Sunday, February 27, 2011

Animal Welfare Statistics for January

In January our clinic treated 232 dogs, 90 cats, 6 rabbits and 2 miscellaneous "small furries". We rehomed 2 dogs, 9 cats and 3 rabbits.

This illustrates how vital it is that we keep on raising enough money to fund the clinic, because this represents 330 animals who might either have been put to sleep or relinquished for rehoming if a low-cost option for getting veterinary treatment hadn't been available. 

Where owners are caring, but don't have enough money to pay the full cost of a vet, it's much better all round if they can be enabled to keep their pets. 
  • It costs less than treating the animals and boarding them until they can be rehomed.
  • It means animals don't have to lose the family they know and love.
  • It prevents "recycling" whereby people relinquish an animal they can't afford to look after and then acquire another one.
Our clinic costs us around £50,000 p.a. to run, including payments for the provision of veterinary services, vaccines, heat, light, rates, repairs etc.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting. Dogs make up the majority of animals treated. I'm curious, do you have any breakdown of the most common treatments for those dogs?

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  2. No, but it might be useful for us to ask the Vet School if they could provide something.

    My off the top of my head guess is that it's a combination of things:

    Large dogs are much more expensive to treat than cats, so it would be economic for dog owners to come greater distances than cat owners.

    Pet owners who aren't working are more likely to have dogs than ones who are out all day.

    Possibly cats are generally healthier than dogs. We do often find that people will have cats and dogs but only register the dog.

    My impression is that the dog:cat ratio is reversed at private vets, which possibly suggests that some cat owners would have dogs if they didn't work.

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