Good evening, everybody, and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's, rabbit Awareness webinar. How wonderful to be talking about our bouncy children again.
So, fantastic news. Before I start, I would like to say a very big thank you to our sponsors, Burgess, for their kind sponsorship because without them, we wouldn't be able to bring you this webinar, and we all know how important burgers are in the Rabbit Awareness Week, around the country. We will hear from Ellie, the Nutritional and scientific communication Officer, later on in the presentation.
So, stay tuned for that. She's got some fantastic information for you. Before we get started in introducing our speaker this evening, just a little bit of housekeeping for those of you that haven't been with us before.
If you have any questions, please just, move your mouse over the screen. You will see that the control bar, it's normally a little black bar at the bottom, pops up. There's a Q&A box there.
If you just pop your questions in there, and we will hold those all over to the end. Please also remember that we do record these sessions, and they will be up on the webinar vet website in the next 24 to 36 hours. So if you do want to rewind or go back to slides, it's not something we can do this evening.
But certainly, when you log on and you go and watch the recording, you can pop backwards and forwards to your heart's content. It is my privilege this evening to introduce to you Ray Walters, and she is a passionate advocate for small animal welfare and has been a director of the Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund for over 25 years and has been a rabbit guardian for over 40 years. She's actively involved in advancing evidence-based care through education, research, and collaboration.
With a strong commitment to improving welfare through education, Ray regularly speaks at events and webinars, sharing practical insights on how rabbit guardians can make informed decisions for their animals and improve their welfare. Ray, welcome to the webinar, vet, and it's over to you. Thank you very much, thank you very much for inviting me here tonight and happy rabbit Awareness Week everybody.
And also huge thanks from us at Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund to Burgess for everything they do for Rabbit Awareness Week. So this presentation is all about the rabbit friendly vet directory. We've changed it this year, it's got, a modular format and we've published the standards that apply.
A huge thanks to John and Richard who created the standards that we've published and also to Elaine who does a fantastic job of managing the whole thing. So this is on behalf of all four of us. In case anyone doesn't know who we are, who are Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund, just to quickly say that we are a membership organisation, so we produce Rabbit in our magazine, which if you join us, which we would love you to, you get that magazine, 4 times a year delivered to you, printed version, and we are also, A registered charity, so Rabbit Welfare Fund, that's the registered charity, that's the charity that does all the campaigning, the education and all the lobbying for change, although we tend to just go by Rabbit Welfare Association Fund, we do everything under that umbrella.
The current situation is that we started the rabbit friendly practise scheme back in the late 1990s. It's been going that long. So as you can imagine, over that time, we've had a few changes, several upgrades, and then, as I mentioned, this new modular scheme that was launched at the end of last year.
As things are now, we've got 133 practises at silver level, we've got 16 practises at silver plus level, and 31 practises at gold level. And because we were waiting for the new modular system to, to, to come in to be launched, we've got now 84 practises going through the reapplication process. We introduced the silver plus level because we recognised that there was a, a bit of a, a space between silver and gold where practises were, were excellent.
They were really excellent in some areas, but not enough to become gold standard. Gold standard can you. Only achieve gold standard if you've got an advanced practitioner or a specialist vet.
So, but we didn't, we, we wanted to make that recognition for practises that were excellent in every other way. That's why the new, the new level was introduced, that was quite recently, about 2 years ago. Why have a rabbit friendly vet directory?
Well, this presentation is from the rabbit owners, the rabbit guardians, caregivers, it's from their perspective. So from their perspective, why do we want a rabbit friendly vet directory? Well, we want to hook up those committed rabbit owners and guardians to vet practises that are rabbit friendly.
We want to give rabbit owners and guardians the reassurance that the practise they choose can provide rabbit friendly care because they, they've been through some sort of . Endorsement process, so that we can give better outcomes for their rabbits. And we hope also that it drives commitment to Rabbit Care within practises, although we know they are already committed, but it, it is, it is a bit of a commitment, more of a commitment to, to go through the application process.
And we want of course to promote practises that do more for rabbits. And we hope as well that we will all learn from each other and we will improve standards overall. Again from a rabbit caregiver's owner's perspective, why is rabbit friendly care essential?
Well, I think it's fair to say that not all vets are confident or up to date with rabbit medicine, and that's fine. We, we know that rabbits are exotics, that their care is very different to dogs and cats, and we just want to pair up rabbit caregivers and vets who are confident and up to date with rabbit medicine. Rabbits of course are prey animals and so that needs to be taken into account at all times, the fact that they are prey animals, that they're easily stressed, that they hide illness, that needs to be taken into account at all times, because by the time the rabbit arrives at the vet practise, they could already be very ill because they hide illness.
So it's essential that we're gonna end up at a rabbit friendly vet practise. We, we hope that the vet practise will triage correctly and, and the rabbits that need to be seen urgently are seen urgently. And on that note, we've recently produced a triage poster which is available to vet practises.
If anybody would like to see it, it's on the website, you can download it, or if you would like a copy posted out to any vet practises, just drop us an email and we'll be happy to do that for you. We want vet practises to be able to deal with critical admissions, so when rabbits arrive and they're really poorly, we want the vet practise to be able to to, to not panic and just to do what needs to be done to that rabbit to get the rabbit stabilised. So we want the vet practise to have all the right medications to hand and in stock, and we want the vet practise to have all the right skills and equipment.
We want the vet practise to have the right environment to reduce stress, and that includes accepting companions during admissions. So that's why rabbit friendly vet practises are essential, we want the vet practise all trained up, all up to date in rabbit medicine and with everything to hand, ready to go. How can rabbit friendly care affect outcomes?
Well, quite literally, it's the difference between life and death, isn't it? We know that stress impairs recovery, we know stress reduces appetite and the GI function, we know it can affect anaesthesia. So stress can affect survival rates and recovery outcomes.
So we need to reduce stress, we need a a rabbit friendly practise that does everything they can to reduce stress in the practise to to give the best outcome, and that is from the moment the rabbit enters the waiting room all the way through to the ward, all the way through to surgery, and then back on the ward. We want a vet practise that can correctly triage, admit, diagnose and medicate. Because that affects all outcomes.
We want rabbits to be treated as equal status to dogs and cats and admitted as an equal priority. If, if I ring up my vet practise and I have a very poorly rabbit, I don't want my rabbit who could have been hiding an illness to be put on, you know, a, a lower footing than somebody that might ring up with a cat or a dog that's poorly, I want my rabbit to be given equal priority. So we need a vet practise where the whole team contributes to a successful outcome and that's from speaking to reception when you phone, all the way through the rest of the practise.
So we want early recognition, admission and stabilisation because that improves the chances of recovery. So that hopefully explains why it's essential that we use a rabbit friendly practise, and, and how it can affect the outcomes. So for, for 2025, the rabbit Friendly vet directory, what did we change?
So we, I mentioned earlier that we had already acknowledged by introducing the silver plus level, we'd already acknowledged that some practises were, went above and beyond exceeded expectations for silver, but other than giving them the silver plus, we couldn't really recognise that. So we designed a modular system. So there's now 16 areas and they're all assessed separately and you'll, you'll see what they are, they are shortly, but it's every area of the practise.
So we can clearly show now what practises do well, where they excel. We can show owners a practise, . We can show the owners what those scores so they can see they do excellent on reception, they do excellent onwards, they do excellent on waiting room, and the owners can therefore, the rabbit owners, the guardians, they can choose a practise based on what they feel is important to them.
We've also created the standards, so for every question there is on the application, there's a silver, a silver plus and a gold standard answer that's been published, that's on our website, so practises can see what we're expecting to see, that's not to say we're removing clinical freedom because obviously there's, there's always discussions around that but practises can see what we're expecting to see for each answer and then they can gauge at what level they are at as well. And how they can improve and how they can progress. We're also asking to see more evidence, so we're seeing, Images, photographs, videos all uploaded to the application and we're seeing a lot of SOPs uploaded to the application as well, so we can, we were finding that some answers and some SOPs they weren't necessarily tying up, so it's much clearer now for us to be able to see the SOP matches the answer.
And we're also asking that there's more than one rabbit friendly vet where applicable. Obviously if it's a practise with only one vet, then that's not possible. But the reason for that was that we didn't want to be relying too heavily on one vet, so that if that vet was on holiday or had a day off, that the practise would, would panic or that they'd be contacting that vet.
We wanted, you know, that there to be a bigger skill of rabbit friendly care within that practise. We do have some red lines, and the red lines are out of hours, which we'll come on to talk about shortly, as I've already mentioned, to be gold standard, then there are qualifications that, that need to be in place to be gold standard. Some procedures such as, clipping molars or incisors, .
We have red lines around that, actually not incisors, sorry, just molars and obviously a rabbit only waiting area and kennel area. So when we were redesigning this modular system and when we were building the standards, we looked at it from all perspectives. First of all, from the perspective of the rabbit.
So if you're a rabbit and you're poorly, it sounds obvious, but obviously you want prompt and relevant treatment in an environment that is as stress-free and rabbit friendly as possible. From the owner and caregiver, the guardians, we want to be able to make a phone call to get prompt and relevant treatment which has been correctly triaged, and then we want to have the confidence that the rabbits are in good hands and they will get the right care and the best outcome. And of course, from the vets and the nurses from the practise point of view, we want to be able to provide them with dedicated owners.
We want to be able to support them wherever we can. We've issued clear standards so that practises can see, you know, which level they're at, and we also of course want to recognise them for their hard work and their ability and make it it possible for them to progress up through the levels. So that's just so that you can see that we've published the standards and there's also that's on our website, on the vet area of our website, and there's also a handy download where you can see the support and evidence that we ask for, so you can get, so the vet practises can get all of the support and evidence together before they start to go through the application.
Just to mention again that we're not removing clinical freedom, we're very happy to see other responses to the ones that we've got in the standards. It's often a discussion and it's the thought behind the answer and the outcome for the rabbit that's important, and we're here to support practises and we can discuss all of that with them. So here are the modules, starting off with communication and rabbit Awareness Week, which is relevant for us again this week.
Basically, it's from the phone call to discharge and even through to euthanasia. It's the whole journey and life stage, lifespan of the rabbit that's covered. It's not just about the vet anymore, which is, which is what it started off being back in the early 90s.
It's not just about the vet, it's progressed. It's the whole practise team now and it's the facilities that are there. So the modular approach, the practise will get one overall level.
They'll get either silver, silver plus or gold as an overall level, but then they'll get a score for their individual module, modules, the 16 modules will get a score for each of those as well. And I think I've explained already that this is to help to recognise all the roles in the practise from the reception to nursing team to vets, and all parts of the journey from the phone call to, to discharge, and all the skills and equipment are in the practise, it's all, it can all be recognised. So from a pet owner's guardian's perspective, Ours we really would like owners and guardians to be aware of this because there's so many different scenarios, out of hours is, is really quite complicated, isn't it now, and the, the, the rabbits can be left at the practise and the, they can be staffed by their own staff, they can be staffed by out of hours staff who come in and take over and have access to the notes, also out of hours staff that might not have access to the notes, or they could be left at the practise unstaffed.
They could be moved to an out of hours provider and that could be done by the, the rabbit owners themselves, or they could be moved to the out of hours provider by the practise and that could be in a vehicle along with dogs, cats, other animals, . And they could remain at the out of hours provider until they're discharged, or they could be moved back to the vet practise when they reopen, and we want rabbit owners and caregivers to be aware of all these different scenarios so that they can have the conversation, what, you know, if, if it's late in the day when the rabbit's admitted or it looks like they need to be moving to out of hours, we just want them to be aware of that so that they can have that conversation. We think they need to ask the question so they know.
What is gonna happen because going back to what we said about stress, we we really are trying to minimise that, moving poorly rabbits, it is ultimately going to add stress and that's why there is emphasis on the out of hours, however, I do also want to say that there are some absolutely excellent practises who absolutely are gold level with, with gold, gold standard vets and everything else about the practise that is gold standard. And for various reasons, they cannot provide their own out of hours, so we wouldn't want out of that to put, put you off a practise, we would just want rabbit owners to be aware of that and to have the discussion around that. I mentioned earlier that we're asking for more evidence now, but on the new modular application, and that's because we don't inspect each practise.
So we want the practise to provide images and videos of the waiting areas of the kennel areas so that we can see, we can see exactly what it's like in there. And then we want to provide evidence of their clinical protocols so that we can see the answers that they give match the protocols. We also sometimes check the website, check that the vaccination advice that they're given or the, the companionship advice on the website is correct, they will submit client handouts so we can see the advice that they're given to their clients, and also the, the application is signed off by one of the rabbit friendly vets, so we know.
When it's signed off by the rabbit Friendly vets, you know, we can take their word for that, that everything that's, you know, we can take it all into account then, everything that's been submitted, we've got a good, a good representation of the practise. We found that in some cases the practises have had to create protocols which we found they found useful, we found useful, we've, you know, they might have allowed us to share them or they've been useful for other, other practises in the same group. So it might be more useful for everyone to see what this modular certificate looks like.
So you can see here that overall this practise has scored silver. But you can see that they've scored various goals, and actually we do think it's possible, we think it's possible for pretty much most practises to score at least 4, if not 5 goals, because the, the, you know, looking at the first two, the client communication and reception, the triage, we, we hope that every practise would be able to score goals on that. They've scored silver plus in some areas and gold in lots of areas, but overall, the, the, their overall level is silver.
But as you can see, there are areas where they absolutely excel, and we wanted to be able to recognise that to a practise that does excel in some areas. And from the practise point of view, they can see, referring back to the standards, where they can improve, where they can continue to improve, because this practise, it's not very far off getting silver plus. So that's a, that's a big benefit to them to be able to see how they can do that and how they can improve their reward.
We've had quite a few applications through the modular process now and what we've noticed so far, the end of life care, we've been really, really, encouraged to see the compassion around that, we're bonded partners, have been present and, and owners have been present. There's been a big move to recognise the importance of receptionists and the triage and, and, and their management of the waiting room. And we can see that practises are incorporating the published standards in the upgrades that they're doing as well within the practise.
Building good relationships within the community, advertising, and the advocates in the waiting room so that rabbit caregivers and owners can see that they really do value rabbits because they've got all of this information in their reception, we can see improved communications on their websites and on their social platforms, and by working to the published standards, it's creating consistency across the practise and, and possibly even across several branches if they're sharing. The SOPs that they've been created. So we hope that we're, we're actually standardising care or, or they are standardising care.
Going back to out of hours, and I did mention there are some excellent practises which absolutely would be gold if it wasn't for the out of hours, and, and we do acknowledge that this is a barrier for some practises, but equally we do feel that it's important and it, it to be, to be gold level, it is important that the, that the out of hours is gold level 2. We know there are more chains, there are more groups and the, the out of hours is outsourced and so the practise kind of loses control. But we hope that the practise would work with the out of hours and that they would do some, be able to work together because there are different standards for out of hours practises, so the out of hours practise, they can be assessed in their own right.
Because it's worth obviously bearing in mind, out of hours is really different to general practise, they're not gonna be doing vaccinations, they're not gonna be doing dentals, routine things, they, we just need them to be great at critical care, we need them to be great at stabilising patients, keeping, keeping the rabbit comfortable until the first opinion practise opens again, so their standards and their application is really different to a general practise application. So we hope that working together, that the general practise and the out of hours practise, they can work together to meet the same standard, if not a better standard, and then it wouldn't affect the standards that the, the award level that the general practise is given. Gaining Rabbit Friendly accreditation is a real achievement.
We know practise life is not easy at the moment, we know that. You, you know, there are, there are many constraints and difficulties. We know that the rabbit Friendly application is a big investment in time and we are asking practises when they submit their application.
How long it has taken them to complete that and it's, that's varied, but it's been anything from 4 hours to more, you know, 8 hours, possibly more at the moment, so we know it's a big investment in time and just on that, it's possible to click for us to give you a certificate so that you can use that as CPD if, if you are part of a practise that completes that application, you can use that as your CPD. It means that the practise has given thought to the waiting areas, to the wards, to the rabbit specific clinical protocols, and then they've got the rabbit friendly skills and equipment in the practise. We know actually it's not easy and it's a commitment to get the rabbit Friendly accreditation, but equally we don't think it should be easy, you know, we want the practises that have that commitment to rabbit welfare to be recognised as such.
So if we've got any rabbit guardians watching this, then please use your pester power. If your practise isn't on the map already, if they, if they haven't applied, then please encourage them to apply. It's definitely worth mentioning that there are definitely rabbit friendly practises out there, there's, there's lots of them that exist.
Just because they're not on our rabbit friendly vet list doesn't mean they're not rabbit friendly, it just means that they haven't been assessed by us, so they haven't got a lot of accreditation by that. By us, so we're not saying if they're not on the rabbit Friendly directory, that they're not rabbit Friendly, we're, we're acknowledging the ones that we know are, but there will definitely be more out there. So if you're happy with your vet practise, then please encourage them to join.
If you use the map and you find a rabbit Friendly vet practise and you register with them, please tell them where you found it, where you found them. So this is what the new website, we just launched a new website last month as well, and the, the new map is absolutely fantastic, I love it, so happy with it. This is what it looks like, so you can see there when you load it up, it's got everything listed in alphabetical order, you can look at it as a map or you can look at it on the map or as a list view, but that's all, you can see there the levels, it's in alphabetical order and levels, and you'll notice there that we've got practises from, All around the world, registered with us as rabbit friendly vets.
You can then pop your postcode in and you can choose 25 miles, 50 miles, you can choose just to see gold or you can choose to see silver or all tiers, and then it will refine that list for you. And then when you choose the vet practise that you want to see, you then get the next screen where you get the details, obviously, the address, the telephone number, the website, and then if you click on the other section where it says vets, it lists the rabbit friendly vets, it lists them all there. So you've got, you know who you, because as a rabbit guardian, you would be asking to see the named rabbit friendly vets.
And then as more and more practises apply or reapply and go through the modular system, we will start another certificate. So if you see the previous screen, it just had the vet details and the practise details, this practise also has their certificate because they've gone through the new modular system, they've got their certificate, this practise incidentally, on this new modular system, they went from silver to silver plus, so that was great. And this means that the rabbit, anyone, rabbit caregivers, guardians, they can look on the website, they can see these scores, they can see where the practise, which area the practise excels.
I did mention still to come, we've got the out of hours standards and assessments, we haven't started to assess out of hours practises yet, but that's in the pipeline, as well as the referral practises, and we have standards in place for those and the assessments that's in the pipeline. Because there are different, obviously different standards and treatment, treatments for each situation. So so far the map that I just showed you, that is just for first opinion or general practise practises.
Practises might be in the process of reapplying, or they might have a rabbit friendly vet. On sabbatical, on maternity leave and they're not ready to apply just quite yet, or they might not want to apply, so we, we've given them the option of taking the Rabbit Welfare pledge, so that acknowledges that they're, a Vet practise Member, that they support us by being a vet practise Member and, and that they have a commitment to Rabbit Welfare but haven't yet or, or perhaps don't want to apply to be listed on the Rabbit Friendly Vet Directory. If you're a rabbit owner and guardian and you see that there's different practises near you that you can choose from, should you shop around, especially if some practises have got different gold modules to other, well, our advice to that would be no, just stick with one practise.
Use the modules to help rabbit to help you as a rabbit owner find a practise that suits you best. And, and stick with that practise because you need the continuity of care, you don't wanna have to pay to repeat tests and the costs and the stress and the travel and of all of that, and it probably won't help you or your rabbits to, to keep swapping them around, swap, swapping practises around, but if your practise isn't, Assessed yet, please encourage them to, to join and to, to go through the process. How do we enforce the rabbit friendly criteria, I think I mentioned earlier, some applications we found weren't necessarily accurate, not deliberately, but the answers didn't necessarily match with the sta with the SOPs, so we, we can double check that now, but we do know that things change, vets leave, nurses leave, facilities can change, so although the, Application is a big commitment, it, they only need to do the full re-application every 4 years, but every 12 months, we send them their application back and we say, is all of this still the same, just have a check through, check everything's still the same, and sign it off again, and then we'll, we'll reissue the accreditation again after 12 months.
If, if you're, as a rabbit owner you find something that you're concerned about, please tell us because we do investigate. We have removed practises from the Rabbit Friendly Vet directory, but it's important to mention that we, we can't mediate, we can't get involved in settling disputes, there is an, an official process for that. Things that we very often get asked.
Or why is my vet not listed? Well, I've mentioned it's not necessarily because they're not rabbit friendly, it's because it could be because they haven't applied. Do all practises that apply pass, and the honest answer is, is no, but we don't want to put practises off applying because it's definitely a two-way process.
If there are areas where, We would like them to improve, then we will definitely feed that back to them, because we would encourage them to meet the criteria so that they are rabbit friendly because then that, that's better for everybody. Do we ever remove practises, we do, if we found out, that there's been real issues with, with care, then we, then we have removed practises on occasion. And how often are practises assessed?
Well, they're fully assessed every 4 years and reassessed by signing off the previous application every 12 months. And we've gone through all of those slides and this is the first opportunity I've had to put a picture of my rabbits in. So I just thought I would just sneak them in there as we've got nearly to the end.
So that is the end. Thank you for listening and obviously happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ray, and there's nothing wrong with the proud parents sneaking pictures of their children in.
So good on you. Good on you. So, I'm going to ask Ellie if she will share her screen for us now.
We will hold any questions that people have over to the end. But first, we, big thank you to Burgess, our sponsors, and, we're going to, have a little presentation from Ellie, who is the Nutritional and scientific communications Officer of Burgess. So, Ellie, it's over to you.
Thank you very much Bruce and thank you Rhea, that was really interesting. I just thought I'd remind everyone that it's Rabbit Awareness Week. We've all spoken about it already tonight but it's our 20th anniversary this year so.
Rabbit Awareness Week was launched in 2006, so we're turning 20 this year. This year the theme is all about feeding bunnies better. We're on day three, at the end of day three of the week now, but there is still time for you to download, our rabbit awareness week packs.
So there's a QR code on the screen there for you, but I will. We'll show that later on so you can have another chance of scanning that. There's packs for rabbit owners, rescue centres and vets.
You can download them all or you can download whichever works best for you. Er but there's some really great assets in there that can be used in practise or er with your own bunnies if you've got bunny owners on the call. So another thing that kind of ties into what Ray's just been talking about is .
Critical care, so our critical care is called dual care and this product is, it's a must have in all rabbit practises, you should have some critical care in all vet practises but definitely the rabbit friendly ones. Our dualare is a, it's a nugget, but you can also stringe feed it, so it has a dual purpose, hence the name Dualare. It allows for, to stringe feed when rabbits or guinea pigs aren't eating, but it also allows for a transition period before, an operation or after they've had some stringe feed they can go back onto a solid nugget and then back to their original nuggets, so it's, it's a nice transition, piece as well.
There's high levels of protected vitamin C in there, so as well as being suitable for rabbits, it's also suitable for guinea pigs. There's probiotics to support the digestive tract, and there's also L-tryptophan in there to help with stress. So tryptophan is a serotonin precursor for the regulation of stress.
There's magnesium to support the immune system, and the product is high in fibre, which supports gastrointestinal function, which is very important in our bunnies. And it's a food that you should feed during illness and recovery. So another thing that's really helpful for vet practises that are wanting to become rabbit friendly or are rabbit friendly and want to refresh their waiting rooms is the assets that B Burgess Excel they they design them with help from, from different vets and industry experts.
So our vet portal is something new and it is to champion small animal welfare within your practise. So what are the benefits of signing up to the vet portal? You can download product information, imagery, and nutritional guides which are on the screen there for you, so the top one is the guinea pig one, but there's two others, which is the pink and the blue one.
The pink one focuses mainly on nutrition for rabbits, and then the blue one focuses on the whole five welfare needs, for rabbits. They've recently been updated, so they've got really great information in there for you to use as rabbit owners and, within practise. You can also access brand and wealth brand and welfare campaign packs, so you can download the raw packs from a couple of years ago on there as well and the Guinea Pig Awareness Week packs are on there too.
You can also watch exclusive webinars and webinars from the Guinea Pig Welfare Forum over the last two years and other leading veterinary experts. You can explore and download free educational resources, you can stay up to date with the latest product news, launches, and clinical insights, and it's available 24/7 whenever you need it. It's free of charge to sign up for, you just need to make an account on our website if you scan that QR code, and the assets are there for you to download whenever you want.
They're updated regularly, and all the webinars that we do with the webinar there are also on there too. So very short and sweet for me, but thank you for listening to the webinar tonight, it's been really great. The two QR codes that I've mentioned are on the screen now for you.
So you can join the vet portal, download your rabbit awareness week pack, and if you do need any support from the team at Burgess XL, please get in touch. We're always here to help support you whether it's with rabbit nutrition or just rabbit care in general, we're always here to support. Ellie, thank you so much.
And once again, a huge big thank you to Burgess for their sponsorship. It is always a pleasure to have Burgess on with us. And, for those of you that have not, listened to any of our website, our, webinars, Ellie was alluding To a lot of the recordings.
Obviously, if you go onto the webinarvet website, there are loads and loads of very interesting recordings, from people like John Chitty and the likes. So go and have a look at those. Again, sponsored by Burgess, and a big thank you to Ellieen Burgess.
Ray, we haven't had any questions coming through yet, but I wanted to just say to you, the, the advances that you guys are making in the, the sort of standards and that, are really very admirable because it's, it makes it easier to not just be a yes or no. There's, there's gradings, and it's a bit like the practise Standards schemes. Yeah, yeah, I think that, that was very much in, in our mind, in particular, John who did the, the bulk of it, in our mind when we designed the standards so that practises can see exactly.
As I say, without removing the clinical freedom, but they can see what we were, the sort of thing we're expecting to see, for each level. So, yeah, it gives them something to aim for as well if they want to improve. Yeah, excellent.
There is a question from Esther, who is a, a vet in South Africa. I, I don't think we can answer her question tonight. She's asking for all sorts of ideas, regarding making a practise more rabbit-friendly.
And I think the answer, and correct me if I'm wrong, Ray, is to really get in contact with yourselves, and to have a look at your website for guidance as to what is actually needed. We love these questions, we absolutely love these sorts of questions where it's, it's all thought about when it's been planned and, you know, at this point just before it happens, yeah, definitely get in touch, with us, info at Rabbitwelfare.co.uk, that's the email address.
We've got quite a few resources and we can signpost to, Fear Free type things, so yes, definitely get in touch with us, we'd love to talk to you about that. Yeah, that's fantastic. Claire has asked a, a question on a similar vein, and she's, asked, what is the area that practises most battle with when it comes to assessments?
So far there hasn't been one standout area, other than the possibly the out of hours, which, which I did mention, there hasn't been one standout area that practises have struggled other than, if I'm honest, the time that finding the time to dedicate to, to go through the application, we do know it's a big commitment, but you can. Save it and come back to it and and go back in and and do a bit more and save it and go back to it, we've actually Put a lot of investment into the, into the, the, the application process on the website, it's like a whole new set of technology behind it now to make it as easy as we possibly can for practises so that they can dip in and out, and they shouldn't be losing any work, we did have problems with that before, you know, we acknowledge that was, was really frustrating for practises, apologies to anyone that, that was affected by that. But we, we've invested a lot in the technology behind it, so that shouldn't be happening now.
I think it is just finding the time within the practise. There isn't one area. It might be that you haven't got some SOPs for particular areas, but, but we might have an S.
SOP because we are also developing standard SOPs that we can share, so we might have an SOP or another practise might have an SOP that they are happy to share with, you know, we are finding that we're building up a nice bank of resources that practises are happy to share, so that, that it, I think if I'm honest it is just the time to do it. Excellent, excellent. Dawn, thank you very much.
She has popped in the chat box, that email address as well as the, web address for people to go and have a look at. very interesting while you were talking, Carol from, Ontario Veterinary College in Canada has popped through and said, can you accredit practises in Canada and can they start sending people your way to get that accreditation and, and be better at at Bunny Care? Yes and yes please.
I don't think we've got any practises in Canada at the moment, off the top of my head, apologies if I have forgotten someone. We've got them all around the world, we've got, we've definitely got practises, in America and New Zealand, and Australia, so we may well have them in Canada already, and I just can't remember. But they just need to be a, a member, a vet practise member, and then there is no extra charge after they become a vet practise member, there's no extra charge after that to be assessed.
There's no extra charge, you know, there's, there might be quite a bit of back and forth, it, it basically it's the same process, wherever you are in the world, it's the same application form and it's the same process, so we'd love to see practises from, from other countries, more, more practises apply. Excellent, excellent. Folks, we can't go into any specifics about a practise and what it's gonna take to upgrade and everything else.
For that, you need to be getting in contact directly, on the, email addresses and on the website to have a look and see what you need to upgrade to a different tier. And, and, as Ray was explaining just now, the modular system is, is really helping people to do that. So, get in contact with them, and then you can pose specific questions to them about your practise, and the needs of, of what it would take to upgrade, you know, with or without out of hours, etc.
Etc. Ray, we've run out of questions now. I think you, you, your presentation was certainly very clear and, the information that is available on your website, I've just had a sneak look at it as well, is great.
And then, of course, Dawn put the email address in so that anybody can email questions through to you about the practise standards. But it's a great idea to try and help people and guide people into improving the overall care and welfare of bunnies, and that's really what it comes down to. So thank you very much for your time and your presentation this evening.
You're welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks, thanks for having us.
And Ellie, to you and Burgess, thank you so much again for all your sponsorship. We really do appreciate it, and I hope that Rabbit Awareness Week in its 20th year, I can't believe it's been that long, is as great a success, if not bigger, and that it just keeps growing and growing every year with your fantastic backing. Yeah, it's always great to support, especially the rabbits, the, I have a soft spot for them myself, like grey, she's got a pair, I've got a pair, so.
Fantastic. Last but not least, to Dawn, my controller in the background, thank you for making everything happen and, and posting websites and everything else up for everybody to participate. And, to yourselves, for attending.
Thank you so much. I hope that you have gained some valuable information from this. Get in contact with the association and, they will certainly help you and guide you in that accreditation.
So, from myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's good night.
