Bruno's Blog – a complete animal at work

I hear the sound of distant conversation (or was it consternation) as the veterinary profession wakes and realises that a major international veterinary pharmaceutical company has launched a new product based on Rheum officianale.

What, you may ask, is Rheum Officianale?

The pre-launch blurb prefers to use the latin name only – I’m sure they have their reasons, but I suspect it might have something to do with focus groups – just possibly fearing ridicule if it crept out that this was a plant otherwise known as Indian Rhubarb.

It is ‘for use in renal health management’ in dogs and cats. ‘It can be used as an aid to the maintenance of normal renal fibrotic architecture’ apparently.

Oh. god, man, just spit it out, for goodness’ sake. IT’S FOR TREATING KIDNEY DISEASE.

There. I’ve said it. I have voiced the claim that dares not speak it’s name.

For thou shalt not state the obvious, but wrap it up in layers of corporate gobbledy-gook-speak so that no one can claim to have been misled. It’s better that way.

We love herbal treatments and use them a lot. We have an osteopath at the clinic every week, we use acupuncture. We love homeopathy.

D’you know why?

Because we often see great results. Placebo or not, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Our job is to get our patients better and try to avoid doing too much harm on the way.

Rheum officianale? Oh well, I guess if it’s no good for kidneys, it might make a good crumble…

 

The loyal and observant amongst you might have noticed a press release we put out some 18 months ago.

Just in case you missed it, essentially it said:

Vetscriptions is at the forefront of a campaign by vets to protect pets from tropical and other previously unknown animal diseases in the UK.

The recent CICADA research carried out by Intervet has shown that cats and dogs that travel overseas from the UK are bringing back an ever-wider range of unwelcome exotic diseases with them when they return.

Vetscriptions Managing Director Andrew Prentis says, “The UK’s stringent 6 month quarantine regulations were initially put in place to protect the UK from the Rabies that was endemic in many other parts of the world. What was not generally appreciated was that the 6-month period of isolation also allowed government vets to identify and treat some of the less well-known non-UK diseases before letting them loose into the pet population.”

Staff at vetscriptions.co.uk are advising all owners of traveling pets that despite the tight controls on re-entry, vets across the UK are now beginning to identify previously unknown diseases such as Heartworm, Leishmaniasis and Erhlichiosis, with sometimes disastrous consequences.

“These diseases can be difficult to identify” says Andrew Prentis “at least in part due to most UK vets’ unfamiliarity with them, and they can present considerable treatment problems. We advise all our customers that they should take full professional advice from their vets on suitable protective medication for their pets before leaving the UK.”

Well, well. We couldn’t help noticing this week that the Royal Veterinary College has just opened a new Centre for Emerging, Endemic and Exotic Diseases, precisely to respond to this new level of threat.

“With increasing international travel and trade, infectious diseases can travel quickly in today’s global village,” said Professor Stark at the RVC.

We are just delighted that this blog has become so influential…

Oh goodness, it’s a vexed issue.

These are the main diseases you can vaccinate against:

1 Feline panleucopenia, or virus enteritis (FPV)

2. Cat flu (2 main types, FHV & FCV)

3. Feline leukaemia (FeLV)

Which ones do you vaccinate for and how often?

Well this is apparently what the European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases has to say.

1. FPV: 2 shots as a kitten, a booster 12 months later and thereafter once every 3 years

2. FHV & FCV: 2 shots as a kitten, a booster 12 months later and thereafter every year for those at high risk ie show cats or regular visitors to boarding catteries, otherwise once every 3 years ‘may be an alternative option’.

3. FeLV: Indoor cats are not at risk and therefore vaccination is not necessary. For those with access to the great outdoors, 2 shots as a kitten, then annually to 3-4 years old, thereafter ‘every 2-3 years would be sufficient’.

So now you know.

Just remember, you read it here first

 

The British Cattle Veterinary Association Junior Vice-President has said this week that he is increasingly worried  that young vets are rejecting farm work, making it more and more difficult for farm practices to recruit experienced veterinary staff.

“Being a farm vet is a tough job, with long unsociable hours, and you spend a lot of time wet, cold and covered in sh*t. There are easier ways to earn a living.”

I think we can see where the nub of the problem lies… 

And this all comes at a time when vets across the board are beginning to feel the financial pinch: the nation’s pet owners, it seems, are starting to rein in their spending as our economic problems worsen.

Maybe it’s also because more of you are finding out about the savings you can make by buying your pet’s medicines online, and if you’ve got any sense of course, it’ll be from Vetscriptions…

One last little nugget: a recent survery carried out by Petplan (the pet health insurance company) has revealed that 40% of pet owners are more likely to to trust a vet’s advice over that of human health practitioners.

Interestingly there is also a geographical bias here, varying from a lowly 26% in Leeds to a massive 70% in Sheffield.

Quite whether you should feed this information into the equation when deciding where to move to next remains to be seen

 

The blog is up and running again.

With an announcement. 

A recent survey in one of the national newspapers asked a number of DINK (Dual Income No Kids) couples how the credit crunch was affecting their decisions whether or not to have children.

30% of DINK couples said that they were delaying starting a family. No particular problem there, we have too many people on our little planet as it is.

But in a triumph of good sense, some 25% of them said that they had decided to get a pet instead. Now you’re talking!

Talking of acronyms, the list grows ever longer, but our favourite was always the LOMBARD, as applied to the very same greedy bankers who have lost us all so much money in the last year…

 Loads Of Money But A Real D**khead.

Never a truer word