Animal Care

StreetVet has come a long way since vets Jade Statt and Sam Joseph were out alone walking the streets of London and offering free veterinary advice to homeless dog owners.  These days StreetVet is a registered charity offering outreach ‘street clinics’ in fifteen towns and cities across the UK.  Each city runs as a fully RCVS accredited veterinary practice providing free advice, treatment and basic essentials to hundreds of dogs.  But this is no small feat and it relies entirely on professional volunteers and industry support, such as the microchips provided by Animal Care.

StreetVet volunteers pride themselves on gaining the trust of their regular clients, and in doing so, helping to make their lives a bit easier in some small way.  After all, often their pet is their number one priority and concern so keeping them safe and well means a lot to the owners.  From the outset StreetVet have prioritised the task of ensuring that all patients in their care are implanted with a registered microchip.  This is essential given that their owner’s can experience sudden changes in circumstances, for example unexpected hospital stays.  Additionally the dogs often spend a large proportion of time outside which is great for stimulation and exercise but increases the opportunity for them to become separated from their owners.  With the provision of free microchips from Animal Care, StreetVet have been able to safely register many dogs that would never have been chipped, but also to update the registration details for dogs that have changed to a new owner often due to sad or unforeseen circumstances.  Practically this has enabled several of the dogs to be returned quickly to their owners when they have gone astray.  But on a more personal level this scheme has provided great peace of mind for many owners who are struggling and just can’t manage the cost or the physical requirements of getting their pet chipped or updating their registration details.

To date, Animal Care have provided StreetVet with over 600 microchips.  By enabling StreetVet’s volunteers to take the chips out to the dogs free of charge, Animal Care are vastly decreasing the number of dogs that may end up in rescue kennels and potentially unable to find new owners.  This is a truly invaluable service that is preventing many potential cases of loss and heartache in the homeless community and will protect that very special human-animal bond for many years to come.

Written by Roz Wright