Welfare charity promotes ‘rabbit friendly vets’
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The Rabbit Welfare Association & Fund (RWAF) is the only charity in the UK dedicated to improving the lives of pet rabbits through education and campaigning, and improving veterinary care of rabbits is a big part of our remit.
The organisation is keen to celebrate vet practices who provide the specialist skills and knowledge of these often misunderstood pets and promote the raising of standards amongst practices who may not have been so 'rabbit savvy' before.
For this reason, the RWAF has held a list of 'rabbit friendly vets' to allow owners to choose a vet in their area that has the skills to give their pets the right standard of treatment.
To be on the list, vets must be a practice membership of the RWAF and submit an application. Dr. Richard Saunders, the RWAF's vet specialist, assesses each application individually.
The assessment has just been recreated to make it more comprehensive, covering areas such as pain management, diagnosis, whether the practice has a rabbit waiting area and ward, and the skills of the vets themselves.
Vets that meet the standard are awarded either 'Silver' or 'Gold' status and issued with a 'rabbit friendly' logo and certificate. The RWAF always advise rabbit owners that using a rabbit savvy vet is vital and their rabbit friendly vet list is a great place to start. It is available to anyone and we urge owners to get in touch at hq@rabbitwelfare.co.uk to check for rabbit friendly vets in their area.
To promote the new assessment, practices that applied to be included in the new rabbit friendly vet list were entered in to a competition to find the most rabbit friendly vets in the UK.
All Gold Practices are of excellent standards and will include a vet who has completed a further qualification to make them eligible to attain this highest award. Both the vets and the practices are at the top end of the scale and it would be impossible to choose one clear winner from this category.
RWAF decided, with a view to commending practices that have raised standards and set an example to other practices to show how improvements can be made, to chose two winners from the Silver category.
The two Silver Practices that are classed as Highly Commended were Dee Collins (above), of Quantock Vet Surgery, Bridgwater, Somerset, and Deb Stafford (below), of Gilmoor Vet Surgery (Hare & Hounds branch).
 A list of all Silver and Gold standard practices are available at rabbitwelfare.co.uk
If your practice is rabbit friendly and wants rabbit owners in your area to know then please apply to be on the list. A pre-requisite of application is to be a member of the RWAF. Membership is £45 per month and includes 75 free comprehensive rabbit care guides to give or sell to clients, a £50 discount for all practice members at the RWAF annual conference, quarterly issues of our flagship magazine, Rabbiting On, for the waiting room (once the staff have had a chance to have a read!) and plenty more besides. Once you've joined the organisation you can submit an application.
The RWAF wants all rabbit owners to be looking out for the rabbit friendly logo and certificate to know that their beloved bunnies are in good hands.
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