Vets?

[hotcrunchybiscuit]

I'm just thinking about the animals hence two animal related threads.

Will veterinary care still be available for our pets?

We had this discussion at work. I work in a rural area and one of the parents thought she wasn't a key worker but as it's lambing season she's extremely busy at various farms. It may not be 'essential' now but the food chain in a few months it will be critical so we can't just ignore it.
And again even house pets need vaccines etc so that we don't have other huge problems.
To be honest, that's why the key worker list is so long!

Ours isn’t. The two main vets retired very suddenly recently and the locum who was covering has gone into self-isolation. The next surgery down the road is trying to manage double their usual caseload with a shortage of staff as some of theirs have gone into self-isolation as well. So they’re only doing emergency and last-minute appointments. We’re having to call every day to try and get our cat in for her injections.

I took my cat to the vet this morning. It dawned on me that flea season will be upon us shortly. Also I didn’t want to run the risk of the dog running out of painkiller. It surprised me that they were still insisting on seeing the cat. They were very quiet. They had hand sanitiser available and a gap between the counter and the customers.

When this kicks off I could see Vets being called into the front line. Humans are after all just another animal species.

Emergency only won't work for small animal, especially dogs.

Family dog is a bit sore and lame. Not "really" an emergency but being a bit sore is a bit grumpy and bites a family member, creating an unnecessary human emergency.

"Emergency" only just about covers a 4 day weekend. Pretty well everything else is either urgent (a health issue that needs attention) or rather important preventative medicine like vaccines.

Cynically (for welfare reasons) I think neutering of cats and dogs should be encouraged as well - we do not need loads of unwanted kittens and puppies if accidents happen when people are distracted! Vets generally loss lead on neutering so not about making money.