180 years of comforting creatures
Charity’s chief superintendent reveals the harrowing and weird stories from his time spent rescuing and caring for all types of animals in need across country
MIKE Flynn has gone undercover to help the fight against badger baiters and was once offered a crocodile for sale in the back of a car.
He’s spent 32 years working for the Scottish SPCA, which today celebrates 180 years of saving animals.
Now at its helm as chief superintendent, he said the charity’s work is more important than ever in helping to protect and rescue everything from cats and dogs to horses and wildlife.
He’s seen some horrific sights over the years, from badly injured dogs used for organised fighting and badger baiting through to hoarders’ homes crammed with dozens of pets.
But he’s also been able to see the many animals whose lives have been saved thanks to the work of the charity that relies on donations from the public.
The Scottish SPCA has come a long way in its 180 years from when it started out primarily helping work animals such as horses in Leith, Edinburgh.
Mike said: “It’s expanded from that to today, where if it lives, breathes, walks, moves, flies in Scotland, we deal with it.”
Over the last decade, the society has cared for 130,000 animals, including 36,333 dogs, 31,548 cats, 10,770 rabbits and 533 horses and donkeys. They’re also involved in education programmes in schools.
Mike remembers one visit to a house where there were 63 caged dogs. He said: “It was abysmal. As soon as we’re aware of something, we’ll go and check it out and do what we can. We do need the public to be our eyes and ears.”
Just under 10,000 creatures went through the charity’s wildlife centre last year from baby birds to badgers, otters, deer and foxes.
The society still mainly cares for dogs and cats – but the numbers of exotic pets being seen, like snakes, lizards and birds, have risen. Mike said: “Going back 20 years, the biggest problem was red-eared terrapins that came on the back of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There were tens of thousands of these poor things. “They were sold when they were the size of a 50 pence and kept in a tank. Grown up, they were the size of a dinner plate and people were just dumping them left right and centre. “Then, with Jurassic Park, the next one was green iguanas people were buying when they were at six or seven inches long for £25.” If the pet shop didn’t tell people how to feed them and give them proper light, they’d absorb their own bones to get calcium and develop metabolic bone disease. Mike was involved in a crocodile case where a man had kept one in a bath in a high rise in Leith, Edinburgh, in 2004.
He said: “A chap was advertising it for sale and we arranged to meet him in a car park in Edinburgh.
“We turned up and had the police alerted and introduced ourselves. He opened the boot of the car and there was this loose five-and-a-half-foot crocodile. It’s classed as a dangerous wild animal.”
Mike and a colleague had to fly to London, pick up another crocodile and take the two on to the crocodile park in Torremolinos, Spain.
Mike has seen many distressing sights. He said organised dog fighting and badger baiting can cause horrific injuries – with dogs having half their faces ripped off. And the illegal puppy farming trade is a big problem.
There’s also been the recent case where a man was going online to find cats, pretending he would care for them but throwing them to his dogs to get their blood lust up. But Mike’s also seen animals brought back to health.
He said: “We’ve always had dog fighting and badger baiting but it’s becoming more prevalent now.
“The one sad thing about the Scottish SPCA is that I don’t think we’ll ever do our job.
“Although Scotland is a fantastic nation of animal lovers, you’re always going to get a percentage of people that think neglecting animals is their right.”