Staff at The Blue Cross  have just celebrated a century of serving pets - and their owners - since the foundation of their first hospital  in 1906.

Since then the organisation has become nationwide and the hospital itself has remained open 24 hours a day, every day for 100 years, with veterinary staff conducting over one million consultations. Today it provides a lifeline for a diverse mix of pet owners unable to afford private veterinary care.

Built on the site of the Duke of Westminster's stables, the original buildings were well suited to the charity's early equine work, when many businesses depended on the health of their horses for survival. During wartime, hospital staff cared for tens of thousands of animals injured or left homeless during the Blitz.

The key dates in 100 years of caring for animals include:

1897: The Blue Cross was officially founded on 10 May 1897 in a small office in Ebury Street in south west London. The "society for the encouragement of kindness to animals" was formed and called 'Our Dumb Friends League'. The name was allegedly taken from a recent speech of the current monarch, Queen Victoria, in which she referred to the need to care for the "dumb creatures of the earth".

1906: After eight years of fundraising, on Tuesday 15 May The Blue Cross opened its first animal hospital in Victoria. The first case seen in the donkey ward was a mare belonging to a flower dealer from Notting Hill that was successfully treated for pneumonia. In its first year 10,957 patients were treated at the hospital, of which 1,226 were horses and donkeys, 3,750 were cats and 4,436 dogs.

1908: Early Blue Cross staff provided free oatmeal and water for tired working horses. In 1908, troughs were erected at Marble Arch, Portland Place and Hammersmith Broadway each cost 25 shillings a week to maintain.

1923: Roads made slippery by oil and petrol and increased street traffic saw an increase in the numbers of injured working animals. In 1923 a motorised horse ambulance was built for The Blue Cross. It supported the charity's horse-drawn ambulance in the capital's streets, the first of which was brought for £500.

1939 - 1945: Power cuts and nightly black-outs meant that treatment at the animal hospital in Victoria often had to be carried out by candle light.

1950: The League officially became to be known as The Blue Cross.

1952: Smokey, a six-year-old tabby, saved the lives of two families when she gave warning of a fire in their home. She was presented with the BC - The Blue Cross Medal - by Miss Kathleen Harrison at the Hertfordshire & Middlesex Cat Club Champion Show at Acton Town Hall on 19 September 1952.

1958: The hospital runs an ambulance service making thousands of calls a year to collect the pets of housebound clients.

1967: The operating theatre at the Victoria Hospital was rebuilt, making it one of the finest veterinary hospitals in the world at that time.

2001: Her Majesty The Queen officially reopened the Victoria animal hospital after it underwent a complete re-build and modernisation costing £4million, funded entirely by voluntary donations.

2004:  The Blue Cross launches a pilot mobile veterinary clinic scheme in east London to deliver free veterinary care to pets in some of the neediest areas of London, reaching pet owners unable to afford private veterinary fees or who are unable to visit a Blue Cross hospital themselves.