What is like working in an animal shelter? We visited the RSPCA Stubbington Ark to find out

Reporter Sophie Lewis find out what it's like to work at an animal shelter and made some friends along the way

Transcript

00:00 Hi, I'm Sophie Lewis and I work for the Portsmouth News. Today we're heading down to Stubbington

00:09 Arc to see what it's like behind the scenes, just to kind of get an insight about what

00:14 the team does, the amount of volunteers and what their roles are, the amount of animals,

00:21 just the general site, just kind of have a little tour and see what it's like to work

00:26 at RSPCA Rescue Centre. I'm really, really excited to be heading down there today and

00:34 yeah, I can't wait to see what's in store for us.

00:36 I am buzzing, absolutely buzzing. This has been months in the making so I'm very excited.

00:45 [Music]

01:12 I'm in heaven, rabbit heaven, bunny heaven.

01:19 So Acorn came out to kind of say hello and she's so beautiful. She's looking for a home.

01:27 She's a little bit reactive to other dogs and she doesn't like other dogs, which is

01:31 fine because I don't like other humans. So I felt like we bonded on that level, but no,

01:37 she's so beautiful and calm and you know, she just sat down and she was enjoying some

01:43 little pats, little bum scratch. She just, yeah, she's so cute and my heart is officially

01:50 full. So hopefully she can find a home because she's so deserving of it and yeah, yeah, I'm

01:57 very overwhelmed with all the dogs and the cuteness and the love. So yeah.

02:03 [Music]

02:15 Okay, so we have kind of come back now. We went to an office with these two rats and

02:25 I did not like them. I'm not going to lie. I've got nothing against rats, but the tails,

02:31 they were not for me. So I kind of got forced into a corner to try and hold the rats, but

02:39 they weren't playing ball, luckily enough. So as an alternative, I then went and held

02:46 Penelope the chicken, which was a bit of a stressful situation. And I fed her a few blueberries,

02:54 which she seemed to enjoy. But yeah, I can't say that I'm going to be doing that again

03:00 anytime soon. And I was informed afterwards that I was lucky not to have been pooed on.

03:05 So that's always a bonus. But yeah, we've kind of just come back now. Speaking of rats,

03:13 I look like a drowned rat because the weather has been terrible, but it's been an amazing

03:18 morning. Just kind of seeing what all of the staff, the volunteers do, how they work with

03:25 the animals and kind of get them back to where they should be. Some animals have kind of

03:31 been abused or owners have died. They've come into the care. So it's been really nice to

03:36 see how they're kind of treated and how they find their new homes. And we've been finding

03:44 out about how Southern Tanaks self-funded, how they do all their own fundraising. It's

03:51 just been amazing to kind of go around the cattery, meet Acorn the dog, meet Bo, the

03:57 very adorable dog that decided to fall on me. But yeah, it's been amazing with,

04:04 yeah, some chickens and some rats as well.

04:09 [Music]