taken on a pet community support coordinator who's going out
02:47looking at what extra can we do in the community. It's a really, you know, it's
02:51one of our real strategic points for the next couple of years is looking at our
02:54community work and what more can we do to help people, pets and Bristol.