My Day

6.45am: My alarm goes off and my cat Maverick promptly demands his breakfast and a cuddle before I head off to work. He is an RSPCA rescue cat and acts as my daily reminder of the RSPCA’s admirable work which makes me proud to be part of the organisation.

8.45am: After a quick stop at the office canteen to grab a coffee, I pore over today’s national newspapers to spot any coverage, potential opportunities or stories which may get our phones ringing as the day progresses.

9.30am: My week is split between proactively working on campaigns or reactively taking calls from journalists, although it’s not always as clear cut as that! Today, I am taking calls and my first one is about urban foxes. Ever since the tragic attacks on the twin girls in East London the phones here at the press office, and also the phones of our cruelty and advice line, have been ringing off the hook asking for our views on foxes. In addition, many requests have been coming in asking for statistics on how common such incidents are, and we have to explain that we don't hold figures for animal attacks on people.

11.00am: I log onto various social media sites including Twitter and Facebook to check what people are saying about the RSPCA today. I run my own Twitter account, @JudeAtRSPCA, and the RSPCA also has a popular Facebook page. It’s important for me to know what is being said on these sites and to have an awareness of what is going on in the outside world. I also find Twitter immensely useful for putting out appeals for information, even though some of the accompanying images can be quite graphic.

12.00 noon: I speak to an RSPCA inspector who has just picked up an emaciated abandoned dog. The figures for abandoned dogs are astonishingly high: between January and April this year we took more than 3,500 calls from members of the public with concerns about an abandoned dog. We have been working closely with the Government to reform the current legislation on dangerous dogs and are calling for the reintroduction of a dog licence to tackle the range of dog welfare problems we currently face.

1.30pm: As the weather is hotting up, we decide to send out a press release highlighting the dangers of leaving your dog in a car during the warm weather. Although this is something the RSPCA has been vocal about for many years, every summer we are still inundated with hundreds of phone calls about dogs left in hot vehicles and tragedies still occur.

2.00pm: The manager of our Mallydams wildlife centre near Hastings calls me to confirm my visit next week. I’m repeatedly fascinated by the wide variety of work the RSPCA undertakes so I’m looking forward to finding out more about what happens at one of our four wildlife hospitals and meeting its dedicated staff.

3.00pm: The RSPCA campaigns team are currently working on a launch for later on in the year. I meet with the department to see how we can work hand-in-hand on its development and identify target media and audiences.

5.00pm: The press office operates an out-of-hours service for evenings and weekends and this is my week on-call. I take my trusty pager, mobile and a pile of information and contact details home with me and wait for the calls to start coming in. Journalists can contact a member of the RSPCA press team from anywhere in the world around the clock which I find both daunting and extremely interesting. With so much going on, my job here is certainly never dull!