Opinion

It is difficult to say what makes a practice. There are so many contributing factors. Buildings, staff, clients, leadership, equipment, ownership: they are all a part of it. Then there are intangibles…

“Kills 99 percent of all known germs”, “kills 99.9 percent of all germs and viruses!” – we’ve got used to such advertisements for hand sanitisers these days, haven’t we? But where is the evidence behi…

It has been an interesting time reading the general press over the last few months. Recycled scare stories about the drop in COVID-19 antibodies in previously infected patients was finally put into so…

The United Kingdom is out of the European Union. The transition period is nearly over and, at the time of writing (mid-November 2020), it is not known whether the UK and EU will agree a free trade agr…

It cannot be very often that a child instinctively wants a clownfish from a swell of 28,000 Piscean potentials, or that one morning an adult wakes up and spontaneously says “I’ve just got to have a mo…

On 18 November, after countless rephrasings, deleting the whole thing several times and much self-doubt, I sent out a difficult tweet. “Last year, while on [The Great British] Bake Off I was bullied h…

There is a game on Radio 4’s Just a Minute called “One tune to the tune of another”. Contestants have to sing the words of a song to the tune of a different one in a totally different style. This year…

What a nightmare! Broken down in the middle of nowhere… Thank goodness for the breakdown services! Twenty minutes after my call along came the van and the guy who got out was so helpful. Not only did …

As many of you will be aware, there is a new series of All Creatures Great and Small on the television. For many vets, we will have memories of watching the original TV series in the late 1970s onwar…

“Could you please look at the dog in cage 43?” came the text message. And so I popped along to the kennel suite to give a quick ophthalmic examina­tion of the Chihuahua in the relevant enclosure. In f…

I recently read a post on a veterinary Facebook page that got me pretty wound up and caused me to rewrite this piece almost immediately. In summary, the post was raising issue with the fact that NHS w…

There are few things in life that make me really annoyed, but one that really riles me is the pet owner who you hear tearing strips off the receptionist because they’ve been waiting for 15 minutes whi…

Wildlife markets have never been more infamous. From live invertebrates to primates, and from animals’ dried heads to their privates, some “dead or alive” wildlife markets have become the anything goe…

Today I write from a classroom I am sharing with an 11 and a 13-year-old. This classroom closely resembles a domestic kitchen, the main difference being the abundance of old and dysfunctional laptops …

When I was seven, which truth be told was 50 years ago, I won the annual photography competition of the 12th Cambridge cub scout brigade with a series of photographs, all black and white of course and…

Regular readers will notice that, for the first time in years, my column was missing from the pages of this essential publication last month. To be frank, like many of you I imagine, I was just too dep…

The elderly Labrador owned by my equally elderly next-door neighbour is slowing down with arthritis, despite NSAIDs and glucosamine together with a wonderful mix (his words not mine) of devil’s claw t…

Inclusion, diversity and culture are buzzwords that have been widely discussed within the veterinary profession over the last couple of years. Every day I am truly thankful that the majority of the pr…

We do like to think we make a difference, don’t we? The animal comes in ill, we treat it and most of the time it gets better. And there’s the rub… I was going to say “we cure it” but in reality, how m…

People. That’s what they don’t tell you about when you decide you want to be a vet. Yes, you may love animals and be good at science, but pretty soon into the job and you realise there’s a whole world…