I was on my way to a Pilates class when I spotted Paul waving at me urgently from across the road at the bus stop. ‘Can you help, Miss,’ he said. ‘It’s Gladys, she’s in a bad way.’ I looked down at his Staffordshire bull terrier and immediately saw what he meant. The 16-year-old dog was trembling, panting and appeared to be struggling to stand. She’d also lost a lot of weight. I’ve known Paul and Gladys for the past eight years, running into them on the street near my home in east London. Paul is not wealthy and has a couple of disabilities. He always calls me Miss.
‘She’s got bad in the past few days,’ he said. ‘She’s not eating, she just paces and can’t lie down. I took her to a vet yesterday. I think it’s time for her to go. But Miss, I just couldn’t do it on my own.’ As we bundled Gladys on to the bus for the short ride to her vet, I knew there were going to be some painful decisions.
‘There’s pressure on the vet to upsell tests and treatments that are not necessarily in the animal’s interests’
In my grandparents’ generation it was relatively simple to have a pet: you fed them, exercised them and then at some point they would get sick and die. Today, however, pet ownership has become more complicated and much more costly. It’s not cheap to end a pet’s life and Paul survives on Universal Credit. The Office for National Statistics estimates vet and other pet services have increased in price by around 60 per cent since 2015.
A couple of years ago, the Competition and Markets Authority began a review into Independent Vet Care Limited’s takeover of eight vet businesses (IVC is already the largest provider of vet services in the UK) as part of its monitoring of mergers and acquisitions. It’s now launched a larger investigation of the whole sector after receiving complaints about higher prices and worse services. So far, it’s found consumers may not be being given basic information, such as prescription costs, while owners are not always informed of the cost of treatment before agreeing to it.
Almost 60 per cent of veterinary practices in the UK are owned by large groups – up from 10 per cent a decade ago. Since 2013, 1,500 of the 5,000 practices have been bought by six large corporate groups: CVS, Independent Vet Care, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners. Pets at Home alone owns a quarter of the animal care market. Many also own pet food and pharmaceutical companies.
In 1999, a change to the law allowed non-vets to legally own veterinary practices. Along came big business and hungry shareholders who have inserted themselves between our pets and vets. The suspicion is that owners are paying the higher price to keep investors happy.
Dr Anna Judson, president of the British Veterinary Association, said it was important that people calculate the cost of having a pet over its lifetime, which for cats is around £11,000 and for dogs up to £15,700 – figures that don’t even include medical care for illness. She said there have also been changes in pet owners’ expectations, with many wanting to pursue treatment options for illnesses when in the past they may have opted to have their pet euthanised.
A veterinary friend of mine, Vanessa – who is currently on sabbatical because of the increased stresses of her job – agrees that pet owners’ expectations are sometimes unrealistic: ‘There can be a guilt felt by pet owners if they don’t investigate every option available, as if in some way they are failing their animal. At the same time there’s pressure on the vet to upsell tests and treatments that are not necessarily in the best interests of the animal. Most vets don’t want to work under these corporate pressures – the burnout is horrible, but we feel we have no choice.’
She also talked of people ‘humanising’ their pets: kittens turning up at surgery dressed in tutus; dogs in prams; and animals carried in baby-style slings which ensure their (usually) tiny paws never touch the ground. Such anthropomorphic behaviour is, according to researchers, actually damaging animals. Around half of all dogs in the UK are either overweight or obese, something that probably wasn’t true a generation or two ago (but, unsurprisingly, no one bothered to record such things back then).
The day I helped Paul and Gladys to the vet, I had to insist on an emergency consultation. After an examination, the vet agreed euthanasia was the kindest option. Paul and I stayed with his best friend while she silently gave her last breath, able to lie down for the first time in days without pain. The cost was £280 for the consultation and cremation. To get Gladys’s personal ashes would have been more than £400. I paid the lower bill. Paul, who is 60, wanted to pay me back monthly from his Universal Credit. Last week, he came to my house unexpectedly, handing me an envelope with cash. ‘And I thought you might like this.’ It was a framed photograph of Gladys. I’ve bumped into Paul since then, walking alone in the park.
