We often get asked what we do as a charity. Our goal is to be the first port of call for pet owners to find information and support as soon as the word cancer is mentioned.
The Animal Cancer Trust (ACT) attempts to address the needs of the pet-owning public and veterinary surgeons by providing information — via the website, social media, e-mail, telephone and post — and responding to your messages as promptly as we can. We also attend as many shows and events as we can to increase awareness of the charity, raise its profile and to raise funds.
The ACT website has many frequently asked questions (FAQs) with paragraph answers to help owners understand their pet's diagnosis. We also have information sheets that summarise these FAQs and answers that are available as pdf files for downloading and printing. We emphasise the importance of early accurate diagnosis and an informed decision-making process that involves all members of the pet's family along with the veterinary practice team.
While we are at shows and other events, we have a variety of activities to encourage people to come and talk to us (Figure 1). We have hand puppets that both children and adults can play with on site. We also stock and sell both hand puppets and Wilberry soft toys made by the Puppet Company (Figure 2). We often have a table for some mindful colouring and run a colouring competition for children at many shows. We also have word search and cross-word puzzles that help us with our aim about cancer education.
Research — what can be done to help our pets with cancer
While the ACT charity is not currently able to carry out clinical studies, we have started to save funds raised specifically for research. We currently have several ideas and, once we have enough funds in reserve to carry out a study, we will apply for ethics approval and seek to recruit cases from veterinary practices through-out the UK. Each study that is considered must be well designed and focused on answering a relevant clinical question about the diagnosis and treatment of a specific type of cancer that will help future cases. With the help of the chief executive, Vicki Adams, who is a veterinary epidemiologist and three of the trustees who are clinical oncologists, we will design studies that are appropriate to address gaps in our knowledge about cancer diagnosis, staging, treatment and prognosis.
What ACT cannot do is to provide financial assistance to owners whose pet needs treatment. We are just too small a charity and do not have the funds available to assist with the costs of diagnosis or treatment. We encourage all pet owners to have a pet insurance policy in place that can help pay for the costs of diagnosis and treatment. We also suggest that owners discuss their financial concerns with their veterinary practice to see if there is an option of a payment plan. In some situations, owners have used crowd funding to seek assistance with the costs of treatment. While the ACT cannot help with this, we can share stories on our social media pages on request.
Fundraising for the Animal Cancer Trust charity
One of the easiest ways to help us raise funds for our work is to sign up to EasyFundraising, AmazonSmile, ChariTable Bookings or Booking.com. These websites are just some of the schemes that you can sign up to that will donate money to a charity of your choice when you shop online. You just need to choose ACT as your choice of charity. JustGiving is another way to raise funds or donate money to ACT. Many of our fundraisers create a JustGiving page for their fundraising campaign and the money goes directly to our account.