Dear Reader

Did I enjoy the snow, no I did not? Even Percy came straight back in from the garden and put himself back to bed after his first encounter with it! On a positive note – the cold weather brought a lot of unusual birds to the garden although time will tell how many of our smaller birds, such as wrens will have fared!

As well as snow, January also saw the publication of Sir Patrick Bateson’s Report on dog breeding. One of the recommendations is for a system to collect data on dog breeds within veterinary practices. Whilst this may smack of Big Brother to some, I for one would welcome it as a means of obtaining a realistic profile of the dog population in the UK, warts and all! And who better to be at the forefront of this data collection than the veterinary nurse? Of course it would tell us nothing about the stray dog population and those animals that are never presented at a practice but it would go some way towards providing a profile of a significant proportion of ‘Dog UK’ in the twenty-first century!

This month’s VNJ focuses on the cardiac patient with articles from Charlotte Pace on the cat and dog as well as Gayle Hallowell on cardiac disease in the horse. For those of you who would not think twice about placing an i.v. catheter in small animal practice but might think twice if the patient was a horse, our senior vice president, Bonny Millar tells you all you need to know! Another council member, Louisa Baker, has written a report on the last Council meeting of 2009 in order to give members an insight into the business of BVNA.

This reminds me that the annual opportunity for you to think about whether you should apply to come onto Council is nearly here. Forms will be circulated in next month’s VNJ so it’s time to start thinking seriously about what you can bring to your representative organisation. BVNA develops as a dynamic representative body only if sufficient people are prepared to support its various functions and one such example is Rachel Lumbis who is stepping down as RCO for the Metropolitan region. Our RCOs do a fantastic job organising and running regional meetings and are an integral part of BVNA and Rachel has done sterling work for which we thank her most sincerely.

Finally I would like to thank Claire Jenkins for her letter this month. Having recently lost an elderly member of my canine family I can sympathise with her and I’m sure that this applies to many of those of you who read the journal. We must all agree that euthanasia is an option that must be considered when quality of life is in question but we should never minimise the effect that it has on so many of our clients for whom the decision must be so difficult and the loss unbearable.

Veterinary nurses can play a vital role in helping clients through this painful stage and this should never be underestimated.

Author

Sue Badger MEd CertEd VN Executive Editor

• VOL 25 • No2 • February 2010 • Veterinary Nursing Journal