THERE’S an old boy I often see in the park opposite my place. He moves slowly, as does his grumpy little dog, which in animal years is about as old as him.
His dog growls at my dog while the two of us talk about football.
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He has a moan about his team, I moan about mine. You know the kind of thing.
One time he had something other than football to complain about though.
A vet had just taken £1,500 off him to treat his dog for something.
He told me, with a shrug, that he couldn’t really afford it but asked what else he was supposed to do.
Now, for all I know, the treatment was no more or less than what the dog needed.
And the price charged was appropriate. Let’s hope so.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the vet saw a devoted elderly owner of an elderly dog who could be persuaded to pay whatever figure the vet said was necessary to make his pet better.
Pardon my cynicism, but ever since I became a dog owner four years ago, my alarm bells have been ringing about the conduct of veterinary care. I’ve got no beef with most vets.
But I do have concerns about some of the businesses they work for.
When I first got a dog, being clueless, I just forked out whatever I was told to fork out to treat a bit of a cough or a bad belly.
For one bout of tummy upset a vet offered me a whole range of possible treatments up to and including an overnight stay in an animal hospital to facilitate a range of tests, with costs running into thousands.
Don’t worry, they said, the insurance will pay.
I thought a number of things about this.
Firstly, the insurance paying is all very well but in the end that bumps prices up for everybody.
Secondly, I wasn’t far off being talked into paying for that overnight hospital stay and others may well have been persuaded.
Thirdly, he just had a bad belly which would probably clear up of its own accord. Which it did.
Lesson learned. Then he got a limp. I was sold some pills, which didn’t work. Then I was sold an X-ray, which didn’t show anything. Then I was sold a more expensive scan, which didn’t show anything either.
And then I was packed off for a reassuringly expensive appointment at a specialist animal hospital, which was all interior design, fancy furniture and artisan coffee.
I was greeted by a delegation consisting of a senior vet, a junior vet, a nurse and an intern.
I was shown X-rays of my dog’s good leg and his limping leg. They looked identical to me, but I was assured, gravely, that he had something wrong with an elbow.
This something necessitated several thousand pounds worth of surgery, which they could do that very day.
As it happened, I’d missed the bit on the information form about not feeding him ahead of the appointment, so they couldn’t do it there and then after all, and I’d have to bring him back the following day.
This gave me some thinking time. Never mind the money — again, the insurance would pay — but did I really want to put my dog through all this?
Lucky escape
Especially as the rehab would mean he’d have to remain caged for weeks and not walked for months.
I decided to get a second opinion, but didn’t bother because the limp soon vanished, and he’s been fine ever since.
This was more than two years ago. In the interim, the veterinary business — and “business” is the right word — has come under the scrutiny of the Competition and Markets Authority.
There are about 5,000 veterinary practices in the UK and more than half are owned by one of six big corporates — CVS, Independent Vetcare Ltd, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners.
The CMA is looking at whether a lack of competition has contributed to soaring prices.
It is also looking at whether vets are being paid bonuses for offering specific treatments, if they are marking up the price of medicines and even if they are over-charging for pet cremations, which are sold to customers when they are obviously at their most vulnerable.
I did eventually get a second opinion on my dog’s mystery elbow condition.
An eminent specialist in the field of canine orthopaedics told me that both my dog, and I, had had a narrow escape.
Don’t get me wrong. Vets are incredibly clever people who go into veterinary science in order to care for animals.
They’ve worked very hard and deserve to be well paid for their work.
However, it does look that many of them now find themselves working for big companies hell-bent on extracting as much money from a nation of pet-lovers as they can possibly get away with.
Lewis, me… world’s best dressed men
BY the time you read this, New York’s Met Gala should have taken place.
And, as usual, my invitation didn’t make it across the Atlantic. Looks like they managed without me. Again.
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This year the theme was menswear, so I thought I’d have been in with a shout, given how smart I look in some of the best clobber West Brom’s club shop has to offer.
But no, nothing.
It’s some consolation to know that one of our own, Lewis Hamilton, was due to co-chair this year’s event.
And a well-dressed smartypants he is, too.
Every year some of the world’s most fashionable people gather on the first Monday of May to showcase some of the most ridiculous outfits on God’s green Earth.
And all to raise money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Not exactly for the benefit of the world’s most needy then, but a worthy cause nevertheless, I’m sure you’ll agree.
BANK A HOL FOR AUTUMN
WHY so many bank holidays all at once?
Two for Easter and two in May. Three bank holiday weekends in five weeks. What’s that about?
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They’re all very nice and everything but why not spread them about it a bit.
Spring is great, but it’s the autumn and winter when we need more cheering up.
Can we not switch one of them to the middle of the long stretch between the August bank holiday and Christmas Day?
Everyone seems mad for Halloween these days so let’s bung one in then.
An All Saint’s Day bank holiday around November 1 has a nice ring to it.
CHERISH VE DAY STORIES
TIME flies. It doesn’t feel like ten years since I was covering the 70th anniversary of VE Day.
Back then, on the radio, we were encouraging young people to ask their grandparents what they remembered of the end of the war.
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I realised I’d never really asked my mum, who was six in 1945, for her memories.
She lived in a small flat in Zagreb in what was then Yugoslavia. She said she remembered soldiers in the back yard.
“But whose soldiers?” I asked. She said she couldn’t remember and that I should ask her older sister.
So I called my aunty Vesna in Zagreb and she told me they were retreating Germans and they had come knocking on the door asking to borrow a fleischmaschine (a meat grinder).
My grandmother told them she didn’t have one, which was untrue, and Vesna remembered fearing they might come in and have a look.
Now this story isn’t going to change anyone’s understanding of the end of the war, but I’m so glad to have heard it.
Because my beloved aunt died a month later. If I’d never made that call, that scene would be lost forever.
These kinds of questions are still worth asking our elderly loved ones – be they about war, peace or life in general.
Then we can carry these memories forward for them.
HARRY A BIT DIM
IS it OK to feel a bit sorry for Prince Harry?
More than anything else I see someone totally out of his depth who can’t see the reputational self-harm he’s perpetrating with every utterance he makes.
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Beneath it all, I suspect there’s a decent, if intellectually limited, bloke, certainly not clever enough to steer a course between the institution he was born into and the wife he chose.
I dread to think where it all ends.
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