Companion collection - Interviews

  Epilepsy is one of the most intensively studied neurological conditions in dogs but much of what we know about the disease has been gathered from research on an unrepresentative population of referral practice patients. Matthew James and colleagues were awarded this year’s BSAVA PetSavers Veterinary Achievement Award for a project which investigated how epileptic dogs are managed in first-opinion practices and what can be offered to improve their treatment. John Bonner reports…

  BSAVA volunteers are instrumental in the success of the Association, at the same time as nurturing their own personal development. RVN Kelly Eyre talks to Companion about her new role as Deputy Chair of the Congress Organizing Committee in preparation to step up to Chair in 3-years-time.

  ‘Every blood donor is a hero’ – according to the World Health Organization, which used the phrase to promote World Blood Donor Day a few years back. But so too are the people who plan and manage blood donation schemes. They ensure that the procedure is comfortable and safe for those that both give and receive this magical life-saving fluid. People like Charlotte Russo, the veterinary nurse responsible for running the transfusion medicine service at the Queen Mother Hospital for Animals at the Royal Veterinary College. John Bonner finds out more…

  In a country where human healthcare is still largely free at the point of delivery, grumbles about the costs of veterinary services are a regular topic for debate in the national chatroom. So, someone who will cheerfully agree to pay an annual vet bill stretching nearly into seven figures is a very unusual client. John Bonner went to meet Patrick Williams, Chief Executive of the Cinnamon Trust to find out more about his charity, a small but powerful force in the world of animal welfare.

 Jenny Hammond, Professor of Veterinary Education at the Glasgow Vet School, was the recipient of this year’s BSAVA Amoroso award for outstanding contributions to small animal studies by a non-clinical member of university staff. Jenny helped lead the team that redesigned the undergraduate curriculum at Glasgow and continues to influence thinking on how to train new generations of veterinary graduates at home and abroad.

  A novel oral vaccine for dogs has been declared a game changer in efforts to lift the ancient curse of rabies, the most deadly of all zoonotic diseases. Gowri Yale, Scientific Advisor to the Mission Rabies charity, told John Bonner how the product will be used to control canine rabies in India and what barriers may stand in the way of eliminating a condition that kills about 60,000 people a year worldwide.

  This month, Carl Gorman steps up to the plate as the new BSAVA President for the coming year. Carl talked to John Bonner about his early career, his many and varied interests and the goal he has set himself for his presidential year.

  BSAVA members can be pleased with the way their organization dealt with the challenge of continuing to provide high quality CPD during the COVID-19 crisis. But in a rapidly evolving educational landscape, there is no room for complacency; the Association is working hard to ensure that the training it offers will suit the changing needs of its audience. Dr Claire Vinten, new Head of Education at Woodrow House, told John Bonner what the BSAVA will be doing to stay top of the class.

 Robyn Lowe is one of those rare individuals that appears to have almost inexhaustible reserves of energy. As well as working in a busy small animal practice, she is a tireless campaigner to improve the mental health of all members of the veterinary team, she treads the streets of Manchester providing outreach care for pets owned by homeless or vulnerable individuals, and she hammers away at a computer keyboard correcting the misinformation about veterinary treatment that is generated and spread via social media platforms. And at weekends she likes nothing more than to go hiking across the UK countryside in the company of like-minded colleagues.

 Mark Lowrie was born in Liverpool and grew up in the Cheshire village of Frodsham. He attended the local High School where he remembers playing the title character in the school production of ‘Oliver’. That was a one-off event, he recalls, noting that the role had been played a few years earlier, with presumably far more success by a certain Daniel Craig. Realizing that even at local level, competition for a career on stage would be tough, he took his mother’s advice and opted for one in veterinary medicine. A good choice by the man who was named PetPlan Vet of the Year 2022.

Chris Laurence is a member of that select band of people who have been made honorary life members of the BSAVA. He is known to the profession as the former chief vet of two of the main animal welfare charities. But he is also noted for his contributions to various other charitable bodies, within the ranks of the British Army as a distinguished and long serving officer in the Signals Corps, and for the residents of Tytherton, Wiltshire, as the main driving force behind the campaign to build a new village hall. John Bonner wondered where he gets the energy.

  ‘Care killed the cat’ is the original formulation of that familiar expression about the dangers of what can happen to our feline friends if they give free rein to their natural inquisitiveness. In this case, the word ‘care’ actually meant ‘worry’ rather than ‘tenderness’ but the staff and supporters of the charity International Cat Care would strongly disagree with either interpretation of the phrase. John Bonner reports on the people devoting care, consideration and more than a little curiosity to improving the lives of cats across the globe.

 Eric Isselée is a Belgian photographer who has made a career out of ignoring WC Field’s injunction to ‘never work with children or animals’. He developed his distinctive style through taking pictures of toddlers at nurseries and has used the same techniques in capturing images of up to 1700 different animal species. His work with companion animals has regularly graced the cover of BSAVA Companion.

  Hill farmer and veterinarian Keith Powell believes that bracken is a blight on the beautiful landscape around his home in the Brecon Beacons. So he has led a project intended to replace that toxic and invasive weed with woodland, providing aesthetic, environmental and economic benefits for the local community. John Bonner reports…

  This month, Fergus Allerton, who took on the editorship of Companion in September last year, speaks to John Bonner about his future plans for Companion.

 Ditte Vasby and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen veterinary school won one of this year’s BSAVA clinical abstract awards. Ditte spoke to Companion about the group’s research into determining the accuracy of VacciCheck for distemper, parvovirus and infectious hepatitis.

  Wanting to help yourself and your colleagues to improve clinical skills will always be the main reason why people are prepared to give up their time to serve as a BSAVA volunteer. But there are plenty of other talents that the Association’s members can develop after they become involved in setting up and running one of its major CPD events, according to Tom Reilly, the new Chair of the BSAVA Congress Committee.

  Greyhound racing may not have the high public profile that it enjoyed in Britain years ago but, as a vehicle for off-course gambling, it still attracts a large international television audience. Olivia Cook is one of the vets working to assure punters that the races are fair and the dogs are well cared for.

  When the first lockdown made Laura Sullivan’s vet skills temporarily superfluous, it meant that she had time to spend making environmentally-friendly washable surgical caps for her existing online business. Now, she is back at work stitching her clients’ animals back together, but she still has time to make her own contribution towards more sustainable veterinary practices.

  By day, Andrew Smith is clinical director of a mixed practice in Aberdeenshire. At night, he dwells in the world of spirits. His hobby is distilling gin made from the finest botanical ingredients available on his home patch.

 Meredith Sheil has made a huge contribution to improving animal welfare in Australia by developing a combination local anaesthetic and antiseptic used to reduce pain and infection risk in farm livestock undergoing routine surgery. That is quite a leap from her original job as a human medic and researcher into paediatric heart disease.

 Lucy O’Donovan is a veterinary surgeon with a keen interest in mental health issues – and also a passion for art. She has set up cRxeate, an online community of vets, doctors and dentists, to explore ways that clinicians can give expression to their creative talents and help them deal with the pressures of a stressful job.

  Fell runners are more aware than most of us that life has its ups and downs. For endurance athlete and Edinburgh University veterinarian Jasmin Paris, the last 18 months have had both. In January 2019, she smashed the existing record for Britain’s most gruelling race but then in March this year she joined the rest of the country in lockdown. So she is forced to distance herself from the wild mountain landscapes that are her passion. Companion finds out how she is getting on.

 Olivia de Rivaz has managed to combine her role as a small animal practitioner with a burgeoning career as an artist. Olivia was born and raised in Surrey, and is the youngest of three children of a senior civil servant father and a charity fundraiser mother. She graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in 2006 and now lives in Wiltshire.

 Robert Johnson is a practitioner from New South Wales and a former president of the Australian Veterinary Association. He has a life-long interest in reptile medicine although, as he explains, his patients have not always appreciated the care that he has given them. In his spare time, he is also an accomplished cartoonist, and on the cricket field, an obdurate late order batsman.

 David Yates pioneered the practice of early neutering of companion animals while working at the RSPCA hospital in Manchester. As the surgeon responsible for one of the busiest charity clinics in the country, he accumulated vast experience in performing these procedures and he is regularly asked to speak on surgical and anaesthetic issues at veterinary meetings and in webinars.

 Helen Whittle is an award-winning Australian photographer specializing in child portraiture, based in the small country town of Orange, about 160 miles west of Sydney. But she is also a Royal Veterinary College graduate whose fellow students from the Class of 2002 will remember her as Helen Bradwell. She told Companion how she developed her twin career in the studio and consult room.

  Matthew Jones took up his post in August as founding head of the UK’s newest veterinary school Harper and Keele. He will lead the staff who are preparing the way for the first intake of students in September 2020.

 Carolyne Crowe is a familiar face at professional conferences in her role as a member of the Veterinary Defence Society communications and training team. She and her colleagues criss-cross the country speaking to VDS members and helping to ensure that they are mentally prepared for the challenges of practice life. Away from work, she keeps her own head in order running marathons – once completing 10 in 10 days.

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Council has elected Mandisa Greene to be Junior Vice-President of the College for 2019–20, making her the first person from a minority ethnic background to be elected to the College’s Officer Team in its 175-year history. Mandisa took time out to talk with John Bonner about her aspirations for the coming year.

Distinguished dermatologist Sue Paterson was elected president of the BSAVA at its annual Congress in Birmingham. Although she was (ahem) itching to get started in the new job, she found time to talk to us about her life and career.

Applications for the BSAVA Ophthalmology Postgraduate Certificate are now open. Andy Rae reports on how this CPD opportunity provided recent alumna, Anna Rix, with a much-needed boost that rejuvenated her career.

Grace Dickinson is the founder of Reptiles etc, a company that trains animals for film and television work. As the company name suggests, her work doesn–t just focus on the more familiar species of four-legged thespians like dogs or horses, but a wide range of other taxa, including invertebrates. She told John Bonner about her job and how the methods that she uses could make life easier for veterinary staff.

Edinburgh graduate Cal Major stroked her way into the record books this summer as the first person to travel from Land’s End to John O’Groats on a stand-up paddleboard. Along the way she raised thousands of pounds to support mental health services for the veterinary profession and others, as well as raising awareness of the threat posed by plastic pollution to our inland and coastal waterways. She told John Bonner about the highlights of her trip.

Frances Barr stepped down as BSAVA’s Academic Director on 30 June 2018 after 8 years in the role. She told Companion about her achievements in that time, her career before arriving at Woodrow House and her goals for the future.

“Don't train to be a veterinary nurse – you'll spend all your working life cleaning”, teenager Hayley Walters was told by one of her lecturers at college in the early 1990s. Not the smartest piece of career advice ever offered, Hayley might think, as she steps forward to receive an MBE for services to veterinary education at Buckingham Palace in June. John Bonner talks to Hayley about her work, travels and achievements.

Anyone who has experience of being a patient undergoing minimally invasive surgery will have seen the advantages of such methods over conventional surgical techniques. But the benefits have not always been obvious to many UK small animal practitioners. Philip Lhermette, the incoming BSAVA President, has done more than anyone to change their minds.

Lots of schoolkids dream of being a vet or a top class sportsman, few have the talent or application to fulfil even one of those ambitions – let alone both. Tom Tully is a rare exception…

Lizzie Lockett, the newly appointed Chief Executive of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, has worked within the profession for 25 years. She was born in Huddersfield but soon after, her family moved to Richmond in North Yorkshire where her father works as a farm manager. Her mother is a nurse and her brother Christopher is an equine vet in Halifax.

James Greenwood qualified from the University of Bristol in 2007 and has worked in the West Country since 2010. Outside of work, James is a keen ceramicist and slipped effortlessly into a new role as a contestant on the BBC television programme – the Great Pottery Throw Down. He told John Bonner about his career, how he developed his interest in ceramics and how he coped with the resulting public attention.

Kate Sparksman is the first RVN to undertake a research-based masters degree in veterinary science at the University of Bristol.

Heike Dorn runs the most isolated veterinary practice in England, providing care for the companion animals, livestock and wildlife of the Isles of Scilly. She received the Ray Butcher award at BSAVA Congress 2017 in recognition of her valuable contribution to animal welfare in the community. John Bonner talks to Heike in her Isles of Scilly paradise.

Stephanie Writer-Davies was born in the Wirral and lived there until the age of 10, when she went off to a boarding school in North Wales. Her parents were both anaesthetists in the NHS before they emigrated to Canada when she was 13. She stayed on at school in the UK, travelling back and forth to Nova Scotia in the holidays, and qualified from Bristol Vet School in 1984.

Lee Clayton-Harvey studied Business at Mander College, graduating in 1992, and has enjoyed a varied career, including working in customer services and as a trainer with Granada TV, SKY and NTL telecommunications.

Professor Susan Rhind is deputy head of school at the Royal (Dick) College of Veterinary Studies, Edinburgh. She was educated at Lockerbie Academy before being admitted to the Glasgow veterinary school, from which she graduated in 1990.

Janey Lowes was named Vet of the Year 2016 in the Animal Heroes awards competition run by the RSPCA and the Daily Mirror newspaper.

Julian Earl was forced to retire from practice after a cycle-race accident left him with horrific head injuries. While he may no longer wield a scalpel, he can still spin a yarn, as Cows in Trees, his book of veterinary anecdotes, confirms.

Paul Mahoney is a veterinary surgeon employed with Idexx Laboratories as part of their Teleradiology team.

Vernon Hill is the ebullient US entrepreneur who has upset the balance of the UK’s retail banking sector. But as well as launching the first new name on the High Street for more than a century, he is an advocate for the Kennel Club’s veterinary science awards and is a generous supporter of veterinary interests on both sides of the Atlantic.

Megan Knowles-Bacon has a talent for making things disappear – handkerchiefs, playing cards, administrative problems facing veterinary practice – by day she works at the RCVS headquarters at Horseferry Road and in her spare time she is a keen magician and the first woman to hold a senior role in The Magic Circle.