RSPCA visit

Our first industry visit has been to RSPCA Southridge Animal Centre, which is an adoption centre just outside of London. It's set on about 5 acres and caters for dogs, cats, livestock, small pocket pets and birds. Its was a great tour - we expected to be about an hour with our guide but it ended up being 2.5 hours :) We all had so many questions as there are many points of difference between the UK and Australia regarding council laws and the adoption process. Our tour guide Kirsty was great - she loves her job and was happy to answer all our questions.
As this is an adoption centre and not a council pound - they receive approx 600 dogs a year and would only about 10 of these would be considered not suitable for rehoming. Similar numbers for cats - with only about 14 fails. They even rehome FIV positive cats to indoors-only homes. Once an animal is reserved by a family for adoption, a home visit is organised to check fences, cages etc before the family can collect the pet.
The grounds were really clean and well looked after. The centre has a fundraising charity which help raise appox 55,000 BP per year to help pay costs to help support their no destruction policy.
Firsts for today included seeing gerbils, hamsters and dugus - all cute little guys that make great pets!



Cute little hamster in his tunnel



This little guy was adorable - wanted to tuck him in my case.

A dugus - these little guys chew their way through anything and everything.
 

Following our visit to the RSPCA we explored Hatfield where we are staying for 2 nights. Its a very quaint historical town and Hatfield House, which is part of the royal households, sits at the top of the town. Unfortunately it's not open to the public until Wednesday but we will go and explore its church tomorrow.
We went to look at a few of the very old pubs as Charles Dickens used to frequent them. They are so quaint and the locals are very friendly. I love the names of these pubs!

The 8 Bells - Charles Dickens' local pub when he performed at Hatfield House.

We had tea at the Red Lion - steak and ale pie was awesome.
Next on the agenda is our visit to the Royal Veterinary College - Hawkshead Campus. This is the most prestigious industry visit that we will be doing, so its BHI uniforms tomorrow.