A celebration of 200 years of the RSPCA

This year the RSPCA is celebrating it’s 200th Anniversary, that’s 200 years of rescuing and caring for pets and wildlife in need through out the UK, and creating a better world for animals

200 years is a long time but did you know that there has been a branch of the RSPCA in Leicestershire since 1881?  We have been caring for mistreated, abandoned and neglected animals for over 140 years. Today, the Woodside Animal Centre supports the professional animal rescue provided by the RSPCA Inspectorate, and provides veterinary care, rehabilitation and rehoming for cats and dogs throughout Leicestershire, Peterborough & Rutland.

Old RSPCA collection box

Community Help

With the help of our community, we are hoping to be able to focus on our next projects to include upgrading the animal facilities to make life better for our animals.  Many of the dog kennels were built around 20 years ago and are in need of modernisation as the environments that we operate in change around us.

Hot Summer of 2022

You will remember the scorching hot summer we had in 2022, some of our kennel blocks could desperately benefit from air conditioning to ensure that the dogs have a comfortable, controlled temperature environment to keep them cool when the temperatures soar, helping to stop the animals feeling too warm or overly agitated and restless. Good air circulation also helps keep the animals and the people who care for them healthier.

Kennels & Catterys

And we are hoping to combat the constant rising fuel costs and plan to become more energy efficient by installing under floor heating to all of our kennels and cattery, so we can keep our facilities running to their full potential for longer.

Other improvements include merging a few of our Murlands block kennels to provide larger accommodation for large breed dogs as well as nursing mums and her puppies. With greed breeding and puppy farm raids on the increase we see more animals that are pregnant or with very young offspring and we need to be able to accommodate their special needs.

The current design of the pens in our Murlands block means that a few of the kennels face each other across a small corridor. We need to install partitions so that the pens are no longer in eyesight of each other. Many of the dogs that we see can be reactive to other dogs and seeing each other across the corridor creates anxiety, stress and leads to other behavioural problems which would get worse with time. The benefits of these for the animals are helping to keep them calmer and less stressed towards other dogs.