It is true that the vets of this country provide a more personal and compassionate service than its doctors do, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
HAS ANYONE done any stress tests at the vet’s recently? I know a rabbit who has been brought in for veterinary care once a week for three weeks now. His owner won’t go to the doctor as she considers medical visits for humans an outrageous luxury. Her rabbit is living on organic parsley.
This country is a madhouse.
I know another rabbit – yes, I am very lucky. This rabbit is biting people’s ankles quite a bit at the moment, as he hops around the kitchen. “It’s because he needs a girlfriend,” said his child owners, who are realistic but a bit grazed.
I know this dog . . . well, when I say I know this dog, I mean to say this dog is a sort of in-law of mine. (The second rabbit is a relative. The first rabbit is just a friend. Yet I end up seeing much more of the first rabbit than I do of the rabbit who is a blood relation. Isn’t that always the way? I’m just putting all this on the table here because I don’t want any more accusations of corruption going in to the Press Council. Never again.)
This dog is 15 and since Christmas it has spent most of its time at the vet’s. Have you any idea how much that costs? Thousands and thousands of euro. One of its owners cannot face the dog dying. It has now been declared recovered, and to be back at peak performance. This dog stands on the landing for hours, just staring into space. He could have Alzheimers. Or perhaps he is just trying to remember where he left the car keys. It’s kind of hard to tell.
You see the Germans have – or rather had – Knut. The late Knut, we should call him. The late Knut was a polar bear who, early autopsy reports suggest, drowned. (Is it wrong to find that quite funny?) Roger Boyes, Berlin correspondent of the Times (of London), is relieved poor Knut is dead. Roger Boyes resented all the precious, journalistic time that was spent monitoring Knut’s behaviour as the economy of Europe sank like a polar bear with a brain infection. (At the time of writing it looks as if Knut was suffering from a brain infection, hence the drowning etc.)
Rejected at birth by his mother, who had been a circus performer in the old East Germany, hand-reared by a kindly zoo keeper who subsequently died, Knut had enough drama in his life to qualify, as Roger Boyes put it, as a sort of polar Bridget Jones. Now that Knut has died, at the age of four, there is controversy over what is to happen his remains. There was a “Stop the Stuffing of Knut” demonstration in Berlin last Saturday.
Fifty fans released white balloons and lit memorial candles because they do not want what remains of Knut to be put on display in the Berlin Museum of Natural History. In his short life Knut became a national – no, an international – figure. And he earned Berlin zoo an extra €5 million.
Because humans need animals, in some way that has never been adequately explained, and yet is a copper-bottomed financial investment. Although man’s cruelty to animals seems endless – and Ireland’s record on animal welfare is grim – on the other hand perfectly normal people seem to need emotional contact with some sort of domesticated creature.
This is why 18-year-old cats are taken to the vet every day, and fed on something called prescription food. The patient under review at the moment used to be on a strict regime of CD Multicare for her bladder stones. CD Multicare is perfect if you need to “modify urine composition”. Or at least that’s what it says on the new, smaller and even more expensive tins.
But now our patient has moved on to a reduced fat, probiotic food which costs €40 per month. “We’re idiots,” says her owner. At one point this family was supporting a Labrador with learning difficulties whose arthritis injections, arthritis medication and prescription food were costing €150 per month – or was that per week? Anyway the dog died; but not before it had been treated for, and recovered from, self-inflicted sunstroke.
You have to say that the vets have us all sewn up, with a plastic cone round our necks to stop us worrying the scar. What a perfect capitalist system is one that has expanded from providing fairly sporadic medical treatment to importing the staple diet for a whole range of healthy and increasingly long-lived animals.
And how can one calculate the steadiness and neediness of a market composed entirely of animal lovers? (Answer: pretty damned fast.)
It is true that the vets of this country provide a more personal and compassionate service than its doctors do. That vets voluntarily ring their patients’ owners, for example, to share information with them. Vets do not routinely have to be chased down hospital corridors by lawyers, or shadowed by private investigators on the off-chance that they might, one day, be free to talk to relatives.
Here is a system that looks pretty watertight, and well worth some sort of national investment. I’m just saying, if David McWilliams is promoting genealogy as a commercial venture, we’re obviously ready to give anything a try.
