Like many other vets, when I see a homeless person and their dog on the street I feel like I want to do something to try and help them. So, one evening in 2015, when I was still a student at Bristol vets school, I decided to go out with my stethoscope and check over any homeless people’s dogs that I came across. What stuck with me after meeting a few people that night was how happy and relieved they were when I told them that their dogs had a healthy sounding heart.
After graduating and moving back to London I decided to try and create a more sustainable and structured way to provide a veterinary service to these dogs. Together with Charlie and another colleague we visited many homeless people in North London with worming tablets and a bag of veterinary supplies. Soon after going out a few times in London, I met Jade in April 2017. Jade had been doing the same thing in Westminster, coincidently operating under the same name. That was when StreetVet was born! Since then we have been working together, assisted along the way by our amazing team of volunteers, to try to marry the passion and willingness of veterinary practitioners with the need for veterinary care for homeless people’s dogs.
With teamwork and collaboration, I think that it is entirely feasible to check over and treat every homeless person’s dog in the country and, in doing so, make a small difference to the lives of some of the country’s most vulnerable people.
