4 minute read
For horses and ponies only
Jersey’s horses and ponies now have an independent vet practice dedicated solely to their wellbeing following the launch of Island Equine Veterinary Services. Report by Ruth Le Cocq
Specialist equine vet Róisín Wood, who has spent the last eight years working with a range of animals at New Era Veterinary Practice, decided it was time to focus her energy entirely towards her fascination with horses and ponies.
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‘It’s the first dedicated equine practice we’ve ever had in the Channel Islands,’ said Ró. ‘Historically I think there has not been enough horse work to sustain an equine practice, but I think clients got frustrated and I got frustrated. If you call a vet for your horse you want to get someone who has a specialism in horses, and that wasn’t always the case.’
Setting up as a ‘one-man band’ means Ró can also focus on her work/life balance. She realised things needed to change following the arrival of her son, Joey, nearly three years ago.
She explained that flexible working hours tend not to be an option within today’s veterinary industry, which currently has 2,500 unfilled vacancies in the UK.
‘These days you need to earn a fulltime wage and in a lot of families both parents have to work, but within the veterinary industry you either do the 36-hour on call shifts and the 17-hour days or pretend it’s a half job. That is one of the things that is destroying the industry because 85% of graduates are women. You lose people forever because it becomes so difficult to work, and then they just give it up completely and they never come back to it and it’s such a shame.’
Ró’s office is based at Haie Fleurie, the home of HFP Equestrian Limited, which has excellent facilities in St Martin. From there she welcomes vets from the UK’s Liphook Equine Hospital who carry out standing surgeries.
‘It’s a perfect base, especially for people who have horses that are lame and who don’t have stables, as they can come up to Haie Fleurie and use the surface there.’
Over the years Ró realised that the needs of Jersey’s horse clients are slightly different to those in the UK, and this has encouraged her to work to a higher standard.
‘Jersey has a small community feel even though there are more than 103,000 people here and probably 1,000 horses on the Island. It’s unique in that there are some really smart horses here and people have the money to spend on them but it’s quite difficult to refer horses. In the UK you send the horse down the road to the nearest equine hospital but, although I certainly do refer things to a specialist, I’ve been pushed to become better and do all sort of things that, at the beginning of my career, I wouldn’t have imagined myself doing.’
In fact, Ró never intended to set up an independent practice in Jersey. She was urged to do so by long-standing clients who appreciated her work ethic, her attention to detail and her ability to read both horses and clients to ensure they received the best service possible.
“It’s the first
‘The overriding thing is that I really love ponies, I really love horses and I really like people,’ said Ró. ‘When I was a child, I watched a million horses trot up and down and I used to go to Olympia to watch the dressage, and I can tell when they are just not moving right. They are all so different – the little Welsh ponies move in a certain way and the big warmbloods move in a certain way and it’s just knowing.’
Ró was a pony-mad girl living in London whose bedroom walls were plastered with magazines and pictures of horses and ponies.
‘There was a local inner city riding school and I would go there and lead the ponies around for nine hours so I could get rewarded by riding them back to the field bareback,’ she laughed. ‘I was always obsessed with animals and my father called me “The Little Goose Girl” because we lived in London, and we had this tiny little garden that was like a postage stamp, and it was full of chickens and ducks and guinea pigs and rabbits and various other things because I wanted them. My mother is the same as me, so we were always hatching things in the incubator and that was our favourite thing to do.’
Now Ró can’t imagine being anything but a vet although she admits to being a little bit daunted about being on call 24/7.
‘I think this is going to be the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ she said. ‘I’m certainly not afraid of hard work and I’m a horse person and I am fascinated by them, and I think you have to have that little bit of fire to be good at it.’
“When I was
