Where have all the vets gone?

That's good then Bossyrossy.
My initial reaction, as an animal lover, was solely for your dog, but I realised after I might have been missing the point of the thread.
Hope you get the vaccinations sorted.

2 of our local vets, in France, have recently moved from the UK after many years working there. One is Italian, the other Spanish.

Bingo Josianne!

Urmstongran

Bingo Josianne!

What game are we playing now?

I think that what foxie48 said about big corporations buying out practices is right. The same is true of opticians I believe. We are ok with the vet at the moment but we are having the devil of a job getting optician's appointments.

JaneJudge according to Mr Scones people are queueing for petrol as the price is meant to be going up and according to him (put on Victor Meldrew voice now) 'Dingbats are queueing for 90 minutes with their engines idling to save £1.50 on a tank of fuel'.

Oh Scones, my husband said the same as I actually spoke to him later in the day I do need to fill up again.....

ninathenana

JaneJudge I wouldn't say exceptionally bright. Fairly intelligent would describe the vets in the practice where I worked for 10 yrs.

Where are you experiencing petrol queues ?

To get into vet school you need 3 “A” s at A level and are 100% oversubscribed, so pretty bright. Large animal work is hard, small animals easier and more lucrative.

I think vets must be pretty bright. They treat all kinds of animals, but hardest of all the patient can't describe what is wrong with them and where it hurts. The vet needs to be very skilful at diagnosing the problem.

We have Animal Trust here in West Yorkshire and all the vets appear to be locums, so no continuity for your pet although they do their best. I wish I could have someone like Peter Wright from the Yorkshire Vet, lovely man but too far to travel.

I had noticed all our vets near here had been bought by corporations. That rarely helps. Same for GPs & care companies (rarely helps in those cases either).

Covid is also causing a problem. My friend's daughter is a small animal vet at a three vet practice, she currently has covid, caught from a vet nurse who is an anti vaxxer. She is off for 10 days for the second time as she had to self isolate a couple of months ago. They do their own out of hours so it puts huge pressure on the practice especially as she is not the only one ill. The husband and sister of the anti vaxxer are both very ill in hospital and now wishing they had all been vaccinated!
fwiw the entry requirement for vet school are the same as for medics. I use an equine hospital for my horses, it is one of the most dangerous jobs that you can do, most equine vets have at least one serious injury in their careers.

I agree about vet's practices now being bought up by large companies Nezumi but at least they keep going that way.
We have an excellent veterinary practice owned and run by a Spanish couple but they say if Le Penn wins the election they will return to Spain. Hopefully that's unlikely.

Just phoned for an appointment today at our vets. None available this morning, but 5.40 pm tonight. Coastal practice.

Our pets' practice and hospital has always had loads of EU vets; same with a large, very well-thought-of, high tech hospital they sent us to earlier this year. I wasn't aware of a vet shortage. In fact, I've just made an appointment an hour ago for this morning.

People who voted for brexit to “take back our borders” and “stop them immigrants stealing our jobs” are learning the hard way that they should have listened to those who pointed out how we needed these foreign workers. They’ve all gone home where they’ll be appreciated and not have to deal with the racism they got here on a regular basis.
Temporary visas won’t help, who in their right mind would come here to be treated like shit for a few months then kicked out again?
However the majority of people voted for brexit, it’s been made worse by covid, but now we all pay the price with staffing issues everywhere and shortages of things on the shelves.
Now Britain needs to go back to being self sufficient, we need all the little farmers who were done out of business by the massive commercial farms, back and selling their produce, growing food for us here rather than for export, small local owned businesses need to come back. We need our factories back, we need to build or buy back the businesses that tidies have sold off over the last thirty years.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can’t see us thriving for a large number of years. I can’t see an end to all the problems caused by outsourcing and selling everything off to the big commercial giants.

I took my dog to the vets on Friday as she had a cluster of her seizures and a new vet treated her and she was French. The owner of the vets told me a while ago that once they qualify it's hard to hold on to the younger ones as they head off for practices with higher wages as he has only a small practice at his farm. My sister who goes to a different vets and she was saying their Spanish vet has gone.
My vets do a vaccination only clinic on a Sunday morning for an hour to free up the appointments for sick animals through the week. I think it's an excellent idea.

My vets are busy but fine. They do as much of their work as they can via chat or video call and have a waiting list for new (human) clients though and I think that this is because they have taken up the slack from other surgeries.

Our vets is a small local vets which we have used for over 30 years (except when we moved away for 5 years and then came back to them). The three main vets are born and bred in our market town. I can't answer for the other vets in our town but ours have kept going through the pandemic and have been able to run a normal service as far as possible, albeit in the car park when we were in the thick of the pandemic. I would assume that the larger the veterinary practice the more they would have to reach out overseas for their vets.

In addition to the shortage of vets, there is a big increase in demand for their services with all the dogs that were acquired during the lockdowns. Bit of a double whammy!

Lasermum

In addition to the shortage of vets, there is a big increase in demand for their services with all the dogs that were acquired during the lockdowns. Bit of a double whammy!

Yes, 12 and a half million dogs in the UK now as compared with 9 million in 2019.
I believe we are the biggest dog owning country in Europe, maybe after Germany? So I guess it kind of figures that we need more vets and that many come from EU countries where they don't need as many.

Been going to my local vets for 20 years with my cats.
Last one was put to sleep by my regular vet and I was allowed in the surgery to be with him.
Got another rescue cat fairly soon and could only have him if I lived outside the area as the rescue’s vet practice had closed and others in the area were not taking on new patients.
When I phoned to register him with my own vet was told that they were not taking on new patients. I explained that I had been a regular client for years and they agreed to take him on.
I think I’m lucky as we nearly always have the same vet, Jennifer, who is brilliant with cats, she has several of her own, and is very kind.

We moved a year ago and registered both cats with Vets4Pets - I've not noticed an issue with a lack of appointments and have seen the vet twice in the last month. One cat is currently in surgery having a dental procedure this morning.

Where we lived previously there did seem a high turnover of vets in the practice as several of them seemed to be either training and moved on once they'd finished.

My daughter is a vet in a corporate practice. Apparently fitting out a practice to the high standards customers now expect, and in keeping up with medical advances, costs a fortune .
They had to close one of their practices due to lack of vets.
My 15 year old dog, who has arthritis, was started on a new treatment, Librela, in May, had her 2nd jab in June, but unable to get any since, as there is a very high demand.
So, sadly shortage of vets and meds.

Apparently fitting out a practice to the high standards customers now expect, and in keeping up with medical advances, costs a fortune .
Is that because people see the posh MRI and CT scan machines on the likes of Supervet, not to mention the sophisticated blood tests and meds they give? A small surgery couldn't hope to achieve anything close.

The tests and procedures for us are often available for animals these days and have to be paid for by the owner or their insurance. Vets often claim to be more skilled than medics because they have to understand illness in many different species.