This weekend The Mayhew Animal Home is shining a light on the amazing work carried out by our vets in the UK and across the world, to celebrate World Vet Day held on the 30^th April 2016.

World Vet Day pays a special recognition to the veterinary profession, celebrating the significant contribution vets have on our society. At The Mayhew we are so proud of our vets who play a key role in helping the hundreds of neglected, abused and unwanted animals who come through our doors every year.

Our veterinary work in the UK

Currently we have four vets, seven nurses and two vet receptionists who work tirelessly providing veterinary care for all of our animals going through the adoption process and preventative care that benefits the London community and individual pet owners. Our Vet Clinic is also an approved centre to train vets and vet nurses, and our team pass on their skills both in the UK and internationally.

One patient that we helped this year was one year old Lurcher Phoebe, who had sadly been involved in a car accident. Phoebe was hit by a van and the force of it caused her to skid along the tarmac and sustain a large shearing injury to the outside of her right hind leg. She was left with a large open wound and the top layer of skin ripped off, as well as severe bruising and several smaller wounds to her front left elbow and inside of her left thigh.

Her owner, who had bought her off Gumtree the week before, was unwilling to pay for Phoebe’s treatment and asked the vet to put her down – this was when our Animal Welfare Officers immediately stepped in and brought her to our home.

Our vet team got to work straight away providing daily cleaning, flushing and debriding of the wound, daily bandage changing and providing strong pain relief to keep her comfortable. Without the work of our Animal Welfare Officers and vets we don’t know what would have happened to Phoebe as her future had seemed very bleak, but now she is a happy, healthy dog who has just found herself a loving forever home. Read more about Phoebe’s story here.

At The Mayhew we provide training for UK and overseas vets, and earlier this year we hosted a study day for Danish veterinary nurse students. Our Head Vet Dr. Ursula Goetz MRCVS, GP Cert(SAS) CVO showed the students round our vet clinic and gave a talk on our work to give the students an insight into the dedication and enthusiasm our vets have for the profession.

This year we have been in the process of building an extension for our vet clinic, which will help us to help even more animals. Our new clinic will have two operating theatres that will allow us to expand the training we provide for UK and overseas vets and offer more capacity for free and low cost vaccinations and microchipping. The extension will also allow us to expand our community animal welfare programmes and increase the number of cases we can deal with.

Our veterinary work is not just bound to the UK though, with our vets out-reaching to countries across the world including Georgia, India, Moscow and Afghanistan through Mayhew International to provide veterinary care and training.

Our veterinary work in Georgia

At present Mayhew International is the only Western charity which is giving veterinary training in Georgia. At the end of March this year our Head Vet Dr. Ursula, vet Dr. Aine Maguire, vet nurse Laura Brind and vet nurse Laura Cashman went out to Georgia to teach neutering and spaying at the Tbilisi Municipal Dog Shelter. The team helped to improve the local vets’ knowledge and practice whilst they were there, and even donated our old operating table to the clinic.

In addition, Head Vet Dr. Ursula carried out a spay day at the Agrarian University Vet Clinic with their Head Vet Marika, who was the first vet Dr. Ursula taught from overseas, and vet Lili. The team managed to neuter and give health checks to 24 dogs in one day, including a few dogs from local shelters in the city.

Find out more about our current work in Georgia here.

Our veterinary work in Afghanistan

Our very own vet Dr. Abdul Jalil Mohammadzia DVM is currently in Afghanistan on a three month trip to negotiate with the Afghanistan Government to sign an agreement with the Kabul Municipality to try to stop their dog culling programme, where street dogs are cruelly poisoned.

While he is in Afghanistan, Dr. Mo has also been busy providing veterinary care and training with NOWZAD. One dog Dr. Mo helped was Tiger who came in with a severely injured leg. NOWZAD were expecting that they’d have to amputate poor Tiger’s leg, however Dr. Mo gave medical attention and surgery to try and save his leg. Thankfully the operation went smoothly and Tiger recovered well, with his leg intact.

Find out more about our current work in Afghanistan here.

Our veterinary work in India

Since 2008 Mayhew International has funded the Animal Birth Control and vaccination programme with HOPE & Animal Trust in Ranchi, India. We were so excited to celebrate a milestone with HOPE this month when they vaccinated and neutered the 50,000^th street dog on 21^st April 2016.

Thank you to all of our amazing supporters who helped this happen and congratulations to the team at HOPE for delivering the neutering. This accomplishment is fantastic as it goes towards helping to control the dog population in Ranchi and eradicating rabies in the region.

Find out more about our work in India here.

This World Vet Day we would love you to join us in celebrating our vets’ outstanding work, and please consider a donation to help our vets continue with their fantastic work.

Find out more about our Mayhew International programmes here and our international vet training programmes here.

Cover photo by Rowan Williams.

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