Hello everyone, and on behalf of all of us at PDSA, welcome to POR 2021. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pet wellbeing in the UK, which launches the 2021 PDSA Animal Wellbeing or PO report. My name's Sean Wensley.

I'm a senior vet at PDSA, and it's my pleasure to be introducing our panel of expert speakers who'll present and reflect on this year's poor findings, which assess effects on UK pets after 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period which has created significant disruption, change, and indeed, sadness and great challenge for many. Today's webinar will be recorded, and should be available for watching again a couple of hours after we've finished. I'd encourage you to tweet using the hashtag there on the screen screen #42021.

And the report's fully digital this year and available to read at the link there on the screen, PDSA.org.uk/42021.

I'd also encourage you to use the, the, the chat box for discussion. Some of our own PDSA, policy and campaigns team will be, in there answering some of the questions that you might raise or providing signposting, to, to various resources as we go along to look out for them. And then we'll use, please, the separate Q&A box, for submitting questions to the speakers, which we'll try to answer as many of, as possible after the talks.

I'll just say a couple of words if I may, before continuing about PDSA and the poor reports, and then I'll be introducing our lineup of speakers. So for those of you who, who don't know, PDSA is the UK's leading veterinary charity. We operate through a UK wide network of 48 pet hospitals, providing low cost and free veterinary care to the sick and injured pets of people in need, and we, currently promote promote responsible pet ownership through a multiplicity of channels and opportunities.

The poor report, the PDSA Animal wellbeing report is the largest, most comprehensive nationally representative insight into pet, dog, cat, and rabbit wellbeing in the UK. Produced by PDSA annually in conjunction with the, leading research organisation, YouGov. And we've been doing that now, unbelievably for those of us who've been involved in the outset, for 11 years.

The respondents are drawn from YouGov's panel of over a million UK adults, and we use demographic quotas and weighting where necessary to ensure that that sample is nationally representative, and particularly for age, gender and geographical region. The findings that you'll hear about today are from the field work undertaken in May 2021. And at that time, 4,579 owners of pet dogs, cats, and rabbits in the UK were surveyed.

And for those who'd like to, read some more, and we'd encourage you to about the poor reports and how we've used it over the years to, identify and monitor trends in pet wellbeing. Our open access, paper in the record is in the current issue, by coincidence rather than design. And that's driving evidence-based improvements for the UK's stressed, lonely, overweight, bored, aggressive, misunderstood, but loved companion animals.

And of our co-authors there, I'd just like to flag Vicky Betton, who many of you will remember from our previous launch webinar last year. Vicky's veterinary policy and campaigns manager at PDSA and is on maternity leave at the moment, but we know she's supporting us and this is a nice opportunity to say hello to her. And so to our speakers.

Thank you, thank you for that. But this year's poor report focuses on, welfare areas that the 2020 report suggested would be particularly impacted by the pandemic. Those being pet population, pet acquisition, pet behaviour, obesity, and preventive healthcare.

And I'm delighted to say we have leading speakers covering each of these areas who are as follows. Chris Lawrence is chair of the canine and Feline Sector Group, a group of influential organisations including PDSA, which advises the UK government on dog and cat health and welfare issues, and he'll focus on pet populations. Jo Oakton is president of the British Veterinary Nursing Association and she'll focus on pet acquisition.

Doctor Kevin McPeak is lecturer in clinical animal behaviour at the University of Edinburgh, and he'll focus on pet behaviour, building on Sarah Heath's excellent contribution on that same topic to last year's poor webinar. Alex German is Royal Canon Professor of Small animal medicine at the University of Liverpool, and he'll focus on diet and obesity. Daniela dos Santos is senior vice president of the British Veterinary Association, and she'll focus on preventive healthcare for us.

And Richard Hooker is PDSA's director of Veterinary Services, who'll focus on some of the impacts and responses that PDSA has made through this time of pandemic. So I'll hand out please to Chris Lawrence, our first speaker. Thank you.

Right. Thank you, Sean, for the introduction and thank you PDSA for inviting me to talk a bit about population dynamics, a key subject for the canine feline sector group. What I'm going to talk about, is here, and data really is critical, how it gets used, the importance of comparability, total populations and some of the dynamics that goes underneath that.

And a little bit at the end without consequences. So why do we need good data? Well, if you are planning anything, you need to know what it is that you are trying to plan.

And having the numbers of population and the dynamics that go underneath that are critical to any planning, whoever you are. That doesn't matter whether you're planning veterinary services, whether you're planning welfare services for organisations like PDSA, Dogs Trust, RSPCA. All of us need to plan forward, and we can't do that without knowing good data.

We need to evaluate to what our success rates are, and we can only do that if we can follow data over a period of time. I think one of the critical points I want to make this morning is how important that consistency is to be able to do some of this stuff. If you're going to change anything, you need to know what your baseline is and you need to know your aiming points, and you need to be able to monitor progress, of course.

And it's critical to a lot of the research that's done. It's no good knowing that 1% of one particular breed suffers from a problem unless you have some idea of the numbers of that breed or indeed that species. And I come back to this point about consistency, which I think is probably one of the most critical things that we need to talk about in terms of data this morning.

So, our methodology needs to be consistent, . And that means, inviting a, a consistent audience to provide your data, . And it means getting the timing right, so doing the survey at the same time of year with the same statistically significant group of people is critical to getting the methodology consistent.

And of course, because this is done by survey work, there is always an element of, of variability between different surveys, and, a, a, a range of results as well from each one. Peer review is quite important, I think when you're doing these sorts of things because if the data has been peer reviewed, it tends to have greater acceptability in areas like government and of course the PDSA, as Sean has just pointed out, the full report methodology has been peer reviewed and shown to be consistent and effective. What is interesting, I think, is that there, there are obviously other comparable surveys, and the one which I think most people would point towards is the PFMA survey.

PFMA also have been doing pet population surveys for many years, but they do it in a rather different manner, and we'll talk a little bit more about that difference in a minute. So where are we with total populations? What is surprising, given some of the headlines that we've seen in the press recently, is that the populations of dogs, cats, and rabbits are remarkably stable.

The changes of only 0.3% of a million in dog population don't equate to some of the earlier headlines and some of the press releases that we've seen in recent months about the increase in acquisition of dogs and cats, particularly. And that, of course, been reflected in the numbers of reports of animals coming in from abroad.

So let's just have a look at the population dynamics. I'm just going to talk about dogs for two reasons. One is that it's an area that I probably know most about, but more importantly, because it's the area where it is most easy to get consistent data.

So, if we look at first of all three species, then, if we look at the numbers that we need to replace every year to maintain that consistent population that I've just talked about, we assume that dogs live for 12 years, then we need about 8, 800,000 new dogs a year. And that's puppies coming in, that's not recycled animals going through rehoming organisations, but does include dogs imported from overseas. For cats, 892,000 and rabbits doing the same sum, about 112,000.

So that gives you a total input a year of animals coming into the dog cat rabbit population of roughly 1.8 million. And that ties in quite nicely with the figure that the poor reports come up with of 2 million new pets acquired a year, because of course, there will be some others, there'll be ferrets and guinea pigs and hamsters and all of those as well.

So that's quite nice confirmation that the potential numbers that we can guess at from life expectancy and total population are roughly right. So again, let's say I'm going to talk mainly about dogs because they're the, the, the easiest to get at. We know that Kennel Club register about quarter of a million dogs a year.

The Irish Dog Breeders Association said a few years back that they exported about 45,000 dogs to the UK. We reckon that there are probably about 100,000 normally coming from the EU, so these are puppies imported into the UK as well as street dogs. And an estimate of licenced breeders, that's those licenced by local authorities, so breeding 3 or more litters in one year, reckon to produce about 66,000 dogs.

So a total of 465,000 out of that 800,000 that we think we need to maintain the pet population, the dog population. That begs the question, of course, of where the other 135,000 come from, sorry, 335,000 come from. And the answer to that is probably the casual breeder, the breeder who has a very occasional litter or breeds, if you watch the BBC 3 programme the other day, with the aim of making a profit.

And that's clearly been relevant over this past pandemic year. One of the other bits of data that's interesting from, from the, the poll report this year, compared to previous years, and I'm using 2019 because clearly, any, any other numbers, will have been affected by the, by the pandemic. 2019, it said that 4000, 4% of dogs were acquired from overseas, and that's puppies and street dogs coming into this country.

Whereas for 2020 that's gone up to 10%, and that of course does substantiate the press material that's been there talking about increased numbers of dogs coming from overseas and also substantiates the fact that the number of import licences for commercial import of dogs has gone up very significantly over the pandemic year. So it's clear that there are more dogs coming from overseas. If you read the paper today, this is from today's Daily Telegraph, talking about the cost of dogs, which again, the headlines have all told us they've gone up dramatically over the past year, and you'll see the numbers there, where, they're reckoning that before the pandemic, the average cost was £876 whereas during the pandemic it went up to over 2000.

What's also interesting is this bit I've circled at the bottom, which talks about the number of adverts and how much they've gone, had gone up and have now gone back down again. And it's easy to speculate, what the explanation for all of this might be within a consistent population. My theory is this, that when the pandemic first started back in March 2020, when we were all told to stay at home, we weren't to go anywhere, we weren't to do anything, and the, the advice very strongly from CFSG to dog breeders was that they should not breed in those circumstances because of the difficulties of doing so and the difficulties of ensuring that the puppies were going to a good home.

So I think the number of UK breeders actually dropped quite significantly in the spring of 2020. And that that drop in UK breeding was then replaced by imports from overseas, and that's where a lot of the headlines have come from. Now that begs the question then that the PFMA report, which showed a very significant rise in dog population over the past year, why is that so divergent from the the poor report which shows a broadly consistent population.

And what is interesting, I think when you look at those two reports is that the PFMA report in previous years had been done by questioning on doorsteps. And because of the pandemic, they had to change the methodology to going over to electronic questioning. And the only explanation that I can think of for the difference between the two is that the methodology changed, and when you change methodology, I think it's inevitable that you end up with, with somewhat inconsistent results.

So in terms of the value of those two reports, if we want to look at population trends, I think we should be looking at the poll report rather than the PFAA report because of the change in methodology. So what are the consequences of all of this? Well, there is the thought that, relinquishment will go up as people return to work.

It's interesting from that article in the telegraph I just showed you that, that particular website is not seeing large numbers of animals being relinquished. And indeed, my contacts within, rehoming organisations generally say that that numbers in rehoming centres are relatively low still. There is the optional course of resale, and again, that telegraph article tells you that on that particular website, they're not seeing large numbers of animals being resold.

I question whether that's the case, because if you paid over the odds 3000 pounds for a puppy during the pandemic, and you find for whatever reason you don't intend to keep it, for the, for the future. I think a lot of people who may well have been the less responsible puppy purchasers, will be tempted to resell those animals on. And of course, there are huge welfare implications for that.

Of course there are information implications for behaviour and I know Kevin is going to talk about that both in terms of separation and socialisation. And of course, because we've had this large number of animals imported, there are significant disease control issues, and I guess Daniela is also going to talk about the increased risks of imported disease. And again, interesting that in the vet times that dropped through my door this morning, there is indeed a report of a newly detected imported disease.

So in summary then, we do need good data. Government bases its activity on it, welfare organisations base their activity on good data. But it does need to be consistent, and, the PDSA have to be applauded for providing a consistent methodology that allows us to look properly at trends over pet population.

There is a lot going on in this field at the moment, and I pointed out the deficiencies in how we measure current populations and particularly acquisition of puppies, and CFSG is looking at how we can get some better information and data on that, because if we want to regulate and improve welfare in those areas, then we need to look better, know better where these puppies come from. And there's a lot of further work to do on that. You'll be aware that the government in their animal welfare strategy, are talking in the Kept Animals bill of restricting imports of puppies, and also of some of the other horrors that come in like crop tears.

So there is much to do. So I'll hand back now to Sean to introduce the next speaker. That's fabulous.

Thank you, Chris. A great opener for us, and thanks very much to the, the work that you're coordinating through CFSG to emphasise the importance of data and good high quality dense data, and, and making that case, into the UK government. That's, that's brilliant for all of us.

Thank you. So, our next speaker. Is Joe Oakon, president of the British Veterinary Nursing Association, looking at pet acquisition.

Over to you, please, Joe. Thank you, I'm just going to share my screen. That should be up now.

Thank you, Sean, and thank you Chris as well. So, as my first slide says, I'm, I'm gonna be talking about pet acquisition, working in first opinion practise, this is definitely something that we've seen a change in over the past year, so it's been really interesting to, to look at the data around here as well. So, in practise, like I've just said, it certainly feels like demand has increased for for our services.

It has been difficult to know whether this is an increase in pets, or it's due to overwhelm short staffed veterinary practise, a backlog from lockdown, but there are a huge number of of factors within this. But it has felt like we are suddenly getting a lot more. New registration requests for newly acquired pets and not just puppies and kittens, but newly taken on pets as well.

And this doesn't really shown any signs of slowing down. We currently have a waiting time of over a month for first vaccinations, and I know we're not alone, as this is the case for many other local practises, and the data that we have here, it does illustrate that increase in demand that we have felt. So overall, 9% of pet owners got their their pet after the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

The figure was significantly higher for rabbit owners at 13% and dog at 10% and cat at 8%. And this actually equates to about 2 million pets in total purchased since the start of the pandemic. And that's a huge amount of new pets that we have had to meet the demand for, who have required veterinary visits and registration with us.

And in combination with all of the other factors affecting veterinary practises at the moment, it's been pretty tough going. So where have all of the, the new pets come from? So we've seen a definite increase in puppies and kittens being sold to young to new homes, with new inexperienced owners thinking they've got a 9 week old puppy or kitten here on examination is nearer the 5 week mark.

I hardly ever have seen a vet before. There seems to be a lot more accidental litters that we are finding are being blamed on the pandemic and owners not having yet got their pet neutered. And we work with a local charity who beat her record number of cats and kittens at any one time before her usual peak time in the summer.

And the figures on the slide here demonstrate where these new pets are coming from. They're relatively consistent, there aren't any sort of huge changes overall in where owners have got their pets from when you look at the population as a whole compared to before the pandemic. But there is one noticeable increase.

And that's pets from abroad. So overall, significantly more owners who got their pets since the start of the pandemic said that they've got their pet from abroad, compared to those who purchased before the pandemic, which was 4% and 10% is the new figure, as Chris mentioned in his slide as well. Significantly more dog owners who had got their pets since the start of the pandemic said that they had got their pet from abroad at 14% compared to those who purchased before the pandemic, which was 5%.

Cats brought over from abroad is overall less, but has seen an increase to 5%. That equates to 48,000 cats compared to those who purchased before the pandemic, where it sat at about 1%. We can see some from this figure here as well that there are actually some concerning reasons for getting a dog from abroad, and that is the open admission of a demand for dogs who have got duck tails and cropped ears, which obviously there have been campaigns against trying to get that prevented.

We've, we've definitely seen that in practise, a huge amount of dogs and with dubious paperwork that have apparently been a a. Brought in from abroad as well. And you can just see that it has definitely increased and there are risks with this as well.

And it's a lot of extra work for the veterinary practise trying to make sure that all of the paperwork is correct, when this animal having been transported from abroad, and it's quite a significant increase, in owners getting their dog from abroad. So are we seeing more new pet owners? So there are significantly more pet owners who said they've got their pets since the start of the pandemic, and they said that this was their first experience of owning a pet or this species of pets, as an adult, and that status sits at 47% compared to those who had owned their pets since before the start of the pandemic, which was 34%.

So yes, the data just show there is an increase in new pet owners. We can probably likely assume that this is due to the change in working environments as the new owners appear to be those who would potentially be in full-time work. In the last year we've seen people furloughed, workplaces have changed the way that they are using their, their members of team of staff, with more people working from home, who probably found they had more time, and the ability to take on a pet, and there may be people who wouldn't have taken on a new pet had there not been a pandemic in place.

So they would have probably been less able to commit to a new pet. And the pandemic has forced this change and then the sudden demand for new pets. 23% of owners who got their pet after the start of the pandemic said they got their pet because their lifestyle had changed due to the pandemic, meaning it was a good time to get a pet for them.

This was significantly higher for dog owners, at 29% than cat owners, which is at 18%. Significantly more owners, particularly dog and cat owners who purchased since the start of the pandemic, say that owning a pet makes them stressed. 27% compared to those who purchased before the pandemic.

And I wonder if this is because they have taken on that pet, without having the understanding of the commitment that's needed there. It's a sudden change in their lifestyle with all of the other things that have come in as well. And I think this is something that we probably need to to play a part in in the educator, so it all comes back to those pre-purchase discussions that we have and the commitment a pet takes as well.

And significantly more dog owners who had got their pets since the start of the pandemic said that they regretted getting their pets, and now it's at 4% compared to those who purchased before the pandemic, which sat at 1%. And is this a sign that we're going to start to see rescues pressured and having to take on more pets? Like I said, the charity we work with has had a massive rise in cats, and it's all pregnant cats.

They've not been neutered. They have got pregnant or they've got kittens, and their owners can't cope and surrender them to the charity. And I feel that in practise we're already seeing a new wave of new registrations of dogs, particularly that are between 8 months and 1 year old.

They've been rehomed or sold privately or through selling sites, and these dogs that are coming in have socialisation issues. They are generally unvaccinated, and they've been taken on by a new owner who has paid for them privately and thinking that they've had things done and they haven't, and they've been taken on from an owner who had bought the pet and they've returned to full-time work or realised that they can't commit to that pet. So although we're not seeing sort of the impact on the rescue centres yet, I do think it is out there and it's starting, and it is those dogs that are now sort of fully grown, hitting maturity.

They've not had the socialisation and training that they potentially should have cats that haven't been neutered, that are now coming into season are now wanting. To go out, getting pregnant, having kittens, and people are just unable to to cope with that. So I think that from this data, it just showed that with the stress levels that people are displaying and the regret that people are saying that they have with with taking on their new pet, we are potentially going to see a pressure on rescues there.

And then it's all down to us to try and educate those people that have re-bought these pets that have been sold on selling sites or sold previously, you know, privately, we're gonna, we're gonna have to give them support with these pets that have already got some issues going on as well. So when we look at rabbits, because I wanted to look at them separately because there has always been sort of a problem with, with the rabbit husbandry, and there are a lot of campaigns that are going on at the moment. And the data showed that sadly there are still 48% of rabbits living alone, despite all of the campaigns that have been going ahead.

And although this has increased by 2% since August 2020, so it's not seen another decline as it did last year, it's still a really, really high amount of rabbits that live alone. And owners whose rabbit lives alone are not more likely to be the new pet owners. Their reasons, as you can see that they had lost a rabbit and they didn't want to replace it.

Then they've got other reasons that they, they don't want to own more than one rabbit. The rabbit doesn't get on with other rabbits. 13% said they had never thought about getting another, so there are 13% that we can educate into how rabbits should be kept.

9% say they've not got around to getting a second rabbit, and then 6% said they can only afford one rabbit. So, you know, is the increase being there because the campaigns are working, or is it just sort of it staying around a similar number and there's not huge amounts of change. But I think it's certainly a sign that we do need to keep pushing the campaigns because we really do need to make this change.

They, they are a very, very neglected pet, and you can see from the data that we saw earlier, there has been a huge rise in rabbits being bought as pets, over. Cats and dogs during the pandemic. So it's an area that we really do need to push campaigns and offer support to new rabbit owners, and make sure that they are coming in for those checks, that they are being sold correctly, that we are making, making sure they've got the correct husbandry and housing available.

So rabbits have always got a bit of a rough end of the deal and the campaigns are there, and we just need to make sure as a profession that we are, we are supporting that and making sure that that education gets out there as well. So with all of the, the issues that we've sort of seen there with the pet acquisition, where they're coming from, the problems that we're seeing, the very young pets, we don't know where they're coming from. Not only are they young, they're usually weaned too early.

They're taken away from their mum too early. They are not worms, they're not fed a great diet, and when they come in, brought in by their new owners and the new owner is informed that they're far too young and they shouldn't have been rehomed at this point, there's usually they're kind of shocked about that, they feel a little bit like they've been had by the person they've got the puppy and kitten from. But it is a really important area, especially for RVNs that we can get involved in making sure that we, we give that sort of pre-purchase advice to help people with pet acquisition, and ensuring that they're getting their pets from a reputable source, that they know what pet they're getting and what they're getting into, what is needed for that specific breed.

It's, we need to be there to support these new owners and make them sort of aware that we are there for them, and we're not just there when the pet's sick and when there's a problem, we do want to help them. And I know it's difficult at the moment in practise because we are, we, the demand is far exceeding the supply that we've got available and it is exceptionally pressured. But we need to think outside the box, in how we can, we can get this information out there to people, whether that's via our social media, whether.

Via websites, whether it's by doing sort of live discussions with the team or even holding clinics because we're getting back to that point where we can potentially start holding nurse clinics, again in practise. We've certainly got a few days set up where we can, we can have nurse appointments. We just need to make sure they get the correct advice and we're supporting them from the start.

There's people taking on new pets still and the demand for our our appointments for new pets is still on the rise. The PDSA, which pet is a really good tool for professionals, so we can support clients in this area, for making sure that they are meeting the five welfare needs, that they can commit the time to the pet that they need to commit to, and the cost and the lifestyle implications, which are huge, and aren't always recognised by by people before they get their pet, how much work they do need to put into them. So pet acquisition has changed dramatically during the pandemic, it has increased so that pressure that we're feeling in practise is reflected in the data with the too many and more pets, that are needing to be seen, that are needing our services that we're needing to register and find appointments for, and we just need to make sure that we are there to support the potential fallout from this as well with the rehoming, and education is a really, really important part of our role in practise, and it's definitely something that nurses can lead on.

Thank you. Thanks very much indeed, Joe. That was, fabulous.

The usual, combination that you give us of, analysing the, the evidence, but coupling it with, with your practical experience, and emphasising the role of, of veterinary nurses. I know, Joe, that you were giving that presentation, from a veterinary practise, which you hadn't expected to be, previously. And because of an emergency, or to assist the team, you, you're not able to take part in the Q&A.

So, I properly thank you now for your contribution. There are several great areas there that I hope people pick up on in the discussion. I think the, the lack of pre-purchase education and that the, the significance of that as a root cause of so many of the, the welfare problems that we see.

I'm really pleased that you pulled out the, the blip in what had been a positive trend on, rabbit companionship, and just the general role that the, the critical animal welfare ambassadorial role that veterinary nurses can and do play. So, I'll thank you very much now and . A message to everyone, we're gonna keep going through the presentations, but it is fully our intention to have something of a panel discussion at the end, to do jot down questions, see some of them are appearing in the Q&A box already.

And I'd also like to say, just having a look through the, the chat box, a big welcome to those, who are joining us from around the world. It's fantastic to have some international attendees. Over to you.

That's Kevin McPeak, please. Thank you. Thank you, Sean.

So, hi, my name's Kev McPeak. I'm a veterinary behaviourist, and I'd like to thank the PDSA for asking me to review the behavioural data for the power report for this year. It's a resource I always look at every year and I think it is very valuable to the profession.

So it's important to note that historically, the poor report has asked owners to detail problem behaviours they wish to change in their pets. This year, there's been a change, sorry to interrupt. Do you mind just hitting the display settings at the top because we can see the next slide at the minute.

OK. You just go display settings and then just the one next to it and then go swap present of view. Can you see that one at the top?

Hang on, I've got. So just where it says display settings, next to where it says show taskbar. Yeah, that seems to have disappeared from mine.

Hang on. If you want to stop sharing then share again for us. So there we go.

That's it. Sorry, apologies. No, no problem at all.

So for 2020, there are two sets of behavioural data. The questions have been changed in order to provide an insight into the impact of COVID-19. So there's a set of data that looks at dogs and cats acquired before lockdown restrictions that came into place in March 2020.

And there's a set of data looking at dogs and cats acquired after that time. So looking at problem behaviours arising since they were acquired by their owners. So firstly, let's look at the data for dogs acquired before March 2020.

22% of dog owners, so that equates to around about 2.2.1 million dogs, reported that their dogs had shown new behaviours since March 2020.

The most commonly reported were new signs of barking or vocalisation for greater than a minute as someone seen outside of the window. Other signs included 5% had seen new signs of distress when home alone. Dogs spending more time and quiet areas of the home, showing signs of fear and signs of aggressive behaviour towards unfamiliar dogs.

Looking at the cat data before March 2020, so 17% of cat owners equating to around about 1.7 million cats reported new behaviours had arisen. The most common was new vocalisation, which was in 6% of cases, but others included house soiling, over grooming, nervous and fearful behaviour and hiding behaviour in the home.

Moving on to dogs acquired after March 2020, 39% are reported to jump at people, and 18% are barking or vocalising outside the window, and 18% are showing signs of distress when home alone, with a smaller proportion showing signs of fear and aggressive behaviour towards unfamiliar dogs. For cats, at 16% have seen timid and nervous behaviours with lower prevalences of hiding behaviour, fighting with other cats, aggressive behaviour towards people and cats in the home, and house soiling. Going back to the data that was introduced by Joe earlier, there are also more first time owners and apparently more stressed owners.

So owners acquiring a pet after March 2020, there are more of those who are first time owners compared to those before March 2020. More of those owners appeared to be stressed by their pets, and newer owners seem to be more stressed compared to owners who have had pets in the past. With that, 3% of owners acquiring a pet after March 2020 said they had regrets about acquiring the pet compared to just 1% and those owners who'd acquired before March 2020.

So what might these results mean looking at them all together? So if we consider the problem behaviours arising since lockdown restrictions began, it is first of all, important to note that there may be simply an increased reporting of some issues due to an increased time people are spending at home and potentially observing their pets. So it may well be that their dog was barking at the window for over a minute every day of the week, but they weren't observing that because they were at work during that time point.

There's also going to be some issues that have truly arisen since lockdown, potentially due to changes in routine. Regardless though, most of the reported behaviour signs that have arisen in this report are indicative of of stress. So whether the owners were previously just not observing them or whether they've arisen, they both deserve our attention.

For problem behaviours arising since acquisition for those dogs and cats acquired after March 2020, many of these problems could have arisen from a lack of adequate socialisation. Lockdown restrictions would have made it more challenging for owners to socialise their dogs and cats in the home, and for, for dogs primarily away from the home. And this is likely had an impact.

Finally, when we look at the actual pet owners, more of these owners are first time owners. They're generally more stressed and they have more regrets about acquiring their pets. So overall, there's a huge welfare concern for both animals and owners at this time.

So let's look at what owners have done about these problems. By far the most common source of information for both cat and dog owners is to look on websites for help about their pet's behaviour problem. So that should give us good information about how to provide.

Good information for those owners. When you look online, you know the variability in what you might find, particularly if you Google something like my dog is being aggressive, you're going to get a raft of different types of information, giving different solutions, some that might help and some that might worsen the problem in hand. Another interesting bit of data from from this section is looking at the breakdown of dog and cat owners seeking advice from veterinary professionals on these topics.

So 15% of dogs, dog owners sought advice from a veterinary professional about behaviour problems, and 5% were referred to a clinical animal behaviourist. For cats, 25% sought advice from a veterinary professional, but only 2% were referred to a clinical animal behaviourist. Now, this could be because veterinary practises or feel better equipped to provide feline behaviour advice.

It could be that they don't have anyone else to refer on to, but I offer some kind of solutions to that later on in my talk. So what might the veterinary profession expect to see when restrictions ease? So when owners return to work, they're going to have less time at home.

There's already been a reported increase in separation related problems. And if owners are returning to work and spending less time there, we would expect these might increase further, or new problems might be evident that weren't there before for pets who have simply not been accustomed to spending time on their own. With other returns to pre-pandemic routines, there is a potential increase in other behaviour problems related to inadequate socialisation.

Owners may be getting more visitors to their home and their garden, the dogs and cats may not have previously been used to. When dogs have been taken out with less social distancing, we would expect there might be more encounters with people and other dogs. Overall, we would expect to be more pets with behaviour problems, and this might increase the demand for behaviour advice, both from the veterinary profession and from behaviourist and trainers.

And there might be a potential increase in relinquishment of pets due to owner stress and regrets. Or as was raised earlier, selling on of pets, particularly if a large financial investment has been made to purchase those pets at the peak of lockdown last year. So I suggest a 3 point plan for what the profession, the veterinary profession can do to try and help.

0.1 is be the first port of call for all behaviour queries. 0.2 is providing behavioural first aid, and 0.3 is referring to a suitably qualified behaviourist.

And I'll now go through each of these quickly in turn. So, to be the first port of call for behaviour queries, I would recommend that each practise nominates a behaviorally focused vet and nurse to help deal with queries. These nominated members of staff can undertake courses and behaviour as part of their annual CPD and stay up to date with current best practise advice.

They can provide preventive behavioural advice for puppies and kittens and develop a practise protocol for dealing with any behavioural inquiries. There's a vast range of organisations offering webinars and conferences, and I've put a few of them here, which are of interest. The Association of Pet behaviour counsellors, British Veterinary behaviour Association.

They each run kind of conferences and webinars, as do the fellowship of Animal behaviour clinicians. The European College have an annual conference is taking place in October this year. It is online.

And again, there's lots of good information with current research in the field of behavioural medicine. There's also a range of free online resources and given that most people are looking online as the first port of call, these are particularly valuable. And if we can direct people to the right sources, we know that they should be getting the right advice.

At one such resource is a PDSA blog. This is just a little excerpt from how to prevent pet stress post lockdown article that can be accessed by veterinary professionals and owners and give some good tips on recognising and understanding body language and what to do if there's a problem. Moving on to 0.2 is providing behavioural first aid, so owners might contact the veterinary practise because of a single severe behavioural episode or escalated chronic issues.

And there's often a need for a vet to provide 1st, 1st aid advice and guidance prior to a behaviour consultation taking place. Guidance it would aim to maintain patient welfare, try and mitigate risk and maximise safety, particularly in cases of aggressive behaviour, to reduce the chance of recurrence of the problem in the short term and reduce the chance of any escalation or progression of that problem. And and within this, there's there's two things I think that we need to do as vets and nurses in practise.

So ruling out obvious medical problems that might be implicated in the behaviour problem and then having a simple ABC approach to giving first aid advice. For ruling out medical problems, you would do as you would for any other case presenting to you. So history taking, observing the patient, a physical examination, including orthopaedic exam, if possible.

And if you identify any medical problems, investigate, treat them as you would otherwise. Even if there's no problems that you find, consider they might still be implicated. If you do refer on to a veterinary behaviourists or a clinical animal behaviourist, they may spend 2 or 3 years with that patient.

They'll probably have a deeper insight into the history, and they might come back to you to say there's something not quite right here. I need you to take a look at this further. So be open minded to the fact that what we can gather within a kind of 10 minute consultation in practise.

It does not rule out every medical problem. We're just there to try and rule out the obvious ones and deal with them as they arise. There's a paper here I want to draw your attention to.

It's a really important paper that was published in 2019 called Pain and Problem behaviour in Cats. In that paper, there was a reported 28 to 82% prevalence of medical problems, particularly painful problems, for example, musculoskeletal pain. Amongst the behaviour referral case loads from several clinics across the world.

So these were often cases that had been referred for behavioural therapy where they were given a clean bill of health, but medical problems were implicated in the cause or or kind of maintenance of the problems. This paper is open access. You can, you can access it free online, and I would recommend anybody working in the event profession reads this to give a really good overview of how pain can play a role within problem behaviours and cats and dogs.

So moving on, I think it's important that we have a really quick and simple way of providing individualised first aid advice to clients who present with a behaviour problem. And and this ABC approach, which is kind of taken and adapted a bit from applied behaviour analysis, I think is a useful way of, of, of, of, of helping owners with these problems. So there are 3 things we need to find out about.

The first thing that the owners will mention is the behaviour. Often owners will mention, that might, that they'll mention a behaviour in a way that doesn't exact to tell us what's happening. But we want a clear description of the behaviour.

If an owner says, my dog's been really stubborn, my dog's been dominant, my dog's being possessive over food, and We can start to think what might be happening, but we are assuming what they mean and what we want is for us to describe behaviour in a way that you can visualise in your head precisely what observable behaviours that dog is doing. So if a dog was being possessed for own food, ask the owner, can you describe what your dog does and in what situations? So we're getting information about the behaviour.

We also then want to get information about the air or the antecedents. That's the triggers for the behaviour. So it could be that we have a dog who's growling around the football when the owner moves within a metre of the football.

So we've now got, we're starting to build up a picture of the behaviours the owners are concerned about and at what point these behaviours are arising. And then we can ask about the consequences. What does the owner do in response to the dog growling.

And, and with the ABC approach, we can start to give different pieces of advice specific to that owner in these problems to help manage and minimise the issue in the short term. So, for the dog who's growling when the owner comes within 1 metre of the football, we can ask the owner to feed the dog separately and give the dog space when eating. That avoids and minimises exposure to the triggers or antecedents.

If the dog is growling, and the dog is lightly growling to make the owner move away, repel the owner, we can ask the dog, the owner to give the dog space and move away to reduce the chance of that dog escalating its response to say, snapping or biting, and that helps to mean safety in the short term. So this ABC approach can be applied to any problem behaviour, and it's a quick and easy way to give first aid advice and the short time that you have with owners in general practise. The third point of my suggested plan is referring to suitably qualified behaviourist.

So first of all, you have to identify one in your area you can work with. You want to make sure that they can see canine and feline cases or have separate clinicians for each. As noted earlier, there's there's a bit of a difference between the percentage of cat owners who seek help.

And the percentage who referred there's a very low percentage referred on. So it may be that there's a shortage of feline behaviourists or the vets aren't aware that feline behaviourists exist, but there's a range of clinicians seem a multitude of species, and there are some feline specific clinicians. So make sure you have contacts for each.

I would also encourage vets to treat a referral to a behaviourist in the same way they would any other discipline, I the vet makes a formal referral, you should expect the behaviourist to only work on referral and provide a report back to you on their assessment and the behaviour modification programme they've compiled. I would avoid common pitfalls, which is asking the owner to find their own behaviourist or just providing a long list of trainers and behaviourists from the client to choose from. That isn't a formal referral.

It will often result in owners finding someone who might not be qualified or might not be giving the right advice. But I still commonly see this and and it's something I think we should be moving away from. To help you find who to refer to, there's a range of organisations.

The first in this list here being the Animal behaviour and Training Council. They're an umbrella organisation for practitioner organisations who accredit veterinary behaviourists and clinic animal behaviourists, and they also have registers for, for trainers as well. Two of the the kind of the two of the main practitioner organisations are the APBC and FABC and a third organisation is the certificated clinical Animal behaviourist CCABs.

So these are all different registers where you will get access to accredited clinical animal behaviourists and veterinary behaviourists. Although there are a range of different email links here, do you know that there are some clinicians who appear on all of these registers. So looking at each won't give you a whole range of new clinicians to look through, but all of the clinicians here are meeting requirements and you should be confident in referring on to them.

Finally, at the bottom, if you're specifically looking for a veterinary behaviourist, the RCVS find the vet tab on their website allows you to search for specialists in behavioural medicine and advanced practitioners and companion animal behaviour. So to summarise, with owner reported problems in the poor report, there's a high prevalence of canine and feline behaviour problems, both in pets acquired before and during lockdown, and these are a huge welfare concern both for the animals and the owners. When restrictions ease or end, we are expecting increased separation related problems and problems related to inadequate socialisation.

There will likely be an increased demand for behaviour advice and potentially an increase in relinquishment. And the advice for the veterinary profession, my suggested three point plan would be that a veterinary practise should be the first port of call for behaviour queries. Providing first behavioural first aid advice through ruling out medical problems and using a kind of simple ABC approach to give individualised management advice until at 0.3 you can refer to a suitably qualified behaviourist.

So thanks for listening and we'll pass on to the next speaker. That was excellent, thank you very much, Kevin. Absolutely loved your, your three point plan there, really succinct and, helpful, and I suppose it'll come up in the, in the discussion, but.

All of those wise and critical messages that you've just conveyed, you know, you, your colleagues in behavioural medicine and, and indeed charities like PDSA have been, emphasising for, for many years the, the importance of, of making sure that we approach these sorts of behaviour problems, professionally and competently. And I suppose the, the critical point now is, is just for us all to be so aware of what's potentially coming down the track. And even if we don't position ourselves as the first port of call, people are gonna start, our clients are gonna start asking us many, behaviour related questions anyway, so the more that we can draw on your advice, the better, I'm sure.

So next up we have Professor Alex J. I'm delighted to say, who's gonna be focusing on, on diets and obesity. Thanks very much, Alex.

Thank you, Sean. I hope everything's OK. I'm hoping everyone can see the slides and hear me.

Rather conveniently, someone's just started drilling outside my office window, so I hope we don't get too many gremlins for sound, so apologies if there's any noises off. Anyway, it's a pleasure to be part of this, poor report for 2020, once again, and I've been asked to review, some of the data on diet and obesity. And as with other speakers, our major focus here is looking at how COVID-19 and the pandemic might have affected things for pets and their owners.

If you push for time, the punch line is we're a little bit unsure, but there is a lot of good data here, as always with the poor report. So let's get right into it. Probably the first thing to look at is some of the diet-related changes in pets, and this report in particular, as, with the last speaker, has been looking very much at changes that have happened, in the current year versus last, last year, making use of that sort of incremental data.

So one thing of note was that some owners, a small proportion, and perhaps more for dogs compared with cats and rabbits, have said they've been feeding more treats, particularly sort of human foods and so on and so forth. Now what's that's small numbers, it maybe does reflect, some changes, I guess, in what has happened as a result of, the pandemic. These are, of course, self-reported data.

So as Chris Lawrence said before, we've got to be very cautious about interpreting data, and we're looking at associations. So, you know, take it, with, with, with, I guess, with a, with, with a little bit of care. If you were to ask me to speculate, and I'm happy to do so, you could suggest here that this increased, use of treats perhaps might increase the risk of weight gain and obesity.

Another area that er the poor reporter looked at was physical activity. And what I've done here is just graph up some of the data from the current report looking at dog walking. On the left we've got how often dogs are walked, and on the right, how long they're walked for.

And we're comparing Feb 2020 before the pandemic with Feb 2021. So on the face of it, one slightly negative trend perhaps is a reduction in frequency of walking. So fewer owners in 2021 reporting walking more than once per day compared with Feb 2020.

Again, that could potentially have a negative impact and therefore lead to potential weight gain. But you really need to look at the whole picture here. If you actually look at how long dogs are, are reportedly walked for, there has been a trend towards longer walks.

So it may be the effects of the pandemic. Perhaps it was, that this came out, of the initial phases where we were only allowed to leave the house once a day for, for, for activity and exercise. And it, but it does appear that that trend has continued.

The, the longer walks may be offsetting the frequency. Now one thing as a scientist studying obesity, I'm always fascinated with is not just our species, dogs and cats, but really, I guess any parallels that might be drawn with people. So if I just er change tack very slightly, the findings in this raw report do reflect some of the changes that have been seen in people.

And there's been quite a lot written about this over the years. Early on, there was a lot of concern that the COVID pandemic would lead to increases of, obesity through weight gain as a result of the behavioural changes that occurred. And this review identified changes in certainly food related behaviours.

Again, I think we can probably all recognise these from er from the pandemic. Increases in food shopping. A greater ordering of takeaway food, more alcohol consumption, or you could argue might have an impact on obesity.

Now in those early stages, people were really frightened and and and and perhaps panicking about this, and indeed these authors, as you can see, coined the phrase cove obesity, suggesting that stakeholders needed to take immediate action. However, a bit like we found with the, the poor report, there's not necessarily one clear cut trend that it that is gonna increase the risk. So if we actually look at physical activity in people.

Again, the pattern seems to be more mixed. So what I'm doing here now is gonna be reporting some data from the company called Withings. If you don't know, they market smart devices.

So they have Bluetooth scales that will interact with your smartphone, they have activity monitors and so on and so forth. And the advantage they've got is they can review big data on what is actually happening. So, when they reported their data, a little while ago, later on in the pandemic, they had noted that people were, were recording fewer steps, during that pandemic.

That was to an extent a bit country dependent, so USA, UK fewer steps, Germany, in fact, actually, increased steps there, interestingly. There was also less formal use of sports equipment, particularly gym facilities and, and tennis, tennis courts and so on and so forth, which again is perhaps not surprising given the restrictions that have been in place as a result of the pandemic. So potentially certain factors which could negatively impact on energy balance.

But on the plus side, it appeared that people became more creative about activity. So they found more evidence of people hiking. And more sessions such as yoga, particularly online sessions, which I think would chime with what I'm sure we all did in the early stage of the pandemic, taking, Joe Wicks's er PE classes online.

And then a final trend that they noted, which I think is particularly interesting was that they also noted people were sleeping more. And it's long been known that sleep patterns can impact on risk of obesity. So people that tend to shorter sleep for shorter periods are more at risk of developing obesity.

So I think a little bit like pets and what we saw in the poor report, the physical activity changes are somewhat mixed. Now I know what you're probably thinking at this particular point. This is all very interesting, but what actually about risk of obesity?

And again I want to look at people and pets in parallel. So people first, early on in the pandemic, there was again a lot of fear that those behavioural changes I've mentioned already would lead to weight gain. And again there, there were, there were a lot of fear, reports coming out.

And in fact, actually in an early study which was using self-reported weights, and this was the first stage of the pandemic where the lockdown was heaviest, and this is from the USA. It was suggested that people were gaining an average of just over 0.25 of a kilogramme every 10 days.

And if you're interested in social media, the hashtag quarantine15 was trending, and that was the feeling that people had gained on average 15 pounds as a result of those first few months of lockdown. However, this really comes back very much to what, Chris Lawrence was saying right at the start and the importance of analysing data and trends more precisely. I'm now gonna be showing you some data from a very large data set.

This is almost 20 million people, where weight records have been reported over time. And this is comparing change in weights in the year before the pandemic in green, versus change in weight post pandemic in orange. And if you can see here on the .

The X axis, this is pounds of change, so pluses here are gain in pounds, and minuses here are loss of pounds. And you can actually see that in both sets of data, there's a wide range. Some people gaining, some people losing, with most people on, on average just gaining a little bit, plus or minus 2.5 pounds, which is really sort of no significant change.

Of course there are some that gain significant amounts of weight. Likewise, there are some individuals that lose. But critically from the pandemic point of view, there's not a clear difference in trend.

So it would appear that weight change is kind of similar during the pandemic and after the pandemic compared with before. And so, and so it really does again reflect the need for us to look at, trends. Data from the same source, this is now almost 50 million records where people have had their weight recorded over time from 2017 onwards.

What you can actually see each year is that there is kind of a cyclical trend of weight gain. So early in the year there's a gain and it's lost later. Over time, however, there has been a gradual trend for increasing weight, about 1 pound per year on average.

The critical thing from the pandemic point of view is actually that whilst there has been a continued increase from pandemic, it's no different from the trends that were seen before. So the average. Gain during the pandemic was about 1 pound, and that was exactly the same as what was seen pre-pandemic.

So I think the reality is the jury is out as to whether these behavioural changes that we're seeing in terms of food activities and physical activity are actually, you know, manifesting in any changes in weight. So that, I guess, sets the scene nicely for what we have in the poor report. A small number of owners, 7% said that their pet may have gained weight during the pandemic, again, slightly more common for dogs than other species.

So perhaps that does suggest that there are at least are some individuals that have, have gained weight. The likely winners and losers may be a bit like what we saw in people, there may be some big winners and big losers, and we may, we may only be looking at the, the sort of tip of the iceberg here. And what I wanted to do is actually share some unpublished data that I've just been analysing with you.

This is a, a large data set of weight records, almost a quarter of a million cats from UK veterinary practises. And what we're doing here is comparing weight records in quarter 4 of 2019 with quarter 4 of 2020, pre-pandemic versus pandemic. And actually, interestingly, this is down and dirty kind of data, but the average weight of cats over this time has actually been down rather than up.

Now I don't know in any way whether this is pandemic related. I think there's a fair bit of caution with these data, but it certainly doesn't give a clear pattern that the pandemic has led to significant changes in weight, at least for cats. So I think I take that as a positive.

I, I always give very negative talks. For me, that is kind of a positive. We do still have major issues with obesity, but I don't know necessarily the pandemic has had a greater impact.

There is also one other note of caution for obesity care. And a final mention in the pool report was that when owners were questioned about weight loss advice, some owners were interested in seeking weight loss advice online. Unclear as to whether that is, just searching online or whether they'd be interested in veterinary advice.

Now 4% might seem pretty low, but let's put that in context. In this population, only somewhere between 3 and 8% of owners said their pets were overweight. And that reflects once again this tendency, sadly for owners not to fully recognise the problem.

But I'm making a big leak here. If we found, if we assume that most of those that are interested in online advice. Might be interested, maybe the same ones as that recognise their pet is overweight.

There might be an avenue for us within the veterinary profession to, to, to impact them. And so very briefly, I just want to talk with you some, talk through some of the experiences we've had at Liverpool at our weight management clinic with remote obesity care consultations. As a part of the pandemic, we've not been able to see cases face to face.

So we've basically gone online and we've found we've been able to adapt our processes pretty well. So we can get records from veterinary surgeons or of his, for the, the histories of, the case. We can actually interact with the owners online through questionnaires to get a lot of the detail we need in terms of, their, their particular problems, diet and activity and so on and so forth.

And we've very much found creative ways of weighing pets at home. For example, making use of luggage scales and pet carriers, and also of course bathroom scales as you can see nicely er within er this video. The other thing we've been doing is making use of remote, body condition scoring using photographs.

It was actually a method that we'd validated previously, but didn't realise we kind of need to, to use it. So we can use photographs taken laterally and, from above and can get a rough idea of condition. Not as good as getting your hands on, of course.

And then the other thing, of course, sadly, is the old death by Zoom, where we do the consultations online. And this here is, Georgia Woods, who's the nurse that, assists me in running the clinic. Now we have found with our experience, we've had some degree of success in some patients.

So for example, this dog Bentley, was a, was an elderly dog with severe arthritis, and we did a partial weight loss plan where he lost 15%. This younger cat, Alan, had severe obesity, and he lost 37% of his weight in, in just over 6 months. So there's certainly clear, possibilities of success.

However, it's not all good news. If we review the data we have from when we started in September 2020. We've seen 52 cases totally, mostly dogs.

Half of them are still sort of ongoing, so I, I can only, only have part of the data. But if you look at those that have sort of reached an outcome, actually only a 50% have actually reached the target weight we set, so 20%, which is down on what we would typically get with face to face where it's about 60%. Now of course numbers might change over time as these 27 cases carry on through, but I suspect we won't have as much success as we normally do.

And one of the key things is that, about half of these ones that didn't reach target never really ever start. So you make the initial contact, they seem interested, but they never actually even return the questionnaires and the paperwork. And that may reflect some differences in online or it might again reflect pandemic issues.

So briefly. What have we, what do we know from the poor report 2021? We know there have been changes in feeding patterns and physical activity which is mixed and very similar pa patterns we're seeing in, in people.

There's a possible impact on weight gain, but we need further study. However, on the, the good side, there may be at least some owners that will be moti motivated to undertake obesity care online. So I think that has per potential, but, sadly it's a work in progress and it maybe our outcomes aren't quite as good as face to face.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Alex, that was superb as always. Absolutely brilliant to see our data, interpreted in the context of the, the broader body of, of research being conducted at the minute.

I love the one health take, that's, fabulous, and that, shared practical experience of, of shifting to an online model. So that, that was absolutely fascinating, thank you. To our next speaker, Daniela Dos Santos, senior vice president of British Veterinary Association.

Hi, Daniela, and thank you. And thank you to the PTSA for inviting me back this year to talk about preventative healthcare and how the pandemic has impacted on that. At the beginning of the pandemic, the veterinary profession temporarily went down for 3 weeks, offering emergency care only.

And over time, they have gradually reverted back to to offering a wide range of services in a safer manner as they can, and that does vary from practise to practise. Now there was real concern coming from various different stakeholders, members of the public, and even the profession, perhaps preventative healthcare fall behind due to these delays. And so, I was delighted to be tasked looking at preventative healthcare during the pandemic, and I actually think that some of the results are quite surprising.

So my presentation will focus on findings relating to nutrient vaccinations, both primary and boosters, microchipping, flea and worming treatment, and insurance, as well as whether pets were registered with vets. And as I've already said, there were concerns that there would be a difficulty in accessing veterinary care during the pandemic, levels of veterinary care that were being provided and also financial constraints may have an impact. On preventative healthcare.

Let's see what data actually shows us. So I'm gonna start with the dog. Overall, across the categories, there were no significant changes from August 2020 to February 2021, which I guess can be seen as a positive in that the pandemic did not undo the great work that has happened over the previous years.

I guess the negative is that we can't be certain that it didn't slow down progress either. There were, however, some aspects that were slightly lower than pre-pandemic levels, including wormers and numbers registered at vets, as well as primary and booster vaccinations. What I think is interesting to look at the reasons given for not having annual booster vaccination.

Now this is a selection of reasons why. What this does show me is that we cannot become complacent and fall into a trap of blaming the pandemic for any lack of progress. Because if we actually look at what we're seeing here, only 3 reasons could potentially linked to the pandemic, and all of, of all of those, they are pretty low on the list of reasons for not having annual boosters.

So so far, it doesn't look like the pandemic has had a significant impact on preventative healthcare when it comes to dogs. What about our feline friends? We see a slightly different picture here with both positive and negative stories coming through in the data.

I remember specifically, I was BVA president at the time when the pandemic started. I remember specifically real concerns, and they have been raised so far today, that from charities and welfare organisations that veterinary practises were not ming cats and the risk that there would be an associated welfare problem and population problem that came with that. Now, Get that bear out.

Overall, there were very significant changes with the levels of preventative healthcare cats received. There's no significant change in levels of insurance, parasite treatment or registration with veterinary practises. However, There were significant increases in both microchipping and neutering.

Now, I would love to say that microchipping was due to all the hard work in previous years on educating owners on responsible pet ownership. I do suspect that the government's manifesto pledge of compulsory microchipping in cats also had an impact. What stands out to me is the story on neutering.

Data is a hugely positive story. As I said, for the 1st 3 weeks of lockdown, veterinary practises reverted to emergency work only. And from that point, there were concerns that vets would not be priorities in prioritising cat neutering, given the strains on services due to a variety of reasons, existing workforce pressures, changes in ways of working, such as social distancing, for example.

The reality is clearly the opposite, despite all concerns, veterinary practises continue to neuter cats. And in fact, when owners were asked why they hadn't neutered cats, 44% said they didn't know. 35% gave another reason not related to the pandemic.

And of all the reasons given, Only 6% said it was because the practise wasn't offering neutering at the moment because of the pandemic. 5% said they were shielding and didn't want to leave home, and 8% said they were worried about public contact due to COVID-19. I am exceptionally proud of the veterinary profession because this shows how hostile they were and how they prioritised welfare outcomes in the work they were carrying out.

There were significant decreases in both primary and annual booster vaccinations. Again, I just want to take a quick look at the reasons given for that. It's really interesting to look at the reasons across the board, and you'll see that some of them are similar to what was given for dogs.

Again, only very few of these can be directly linked to COVID. So the significant decrease in vaccination uptake cannot be attributed to COVID or the ways in which practise is working, at least not to any significant degree. And the concerns that practises have not been able to keep up with demand for preventative healthcare doesn't match the data that's been presented in the report.

Now on to rabbits. Now there wasn't a template slide, just rabbits on it. This data is all about the bunnies, and actually, we have another mixed picture when it comes to rabbits.

There was a really varied picture when it came to preventative healthcare and rabbits. There were significant increases in both neutering and insured rabbits, and showing that the veinary profession was still prioritising neutering. And a significant recovery back to pre-pandemic levels when it came to microchipping and flu treatment.

Booster vaccinations, there were no significant change compared to August 2020. They were still lower than pre-pandemic levels. There's no significant change in primary vaccination courses or registration with veterinary practises.

And again, I just want to dig into why there was that issue with the vaccination. Again, a lot of the reasons given are very similar to cats and dogs, and there is a pattern here. Only very few of these reasons can be linked to the pandemic.

So it isn't, so it's interesting, as I say, to look across the reasons given, not having booster vaccinations. There were so many commonalities, and the three most common reasons, no because they said their pets had no contact with other animals. We no longer see the diseases vaccinated against, and primary vaccinations last for life.

If this pandemic has given us one opportunity, it is to push on the education around vaccination and dispel the myths that persist, because it is clearly those myths are still preventing people from coming in with their pet vaccination. So in conclusion, when it comes to preventative healthcare, very little can be directly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. And despite a huge amount of work and successes over the years, we still have work to do.

We still have significant numbers of animals that are not neutered, as you can see on the screen, 2.8 million dogs, 1 million cats, and just under 340,000 rabbits are still not neutered. What we mustn't do is let the pandemic and sorry, and when we look at boosters, we're still in a very similar situation.

2 million. Dogs haven't received regular boosters, 4.2 million cats and 450,000 rabbits.

What we mustn't do is let the pandemic distract or deviate our paths as we continue to work together, improving the health of the nation's pets. This is a prime opportunity now where people are more aware and understanding of infectious diseases, particularly around boosters, to do some work there. I am exceptionally proud of the veterinary profession and how they have stood up during this pandemic, how they've continued to provide services, and as we can see from the data here, done an absolutely brilliant job in continuing to provide preventative healthcare for our nation's pets.

That's me, thank you. Thanks so much, Daniella. Thanks for the, the pan professionals view in your BBA role and also your, your practitioner's view.

Seems like a keep calm and carry on type message, and recognising how much effort has gone into making, making sure that's the case, and we haven't been completely derailed by the, by the pandemic. Thanks so much. So I think continuing the theme really from Daniella and all of the speakers now into the world of a busy, charitable veterinary setting.

It's over to Richard Hooker, who's our director of veterinary services at PDSA. Thanks, Richard. Thanks Sean, I, I don't want to maybe start by just talking about, the recognition, I think, since March 2020, that there's been a period full of, challenges and changes, of course, and, and this has impacted upon all of our lives and of course those of our pet population.

So for a few minutes, I plan to look through and pull together some of the key themes really of how the pandemic has impacted on our pet population. A recap really of the headlines, but also how it's affected, delivery of veterinary services. Including those from PDSA and then take a brief look at the wider impacts on the veteran profession as we've continued to provide services for our pet patients, the care and treatment that they've needed through, through the lockdown and the restrictions.

And I think the poorer report has focused this year on the impact of the pandemic on our pets, and I think within PDSA and across the sector, our hope is that the findings will be used to drive change, to help us look at how we can mitigate some of the potential welfare impacts of the restrictions and the lockdown and and and what comes beyond that. And and really to emphasise that poor is not the answer, poor is the merely a prompt, the, the evidence and insight that perhaps steers our actions and our and our progress on, on, on managing some of the significant challenge affecting the five welfare needs of the UK's pet population. Let's go to the next slide.

So, how has the pandemic impacted on our pets, just those, those key themes, and I think most interesting is the fact that there hasn't from our insight here, been a statistically significant increase in the estimated pet dog, cat, and rabbit populations since March 2020. But that there has been a significant number of owners who were new to pet ownership during this year. So I think it remains important to convey the necessity of pre-purchase research for for all prospective owners, including the consideration of an owner's ability to provide for their pets 5 welfare needs throughout their lifetime.

The report also found an increased proportion of pets that have been imported from abroad, during the pandemic, as we've heard, particularly dogs. And I think that's something we need to be considerate in terms of the impacts that particularly has on their health and behaviours. This presents many challenges for frontline vetting professionals with emerging disease risks, as we've heard, issues such as ear cropping, and of course, some of the issues dealing with some suspected illegal imports in part of this mix.

I think we're also seeing, as we've heard, some stress related behaviour in pets compared to before, some, some increases in that. And a key example of this is, of course, as we've heard, separation distress in dogs. And, and really that's not to be unexpected.

But for us it's therefore important for us to develop really accessible information to support owners who experience problem behaviours in their pets, making sure that we refer appropriately and that we take the time to signpost to other support such as that available from Animal behaviour and Training council. And, and that becomes, I think, even, even more important as we've seen. Some owners have also noticed that their pets have gained weight er during lockdown, and we've also and perhaps more importantly, know that pet owners still don't regularly and easily recognise the link between obesity and and various health problems.

PDSA and others have a long standing commitment to tackling pet obesity, and certainly having seen those impacts clinically in our everyday work at PDSA that prompts us to take action and, and later this year we will be launching a further obesity and exercise campaign as part of our educational sort of interventions to help owners identify overweight pets and provide them the support that they need to support their pet's weight loss. Finally, when looking at preventive care, we are pleased to find that despite the restrictions on many practices' ability to carry out routine healthcare during the first lockdown and beyond, there have been very little overall change to the proportion of pets ultimately receiving preventive healthcare. And whilst at PDSA we've always been a strong advocate of the benefits of vaccination and neutering, during the pandemic, we have needed to pause our own preventive care services in order to prioritise emergency and and life saving care.

And of course this was done very much with a heavy heart, and we hope that as we move forward into a world without restrictions, we will once again be able to provide these services for our clients as soon as we have the capacity to do so. We just simply couldn't stretch our face to face services to provide preventive care alongside those cases that had nowhere else to turn for life saving and urgent treatment interventions required from our teams. The pandemic has led to a lot of changes for PDSA especially for our dedicated pet hospital teams.

We have seen challenges to the accessibility of veterinary care and at PDSA many of our clients are vulnerable or isolated, and the pandemic restrictions often made it harder for those who needed us most to gain access to services. Restrictions on service availability have also been a challenge, and like everyone delivering veterinary services, the need for COVID safe ways of working, making sure that we could implement and prioritise cases during restrictions, some of these things have put huge challenges on, on our teams and have alongside things like test and trace and the need to self isolate. The consequences and impacts of homeworking and er dealing with school closures for many of our teams.

And we know within the profession there is major challenges across the profession in terms of staff recruitment and retention, coupled with all of these factors, stretching our teams even further and placing quite high levels of stress upon them during this, this period of time. The pandemic, I think, has also led to wider concerns about the ongoing affordability of veterinary care. And, and while, you know, providing a much welcomed safety net, the government furlough scheme, it has still meant that for many people, incomes have decreased and there have been job losses, and that's led to more owners finding themselves in financial hardship.

And, and we expect these impacts to be over a longer term and to potentially continue. So we definitely feel that there will be more pet owners seeking out charitable veterinary care as we go forward for their pets. And, and we in PDSA need to be ready for this, to be there and to be ready to help them.

As I've said, over the last 18 months across the veterinary sector, we have adapted and and risen to many, many challenges. And at PDSA we've continued to prioritise life saving and emergency care for our face to face consultation capacity. And to enable this, we've introduced a new system of remote consultations, telemedicine if you like, allowing us to reach more pet owners than would otherwise have been the case.

And using the skills of our, our veterinary teams, we've supported and treated patients through this alternative route. And also where required, we've used it to triage and to direct those urgent cases into the hospital setting. We've undertaken over a million remote consultations since March 2020, which is quite staggering.

And through this time we've also taken care to analyse our clinical outcomes, and our treatment, approach and look at patient safety. And reassuringly, there's no evidence to suggest that by delivering service in this hybrid way, that there's been any detrimental impact in terms of outcomes or or patient health. So I think that things like, you know, remote consultations will be something that we would anticipate to take forward, so we can treat even more pets, and support them, those some of those most vulnerable in society.

Like across, the, the profession, we've all had to adapt using PPE, putting the screens in place, dealing with social distancing. Managing clients outside the building during sort of the peaks of the lockdowns, whilst their pets receive treatment inside, and adjusting rotors and ways of working to create safe rotors and bubbles and fixed pairs to reduce the impact of isolation or the potential for the spread of disease amongst our teens. Some big challenges have sat within that area and it's a credit to teams across the UK across all veterinary services who have adapted and risen and managed to deliver veterinary care in quite difficult circumstances.

We've also ensured to continue to provide reliable and evidence-based veterinary advice for our owners, and we've done that in PDSA through our pet Health hub, on our, on our website. And we've also worked to provide frameworks in which we can communicate more effectively with our clients digitally, they can email documentation, book appointments online, essential things that we've had to change in order to deliver our services effectively and something that we will look to continue. And I think the sector er and the profession has come together like it's never done so before and in a really coordinated way.

The collaborative approach, especially in providing guidance and reassurance to pet owners and to pet businesses through the pandemic, such as the tremendous work of the canine and Freeline sector group, are perhaps a real shining light of what can be done. But perhaps we don't need to just work in this way when we're in a crisis. We can learn to adapt and to work in this way for greater impacts in more normal times too.

So, so what next for the, the veterinary sector? I think, I think the impacts of the pandemic, as we've heard, will be with us for some time to come. I think we should take forward the aspects of what we've learned and make work in difficult times into the future to help us.

We've seen the impacts that we, we. We started to see with with Paul in terms of things that we need to be conscious of and to recognise as being emerging or urgent welfare concerns. And we need to plan our actions accordingly and take action where action is required.

And I think as a sector, And across the profession, we will continue to work to safeguard the welfare needs of pets and, and, and we need to make sure that as those further impacts start to emerge that we're well prepared and planning and able to manage them. We need to also be effective and consistent and target education in in what we do, especially on the areas where we believe there'll be the biggest impact on the biggest issues, and determine whether that's something that needs to be supplemented with legislative reform or further collaborative campaigns and working together. And I think importantly we also need to keep veterinary care accessible for all pets.

And at PDSA we want to continue to be there for as many pets as possible and moving into the future, working alongside veterinary colleagues who have been and will continue to be a real lifeline for pets. Without doubt there are some significant challenges within the profession, and we have to find ways to adapt and change the way of work. And I think the growing challenge that we have in terms of clinical skills shortage in the UK of vets and vet nurses and the support teams that go with them will be something that we have to find a way to manage and mitigate our way through.

I think PDSA remains committed to helping those pets whose owners are in financial hardship. And fortunately through a previous careful financial management within the charity, we are in a fortunate position to be able to invest in our services as demand for them continues to increase. Investing in a replacement programme for our hospitals to give us more physical capacity.

But also invest in the growing, the need for the size of our teams, and that means that we're actively recruiting vets and nurses across the UK specifically to help us, help even more pets and provide that veterinary care to more pet owners who need our help the most. I think finally, the pandemic has taught us many things as a sector. It's taught us just how adaptable, flexible and determined we can all be.

And I think many of the challenges we've hit through the pandemic, other challenges and the emerging challenges will continue. And I think that we we can continue to protect and promote the health and welfare of the UK population, but only by doing so, by being adaptable, collaborative, and continue to to strive to to manage some of the big risks and challenges ahead, some of which, the poor report in 2021 has given us a heads up as to what those issues might be. So thank you all, and thank you all on behalf of PDSA for your continued support of both PDSA and the work that goes into to the poor report.

Thank you. That that was terrific. Thanks very much, Richard.

I'm sure a lot of those operational points and challenges will resonate with, many of the vets and vet nurses who are in the audience who've, faced and faced into a similar and adapted similarly, but I thought it'll be a brilliant window for those who aren't spending their days, in, in veterinary practises, hands-on. And I think there's a real shared feeling, certainly amongst all of us at PDSA and hopefully to very many of the, the attendees today of this sort of the spirit that you've alluded to there, and the way we, we have all stood shoulder to shoulder and, and can be absolutely proud of, of what we've achieved together. That brings us then to the end of our presentations and into.

A, a panel discussion which we've got some time for, I'm happy to say. Could I ask all of the speakers to, turn their cameras on, please? We've got a few questions in the chat, and I think they, in the Q&A box, sorry, and I think they spread quite nicely across the speakers, just mentioning again that Joe Oakton was, was predisposed at her own vetting practise.

So, we don't have her just now. But let's go to the, let's start at the top and and see where we get to. So this one first up for, for Chris, I think there's a a spread here of some quite specific questions, and then there are some more lend themselves more to discussion, but I think this is quite specific.

Are puppy farmers included in the casual breeders stated in the 300,000 that you mentioned, Chris? Yeah, absolutely. I, it depends how you define a puppy farmer, doesn't it?

I think my definition will be breeding without any regard to welfare of, of the, the puppies or the breeding stock. And there's no question that many of that, deficit in the numbers come from party farms. This is the reason why, CFSG continues to lobby the government to make anyone who breeds a dog register or licence.

We, we believe that as long as there is a threshold below which we, you can breed, then people will always hide underneath the threshold. So we want to register small breeders, very small breeders and occasional breeders, and make sure that, the more professional breeders are licenced and inspected, and that protects the welfare of the both the breeding stock and the puppies. Thanks, Chris.

And I think on this next one, you did touch on this in your presentation, but we'll, go through it, regardless. It's, I was just asking why is the population data different, in the PDSA report from the PFMA reports, with it having suggested that the numbers have increased quite dramatically. So.

Yeah, I think there, there's, there's always been a bit of a difference between past PFMA reports and and PDSA reports. But what's happened with the PFMA report is that if you look at the trend line, the population has gone up quite significantly, and I think that's down to changing survey methodology going from face to face surveys as they have been done in the past to online surveys, whereas the PDSA survey technique has been consistent all the way through. And this really was my point about consistency is that the PDSA reports have always been consistent, whereas the PFMA methodology has changed over the years.

If you change the methodology, you almost certainly get a different answer. Thanks. And actually just not to ignore the second part of that question, this perception which I'm sure this person isn't alone in perceiving from our findings of vet visiting vets, there does seem to be a lot of new puppies and kittens about.

I suppose we would recognise that there's, there's some regional variation, potentially, and perhaps also, I don't know, Chris, Daniel or others, maybe pent up demand, and then people starting to revisit once restrictions at ease. I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that? I, I, I think actually you.

Seeing a slightly different owner population, I think that a lot of the more responsible owners who would have gone to a UK breeder, done a lot of research, probably waited several months to get their puppy because there wasn't one immediately available. I think a lot of those people actually didn't get puppies over the pandemic because they couldn't, they couldn't travel. The UK production wasn't there, whereas if you're looking online, then that's where the increase in imported numbers comes in.

And I think the online buyer found it much easier to acquire than the more responsible, more considered approach that you would get from the more traditional buyer. It will be interesting to see if this next year. The the more traditional responsible buyer actually then comes back up again, and as UK breeding picks up.

Interesting to know what Daniela thinks about numbers coming into, into practise. Yeah. Yeah, so speaking as a vetting practise, I probably do feel like I'm seeing more, but if I take a step back, we're working in very different ways.

You know, our ways of working are very different. We're under increasing amounts of pressure for various other reasons, but we already had the workforce problem. We've now got, you know, people off due to COVID or self isolation and so on.

So There is a possibility that we feel like that because the ways we're working have changed and therefore fortunately we feel like we are spending more time on puppies and kittens. So so I think that there may be, I think someone has written down in a chat somewhere, an observe a bias there in terms of what's actually going on. Yeah.

Thank you. The next two, I suppose we can consider alongside each other. The first is, do we know why people choose to import animals as pets rather than rehome from UK centres?

And the next one just goes a step further with it, I suppose, a, a proposed reason why some people choose not to rehome. I've heard people get pets from abroad as the rehoming charities put too difficult demands on home expectations. What, are your views on this?

That's, that's been a long-term accusation on rehoming charities and I, I, I think it has some justification too, . I There, there is a secondary issue here, and, and that is whether the people who are rejected by rehoming charities actually are the right people to have the dog or cat in the first place. And if you really want to be controversial, you could say that that the, the imported animal that can come in easily, probably imported through.

Some of them are certainly through criminal organisations purely for profit, therefore easy to get, no filtering, and, and it reflects the, the, the, the, the modern social trend of wanting everything today because I can order it by 4:30 and have it delivered by Amazon tomorrow. Which is not how we should be buying pets. Yeah, Daniel, please.

I think there's possibly an emotional aspect to this as well. You know, these are decisions based on emotion quite often. And if people are faced with stories of how these pets are living abroad and, and, and so on, that there is this emotional aspect, this desire to want to help and rescue.

So I, I think it's probably more human behaviour than anything else and something that . I'm practise I'm seeing more of, and it, I have to say it never comes from a bad place, it always comes from I wanted to help. And I think there's an education point there to make too that we need to educate people, .

Where if they want to help these, these stray populations, particularly in Eastern Europe, places like Romania, taking dogs out doesn't control the street population. What we need to do is to persuade people to put the resource into neutering the street dog population, controlling it that way. Removing dogs from a population is never going to control it.

Mm, so that's the, the, it's a rational part of of that complex. Richard. Yeah, but I think there's probably an overarching issue which is a lack of supply of good, well bred puppies in the UK versus the demand, and I think until we all face into how that can change, and .

Enable pet ownership to be achievable by remaining UK and finding well bred, well sourced, of good genetic stock, puppies. I think, I think that therein lies. The opportunity for unscrupulous, whether that's abroad or puppy farming or whatever, to be able to find a foothold in that marketplace.

And I, I think, I think cracking that problem would would potentially be the big game changer in terms of sourcing appropriate. And, and the, the ongoing impacts of that. We've, we've talked about, you know, this isn't just acquisition, this is a lifetime of potential health and behavioural issues.

So, so that I think is the root cause that we we need to find ways to inevitably consider and perhaps consider things that we don't feel comfortable considering in order to address that to. Thank you. And we've got some cracking, supplementary information coming through the chat box.

So one, thanks very much to Carrie Westgarth, who with her co-authors did an excellent paper in vet record last year on this very topic. So she's reminded us that she has her research paper on reasons for importing from overseas, and has included the link there. Thanks Carrie.

And we did also ask some questions in this year's report about motivations, for. Choosing to, buy a pack that had been imported, and the answers are, are posted there, the top 1, 38% was, they had no preference where the pack came from, they just happened to come from abroad, which I suppose is linked into the the availability point. OK, I wonder, I mean, just before we move on from that, I know it's, it's, it's not easy to, to solve, but you did make the point, Chris, that there's a bit something of a perennial issue there about this sort of striking the balance between rehoming charities wanting, understandably, to make sure that their animals go to, good quality homes versus this idea that they set the bar too high and and it and it becomes a barrier to going to that source.

Do we have any, I'm sure we could spend the next 20 minutes on this, but just any thoughts on how best to strike that balance, conscious that we don't have a rep from a rehoming charity here, but Chris with long experience in the sector. I think actually it's beginning to change anyway because I think it's been forced on rehoming charities having to do, their home visits remotely. So looking at Google questionnaires, all of those sort of things, and then when a pet's been delivered to a home, doing a quick check at that point, and I think I've seen a change in, in the charities that I have contact with, being.

More, more effective. I know Battersea changed some years ago from doing physical checks of homes to doing it all remotely and found that it was extraordinarily successful, and I think the trend is for charities to do that. I think it will improve the situation.

I absolutely agree with with Richard. We need to encourage good breeders. That's really useful, thanks.

And yeah, apologies to those in the audience who you know are from rehoming charities. I'm sure, the comment from Lindsey would resonate. It's very sad that rescues get this reputation for being difficult.

They're just trying to find the best homes for their animals. So, yeah, just interested to explore how we best strike that balance. That's really, useful, Chris, thanks.

OK, next up from the Q&A box, I think this one's for Kevin. Can the populations pre 2020 be comparable? To to the post March 2020 population, assuming the majority of the newly acquired pets post March 2020 will be young.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think that we can't directly compare this year's behavioural data to previous because the nature of the main question changed. So when we think about the kind of pre-2020 population, owners were always asked to Report behaviours they would like to change in their pets, whereas the the new survey asked of those acquired before March 2020, what behaviours they had seen arising.

Since that point and and for those acquired after March 2020, like newly acquired dogs, what behaviours they had seen. We, we did think about the the kind of potential age effect of newly acquired pets being kind of younger, particularly if there were more kittens and puppies. We did go back and although I didn't present it, we did go back and explore that ahead of today's presentation.

And it didn't seem to be an obvious age effect, but it was something we thought about too. So really good question. Yeah, thanks Kevin.

And just before we move on, just also from the, the chat there, Nicky Tro at Cats Protection has said Cats protection stopped home visiting in their centres in 2012. Hands-free homing has been hugely successful with lower returns rate compared to pre pandemic, so thanks for sharing that, Nicky, . Then I think the one for, for you, Kevin, this one from Jennifer, I've noticed as people stop distancing and shops get busier, I find anxiety and stress and grumpiness increasing.

To what extent will this philtre down to our pets, do you think? I think that's a really good point. I think it may philtre down to your pets in a couple of ways.

I think if If individual owners are concerned about other people and those people's dogs being too close to them from a COVID risk, it may make them more concerned when they're on a walk with their dog, if they're coming into close proximity, they may then act differently and and it's highly likely their dogs might pick up on that. So it may have a direct impact on how their dog might perceive that situation. And I think generally it's been a stressful time for, for probably all of us.

So I guess that that may change our habits, our behaviour, and I think most of our pets can be highly sensitive to that. So I think it could, it could have an impact, without a doubt, yeah. Yeah, and good to be aware of.

I just realised that I've obscured the, our panellists with my chat box so I could look at the discussion, but did anyone else have anything that they wanted to add in on that? I think that was fairly specific to to Kevin. OK.

And, and sticking with you, Kevin, for lockdown impacted or first time owner reactivity style issues, is there a need for owner support groups was this person's question. Yeah, owner support groups have been quite commonplace for many years, and I think that there seems to be an explosion of them, particularly on social media, like, like Facebook, where those forums that may contain thousands or tens of thousands of owners. I think there's a lot of potential benefit for owners to have support.

If they're dealing with a problem behaviour in their dog or cat or other species, and they can feel quite overwhelmed, quite isolated. And I think there's a benefit for owners seeing that they're not alone in that situation. But whether that's best achieved with a large population of other owners, is, is a difficult one because the, the concerns are that the Often what happens is they might post a concern they have about their dog, and they may within 5 minutes have 150 responses on specific advice on how to deal with that, that may not all be appropriate and may actually worsen the problem.

So I think owner support groups are probably best offered by a clinician at Offered in small groups and and moderated by someone who's a pet professional who may set rules on what other owners should contribute so that it's not a free for all where I can post my dog bit me when I took a ball away, and then they Got 100 different options and what to do. I think that's a poor use and potentially dangerous. But if it's a support group that's structured to help owners know that they're not alone, I think there are, there are benefits there, definitely.

Yeah. So, so potentially a good idea, but fraught with some difficulties if used incorrectly, I think. Comment, thank you.

Sam Gaines from RSPCA has also come in just on those points about rehoming. She says there remains a lots of myths around rehoming policies which in some cases seem to prevent people from even considering UK adoption. There's definitely a major shift away from blanket policies and focusing on an individual's needs.

So thank, thank you, Sam. Over to Alex now, on your obesity discussion. For Alex, do you feel practicers would be more able to charge for a VN clinic if it was online, I they pay before accessing rather than this expectation that an RVN time is free.

It's an excellent question. I mean, I think that has been a, a, a sort of constant issue we've always had with weight management, irrespective of online or face to face, how should you charge for it. And I guess the model we tend still to use mostly is the sort of free advice, professional advice, and the practise obviously gets the money from the therapeutic diet that there is often sold as a result of it.

And that may or may not be an issue, but one of the challenges is balancing the barrier that you introduced with a charge, against the, the, the sort of downside then that maybe motivation is slightly less, . I don't have an answer for it, and I don't know necessarily whether online is better or worse. I, I think you could certainly speculate that there, again, there could be opportunities.

Richard was talking about opportunities for changing practises and we've, you know, experimented, say, with our online obesity care, packages. And here there may be some parallels that we could look at with how things are done for humans. So taking one example in the online field, people may be familiar with Noom as, as a sort of online package which is sold.

Obviously other products are available, such as WW. And I know to get people hooked, one of the things they do is start off by saying, actually for the 1st 2 weeks, this is what it's gonna cost us to run the package, but you can decide how much you pay from nothing through to even more than their suggestion. And I suppose the advantage there is one of the big things is you've got to sell value.

And the hope that in that way as a hook might be that if people are thinking, right, well, I'll pay a couple of quid for this cause I'm a bit dubious. If you can demonstrate success in those first few weeks, then maybe, that will encourage them then to go on and, and pay and you know, and, and, and sign up for. For a longer period.

And we've done some studies where we know that 1st 4 weeks is actually fundamental to overall success. So I guess perhaps there are ways that you can tap into that more with the online space. Whether it's easier or not than face to face, I, I'm not sure.

I'll be yours. Thanks, Alex. And I see we're ticking down to half past gently, so I think let's go to, Daniella and just ask this question.

It says 23% of dogs not received boosters, what percentage would the veterinary profession see as an improvement? I think there's two ways of answering this question. If we want to go down straight down the science route, we'll say, well, herd immunity for temp is XY, and that's what we want to see.

But actually, I don't think that that's a useful way of doing it. I think what would be a positive is to see the percentage not vaccinated coming down, and the reasons being given. Reducing in terms of, you know, those myths, is not needed after a primary vaccination.

The diseases don't exist anymore. So for me, I'm looking yes over the overall number, but also the reasons given for not vaccinating, because that would demonstrate that we have provided a good enough education to owners, that we are listening to them and engaging with them and trying to dispel the myths that are around vaccines. That's great, thanks, thanks Daniella.

I think that probably brings us to time so that we don't overrun. Thanks so much to all of you for sticking to time. I'm just going to share a closing screen.

Apologies. OK, so yeah, we are approaching 1:30 and it's gonna be nice to, to finish on time and, and it's important that I do leave some time for some, thanks. There's another just point of housekeeping, which is that there's gonna be a short feedback survey, emailed to all attendees, so if you're able to find the time to complete that, please do.

And really the thanks that I have to relay are not least to the webinar bet. Thank you as ever for giving us this fabulous platform and all this support for putting on this webinar. For me, all of my colleagues at PDSA, who, as you can imagine, do absolutely phenomenal amount of work to compile and disseminate the poor reports.

All the speakers today, all of you, and of course, Gerriton, who've not only put time into, preparing these fantastic presentations, but you also produced some short videos to supplement and enhance our, our digital version of the report. And on that note, also to thank very much now the senior vice president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Doctor Mandisa Green, who also gave us, an introductory short video, which we're extremely grateful for. We would say we're indebted to all of our contributors and supporters, as Richard said, and that's both past and present, so everything's today, but everything that's come before, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

And we know that that that there are very, very many of you in the audience who we work shoulder to shoulder, with, and we really value that. We're keen to foster further collaborations always. So if you would like to speak to us about the poor report after this event, or ask any further questions, then there's an email, a dedicated email address there, Paul at PDSA.org.uk.

And I think it's time maybe just for a closing word from Richard, as PDA director. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, Sean, that was, that was very well done, so I'm not sure how much I can add to that, other than to, to thank everybody who's supported us as an organisation and, and, and are so incredibly grateful for all the input, the hard work and Seldon talked about, the collaboration that goes on across the sector.

It's only in doing so that we can all jointly make a make work towards making a real difference, lifelong difference for the pets of the UK and improve their welfare outcomes. So thank you all, thank you for your continued support and enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Thank you.