I just had the shock of my life. I tried to arrange an appointment with the vet to have my cat’s teeth cleaned. The estimate they gave me comes to more than a thousand dollars! Even my own teeth don’t cost that much.

This started me thinking. I have felt vaguely dissatisfied with my vet services for some time. Not with the individual vets, to be sure. All have been pleasant and completely professional. I have no complaints about that.

My issue lies with the way the vet clinics are set up. First, they all seem to be big business. They are all part of larger franchises as far as I can tell. This imposes a certain way of working on them. What it means to me is I can’t just ring my vet up with a simple question. For one thing, I have to go through a receptionist and a bloody menu. For another, I don’t have a vet. I just have a ‘vet service’. That is my second thing. Every time I bring in my cat, a different vet sees me. It is impossible to build up a relationship with the vet, which I find important. She never gets to know me or my cat. All she does is read the notes from the last appointment. I find this very unsatisfactory. In Holland and other countries I have lived in, vet practices have single vets who know their customers and their animals. 

It doesn’t help that I live in Hastings. This is a big town but a small city. It isn’t even close to Wellington, let alone Auckland. There are options, but they are limited. What am I to do? 

I realise that Bondi Vet is staged and should not be held up as an example, but that is how I wish things were. I want a beautiful hunk of a man brimming with kindness and compassion who will leap into his car and drive all day to treat my cat and give me a hug. Lacking that, I would really like to just be able to have a single vet, like I have a single doctor, that I can build a professional relationship with who knows my animal so I don’t have to explain everything all over again every time I bring the cat in. I would also like a vet I can contact with simple questions without having to thread through receptionists and menus. I do realise and appreciate that there have to be limits. A vet can’t be on call all the time, not even if his name is Chris Brown, and the service has to make an income. I don’t have a problem with any of that. 

But I really hate the way things are in my part of New Zealand at this time.