Celebrating 150 years of the RSPCA
For three decades, vet nurse Debbie has helped all creatures, great and small!
Like many of us, Debbie Olds can’t help bringing her work home, but it usually has four legs and a wagging tail!
The 61-year-old has spent more than 30 years helping animals get back on their feet at the Broken Hill RSPCA, starting as a receptionist in 1990 before training to become a veterinary nurse in 2000.
Now head nurse at the branch, Debbie still loves walking through the doors to the clinic every day.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” she says. “When you see people walking out with a pet, you can see how happy they are to be with them – it’s wonderful!”
Debbie’s love for creatures great and small extends beyond her hours in the clinic. When she goes home, she spends her evenings tending to a menagerie of animals, which includes two cats, three horses, seven dogs (including six rescue terriers) and a brood of 23 hens that roam around her 24-hectare allotment.
“If I have a stressful day I go home and I sit down and pat the dogs,” she says. “I feel better straight away. It’s a lovely thing, the connection between people and animals.”
And she still finds room in her home – and her heart – for more furry friends.
“Over the years if there’s been an animal that needed extra special care I’ve taken them home,” Debbie chuckles, grateful her husband Barry, 64, is so understanding.
“Once they get to our place, they often don’t go back!”
From travelling to the outback to treat working dogs and livestock at the back of a rural pub to once capturing and rehabilitating an injured eagle, Debbie is grateful for the joy her career still gives her.
“It’s quite exciting that the RSPCA has been around for 150 years. We are so important because people need our assistance and guidance,” she says.
“I’m happy to retire, but I’ll still be working with animals
– I could never give it up.”
‘Once they get to our place, they often don’t go back’