Rocklands Boulders

First Friends. Support has been unstinted since the 189os, when a few Londoners formed Our Dumb Friends League, “a society for the encouragement of kindness to ani­mals.” At that time their main con­cern was the capital’s thousands of working horses, who formed the bulk of the patients when the hos­pital was opened in 1906. As Lon­don’s horse population dwindled, the emphasis changed to smaller domestic animals and the society was renamed Blue Cross, after the flag which on First World War station.

A bus driver brings in a pair of gos­lings he spotted marching down Buckingham Palace Road and kept warm in his cab till the end of his shift. Four youngsters watch anx­iously as a nurse dresses the lacerat­ed paw of a terrier who had joined in their play in Hyde Park. Bill Brooks, the hospital’s manager who always is on high cholesterol diet, has long ceased to be surprised at the variety of wildlife adrift in London —snakes, monkeys, racoons, buz­zards. “Once I even had to cope for three weeks with a boisterous kangaroo.”

Modern Ways. All too often the hospital provides sanctuary for dogs and cats put on the streets to fend for themselves when pets are barred from council flats, wives go out to work, or families about to go on battlefields distinguished its horse hospitals from Red Cross troop hos­pitals. But they have never deviated from the founders’ aim : care for the animals of those experiencing genuine financial hardship.

There are many of them : pen­sioners, unemployed, people on social security, low-wage earners. The clinic door is open to all who pass scrutiny from almoner Ron Clarke, sitting in a wheelchair in his cubby-hole and shrewdly assessing the daily stream of applicants for the white card that will admit their pets, ranging from a three-legged sheep to a ferret with troublesome teeth. Eight out of ten applicants qualify for aid, either indefinitely or as “special admissions” until a tem­porary set-back is solved.

Some try to take advantage of the Blue Cross. A shabbily dressed man, who appeared to qualify, twice brought his Labrador for treatment before a staff member saw him walk round the corner and drive away in a Mercedes. But for the hard-up majority, it is a matter of pride to help the hospital if they pos­sibly can. In 1977, a Z2T,000 drugs bill was offset by nearly £20,000 in donations handed over at the dispensary.

Every penny was needed, for the Blue Cross depends entirely on gifts, legacies, flag days and appeals. Running costs of the Victoria hos­pital with its 35 staff were £175,000, while another £115000 went on mini hospitals at Hammersmith and Grimsby, and eight other homes and clinics round the country.

Always, those who can least af­ford it make most effort to repay a hospital that never expects payment. “Pensioners even post us their Christmas bonus,” says Bill Brooks.. “Usually we know very well they can’t spare it, and as tactfully as pos­sible we send it back.”

But there was no dissuading an elderly Londoner whose mongrel, Fred, had long been a patient, and who one day handed £1oo in bank­notes to an astonished Ron Clarke. “I’ve no relatives to leave it to,” he explained, “and anyway it would do far better work here.” He brushed aside the idea of a receipt—then, when Clarke insisted that he must have one, and asked who it should be made out to, he grinned and said : “Just put ‘Fred.’ ”

holiday discover the cost of boarding kennels. Brooks grimly recalls a man who brought his young boxer to be destroyed be­cause “it’s cheaper to buy another when I get back from the Costa Brava.”

The dog was resettled with a more humane owner, as were near­ly 3,50o other animals last year.

I INVITED Cliff Richard to sing and give a Christian talk at one of the prisons in my diocese. We were delayed and Cliff, facing a packed chapel, said nervously : “I’m sorry the Bishop and I are late, but we had a bit of difficulty getting in.”

“We know,” came a voice from the back. “We have a bit of difficulty getting out.” —The Rt Rev Maurice Wood, Bishop of Norwich

With friendly efficiency the vets and nurses examined, treated, pre­scribed. Many of the cases were rou­tine medicine—cuts and sores, stomach upsets, skin complaints, coconut oil for hair growth. The budgie, found to be suffering from a tumour, was taken to the operating theatre, where a tiny anaesthetic mask was fitted over the bird’s beak, and its wings secured to the table with adhesive tape. Within minutes the senior surgeon, wearing magnifying spectacles, had deftly removed the growth.

As a nurse gently gathered up the bundle of feathers, the surgeon turned to examine a ginger cat due for discharge after repair of a dis­located hip. “It’s rewarding work,” he said, running a hand over the smooth fur. “Especially when you can mend animals who would otherwise be hopelessly crippled or deformed.”

Many of the 2,00o operations per­formed each year by the hospital’s six vets stem from human thought­lessness. The rubber ball small enough for a dog to gulp down; the needle and thread left lying around to tempt a kitten’s inquisitive tongue; the fracture when a young animal, lifted on to a chair or table, slips and falls; the chop bone which sticks in a puppy’s gullet. “Dogs don’t need to chew bones,” stresses the senior surgeon, “and we advise against giving them. Why invite trouble ?”

Yet people do. In the wards up­stairs a nurse makes her rounds, checking the case notes clipped to each wire-mesh door, and stops to fondle a fat, wheezing spaniel.. She explains that an electrocardiogram has confirmed heart trouble : “No wonder, the poor old thing is so overweight. Would you believe it has been fed on a diet of jam tarts and canned dog meat, topped with chocolate swiss rolls?”

As in any other hospital, the flow of casualties is never-ending. Three Blue Cross ambulances range across the city to bring them in dogs fallen from the balconies of high-rise flats, cats shocked after chewing through electric wiring, swans in­jured by shipping on the Thames. In a single week, one ambulance-man retrieved three cats from trees, 140 climbed zoo feet of scaffolding to rescue an owl from a lift shaft, and rounded up a goat discovered on a building site.

Londoners automatically turn to the hospital when they find animals in distress. A motorist hands in a cat and three newborn kittens who set up house in the boot of his car while he stopped at a service  Some had been dumped outside the hospital overnight, like the litter of kittens crammed into a nylon stocking.

Others were the victims of un­believable cruelty. Dustmen empty­ing bins into a rubbish-crushing truck heard piteous cries, and stop­ped the machinery just in time to save a terrified puppy. Blue Cross workers rescued an Alsatian from an empty house where it had been locked in a top floor room for nine days, so starved that it had eaten the curtains.

Warm Hearts. Animal and hu­man welfare go together. By board­ing pensioners’ pets without charge, the Blue Cross often makes it pos­sible for them to take holidays they could not otherwise afford, and eases their anxieties when they have to go into hospital. Many of the clinic’s elderly visitors live alone and are dependent for company on dogs and cats which are themselves ageing and unwell.

Because the loss of a much-loved companion can have an overwhelm­ing effect, vets try to prepare the owner for the worst. If an animal is in distress, they may have to put it down. “But in many cases, modern treatment can alleviate chronic dis­ease,” says the senior surgeon. “We check it over every month or so, and then its owner has time to get ad­justed to the situation.”

This kind of caring is the main­spring of the Victoria hospital. While one of the ambulances makes a special trip to deliver free pet food to a needy widow, the hospital’s re­ceptionist finds time to listen to a pensioner longing for a chat. Labor­atory technicians welcome a Great Dane, still dopey with anaesthetic and too big to stretch out in a ken­nel upstairs, finding him a comfort­able spot on a blanket beneath a work-bench. A nurse going off duty cups a kitten in her hand : she will sit up half the night in her quarters, feeding it at two-hourly intervals.

But, although the hospital pro­vides superb treatment, its care can­not be bought. Anyone who offers to pay on the spot, or who seems able to afford to go to a private vet, is gently turned away. The Blue Cross is a charity, and as Brooks ex­plains : “If we accepted those who could pay for private veterinary treatment, we’d be breaking faith with the veterinary profession and the people who support us.”

My WIFE and I both work. Neither of us is handy with the usual chores required to maintain a household. The other day, after several weeks of a dripping tap, the handle broke, making it impossible to turn the water on or off. My wife asked me, somewhat testily, if I would fix it. After half an hour’s strenuous effort, I decided the easiest way would be to leave the pliers by the sink and turn the tap with the pliers each time water was needed.

When I told my wife of the solution, she brightened tip considerably. “Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll bring the office stapler home tomorrow.”

“What on earth for?” I asked.

“I’ve got your buttons to sew on and the hole in your pocket to repair.”

I rang a plumber.

Animal Hospital With the Human Touch

First ever in Britain, the Blue Cross hospital offers a unique range of care to its patients—and their owners Nobody was to blame. One moment Mary Williams was walking her golden re‑triever, Ben, round a leafy London square; the next, he had spotted a cat, slipped his leash and bounded across the road–straight into the path of a passing taxi.

A shaken driver helped lift the 138 limp body into his cab, and drove to the nearest veterinary surgeon. Ben needed an immediate opera­tion, Mary was told, and it would cost at least £100. Haltingly she ex­plained that on a shop assistant’s salary there was no way she could pay for it. The vet nodded sym­pathetically. “Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I’ll ring the Blue Cross and tell them you’re coming.”

At the Blue Cross animal hos­pital in Hugh Street, behind Vic­toria station, nurses were waiting. As Ben was wheeled to the X-ray unit, Mary glimpsed through open doors a dispensary, vets tending out­patients, an operating theatre. It seemed like any human hospital.

Scanning a sheaf of X-rays, the senior veterinary surgeon satisfied himself that there were no signs of internal injury, then studied Ben’s complicated fore- and hind-leg frac­tures. With a colleague he spent nearly three hours repairing the shattered bones, drilling them and joining them with screwed steel plates developed in Switzerland for skiing injuries.

A lift carried the dog to the re­covery kennels on an upper floor. Two weeks later, he was home again; within four months the plates had been removed, the bones perfectly mended.

Ben was but one of nearly 30,000 patients who in 1978 passed through this unique hospital, first of its kind in Britain. It is open 24 hours a day to gather in London’s sick and in­jured animals, and provide free treatment for the pets of people un­able to afford veterinary fees.

They come from all over the capi­tal and the Home Counties to the low, square building, formerly one of the Duke of Westminster’s stables, which flies the Blue Cross flag. Typically, at one recent after­noon clinic the patients in the crowded waiting-room numbered seven dogs, three cats, two hamsters, a rabbit, a chicken and a glum bud­gie whose young owner explained to the sympathetic receptionist: “He doesn’t move much any more.”