Tag Archives: Snowdrops

Muted Sunshine

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

Last Saturday I had an emergency trip to the opticians’. On Friday, or perhaps Thursday, I’d noticed flashes of light in the corner of my left eye. I thought it was a reflection from the headlights of a passing car catching the edge of my glasses, but when it happened again in the darkness of my back garden on Friday evening, then again when writing this blog on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn’t.

Having looked up what flashes of this type could mean, I called the opticians’ as soon as they opened. The receptionist asked lots of questions and said they were fully booked, but that she would speak to an optician and call me back. She did so within a few minutes, telling me they were going to fit me in and to come right away.

I was seen very quickly and fortunately, she didn’t find anything untoward. As a part of the aging process, the vitreous humour (the jelly like substance filling your eye) becomes more liquid and can pull away from the retina (made up of cells which capture the light and send information to your brain allowing you to see). As it pulls away, there’s a risk of tearing. Either the retina can be torn away from the back of the eye altogether (meaning you lose sight over whichever area becomes detached) or blood vessels can tear, with potentially the same effect if the cells of the retina die. Fortunately, my flashes were most likely caused by the edge of the retina lifting a little as the vitreous humour separated. Most likely it would stop in a few days, she said, and it seems to have done just that.

There was another unexpected surprise when I went to pay. I was expecting a fee of maybe £100 as she’d spent a lot of time looking at my eyes and used a lot of sophisticated equipment, but apparently the whole examination was covered by the NHS. Many of its services may be broken, but this one worked exactly as it ought to. A reminder then, that sometimes peripheral functions can be provided by the private sector, even if central services really are better served in public hands.

It’s been a good week at work. I inspected chicken farms on Monday and Tuesday and felt I was beginning to provide a useful service as my knowledge is growing over time. Once I have been doing it for a little longer, it would be a useful experience to recap by joining another more experienced vet on a visit, if I am allowed to. When you first visit with someone else, you pick up some knowledge and can grow your own as you work, but sometimes going back and watching someone else once the basic knowledge is in place can mean picking up on the subtler aspects that you maybe missed in the steep learning curve at the beginning. I’ll have to discuss it with my line manager though. One of the problems with being chronically understaffed is that there is little spare time for anything beyond the basic.

On Thursday, I had lunch with Fran, the minister of the church I’ve been attending in Lochmaben. It’s been my intention for a while to ask her whether there is anything I can usefully do in my (admittedly limited) spare time to help in the parish, but instead, we got talking about Shetland, where she worked for a few years, and then writing. It seems that she also writes and was very enthusiastic when I suggested she could come along to the writing club I belong to. I will ask about helping out later, but in the meantime, I seem to have made another friend.


The best things come to those who wait, or so it is said. Over the past years and months, I have had so many things to sort out (moving internationally is incredibly intense) that all kinds of other things have ended up on the back burner. A colleague and I had talked about getting a coffee machine at work, but somehow, I’d never got round to it. I had a lovely meal round at Donna’s last Friday and it came up that she had one, barely used, that she was going to take to a charity shop. I guess I should probably make a donation to charity now to cover what they’ve lost, but she gave it to me instead. It is now installed at work and I will buy pods and try it out next week. I hope my colleague is pleased!

I’ve also been putting off making any decisions about the garden, which needs to be tidied, but is taking a firm second place to the building work in the house. I had a gardener for a while, but he sacked me as I was never home. I had vaguely looked for another, but they aren’t easy to find. David, one of the local authority inspectors I work with, unexpectedly offered me gardening tools that were left in a rental house he part-owns and oversees. So now, without lifting a finger, I have a lawn-mower, a strimmer, a hedge cutter and various hoes and spades. Part of what put me off doing my own gardening was the expense and time it would take to go out and buy everything I need, and now I don’t have to. Though the last few years have been incredibly tough, and there are still struggles I’m going through, there are shafts of sunshine in my life that are beginning to break through the clouds.

Most of the pictures this week were taken on the way back from lunch on Thursday. The cafe was in Lochmaben and the road back to Dumfries tops a hill, then drops steeply away, giving marvellous views over the plain where Dumfries lies. As I drove over, I got glimpses of the sun, which was shining through cloud, creating a wonderfully dramatic sky. The village of Torthorwald is halfway down the hill and I often drive past it and look at the ruined castle, clinging to the hillside. This time, I couldn’t resist. Stopping the car, I got out, climbed over the gate and made my way over the muddy stream to see the ancient stones in their wonderful setting. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my wander.

And last, but not least, after the long, Arctic winters, where everything is silent and frozen for months on end, I was amazed to see that, even after the deep chill of last week, there were snowdrops growing in the shelter of the hawthorn hedges in Blackbird Lane. The birds are starting to sing again as well, on still mornings. On Wednesday, blackbirds vied with robins and greenfinch, as well as pink-footed geese and collared doves in a wonderful morning concerto. It was a reminder that spring is not too far away.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a lovely week.

Cross Compliance

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, ,

On Friday, I headed out to meet S. S is a locum vet, currently working with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and she is being sent out over half of Scotland to cover welfare inspections on farms. Many of these visits are what are called cross compliance visits.

In the UK, farmers and land owners can apply for subsidies from the government. In order to receive these subsidies, they have to follow some rules that are designed to ensure that they are taking good care of the land and any animals that they keep. There are a number of different rules, some of which are for protection of the land from pollution and ensuring boundary markers, such as hedges, are maintained. Others are related to identification of animals via ear tags and so on, but the ones APHA are responsible for are the animal welfare regulations.

You can read a bit more about the cross compliance rules here: Cross compliance

When carrying out a cross compliance welfare visit, many of the aspects of care we look at are similar to any welfare visit. We check whether animals are being looked at regularly and fed and watered, whether they have shelter from the weather and from predators, whether they are protected from injuries, and if they are taken care of when sick or injured. If the farmer is found to be in breech of some of the rules, an assessment is made on how serious the breech is and that can depend on whether he or she knew that they were breaking the rules, how severe the effect is in terms of animal suffering, whether the effect might have spread to other farms and whether it is rectifiable.

For example, a farmer who has been warned before that she needs to treat her sheep as they are infected with the mites that cause sheep scab, but has let the infection continue to the point where the sheep are suffering and some have died, and worse, hasn’t maintained her boundary fences so that it has spread to the neighbour’s sheep, has ticked all the boxes for a very serious breech. She should probably expect to have her subsidy substantially reduced.

The vast majority of visits we do are triggered by other events. These can be reports from neighbours or the market or abattoir. Every year there are routine visits to a certain number of farms. A very small percentage are randomized, but most are risk based, depending on past performance and previous breeches. Most of the farms we inspect still have good standards of welfare though and most farmers are doing their best and do care for their animals. Unfortunately, there are a few rogues, and those are probably the hardest to deal with.

As I discovered in Norway though, it’s rarely as simple as that any farmer who allows animal suffering to occur is an awful person. Very often problems arise when something happens and the animal owner finds themselves in a situation where it’s difficult to cope and then things spiral out of control. There’s a risk that docking someone’s subsidy when they’re already struggling financially might actually have a further negative effect on the animals, so it’s a nuanced situation where some of the decisions can be very difficult.

Next week, I will be spending some time in my old stomping ground of Stranraer. Thirty years ago, I worked in a practice there. The practice is long gone, but the farms I used to visit are still there. A few of the names that come up sound familiar, but so far I haven’t come across the double recognition of a surname and farm.

I will shortly be taking over responsibility for a TB outbreak over there and the farmer’s name is familiar, but he is on (to me) the wrong farm. So I don’t know whether it’s a new farmer, or whether it’s the same family and they’ve moved to a different place, or whether two families have intermarried. That is relatively common of course. Farming families are often connected and back in the day, I also joined Young Farmers when I lived there.

My memory is not that great, but of course the few farms and farmers I do remember were the ones I was friendly with, either at Young Farmers or through visiting their farms. When I started, I had to declare any possible conflicts of interest and I didn’t think I had any to declare as I was working in Dumfries. But over in Stranraer, there might be some minor considerations. Should I be dealing with the farmer who was an asshole on a date back in 1993, do I have to declare it? Probably not. He’s had plenty of time to mature since then, as have I. But I’m looking forward to spending some time there.

Viaduct at Glenluce

And last but not least, my solicitor has now made an official, written offer on the cottage I hope to buy. Keep your fingers crossed for me please. All being well, by Easter I may have a house of my own.