When you're in training they make it sound all positive, that you're helping with animal welfare and stuff, and that is true. What they don't prepare you for is the sheer amount of abuse you get. An example is that I had a woman call up saying that a cockerel (that she hadn't seen) was clearly in distress because it was crowing in the morning in her next door neighbour's garden. When I told her, very politely, that that was natural behaviour for a cockerel and it was a good sign, before I could say anything else, she went on a huge rant about how I should be ashamed of myself for not understanding that this cockerel was in distress, called me a stupid c-word and hung up. I was going to say that she could call her local council about the noise and they could tell us if they saw a welfare concern, but they don't want to hear what you've got to say unless you tell them you're sending an officer out immediately.
Then you have the people that find injured wildlife and they don't know the name of the street they're on, but somehow it's your fault that they don't know and you're struggling to find where they are on Google maps because they're saying things like, 'oh, there's a roundabout and a road with a bus stop on it, and a children's play area'. It's even more awkward when they're in Wales, in an area that has no street names. And of course, we're the incompetent ones because we can't find where they are, it's not their fault that they don't know and can't give you any concrete landmarks to go from.
There are certain questions we need to ask, and a lot of people are awkward and say, 'why do you need to know that?'. Someone I know actually got a call from somebody with an injured bird in their garden, and when she asked for their address he refused to give it, saying she didn't need to know that information. When she asked him how she was supposed to send somebody to collect the bird without his address, he paused for a moment and had a rant before saying, 'forget it' and hanging up.
There's so many different scenarios where people find a way to have a go at you. Now, if this happened every once in a while, it wouldn't bother me, but it happens quite a few times a day, and it just gets so draining when people don't want to hear what you have to say. We can't send officers out to cockerels that crow in a morning, or horses that are lying asleep in a field with other horses watching over them, because we don't have the resources to check on animals that either haven't been seen or appear in good body condition and there isn't a welfare concern. You try and explain politely that there are so few RSPCA officers, and try to help them as much as we can by suggesting any other organisations that might be able to help. But we're the ones that take all the abuse for it, and quite frankly, it's frustrating and draining.
I'm sorry for the mini essay haha, it turned into a bit of a rant.
