We’re delighted to launch our new GREEN pet club!
I’m excited to announce that we’re launching a new, more environmentally conscious GREEN pet club to run alongside our regular pet club …. and it will save you money!
The principle of being a pet club member is that your pet gets all their preventative healthcare required over the course of the year, two vet health checks, vaccines and treatments, all at a discounted rate, spread over monthly payments.
There are conditions that occur more commonly now, such as lungworm and tick-borne diseases, which have led to us as a profession becoming increasingly vigilant against internal and external parasites over the past ten years.
However, there is also an argument that we have become over-vigilant. An interesting scientific paper recently published found fur contaminated by pet anti-flea treatments present in birds’ nests, potentially linked to an increase in unhatched eggs or dead chicks. Another study by Brunel University found anti-flea chemicals in Chichester Harbour. Some of the ingredients we use to treat fleas in dogs and cats have been banned from use on crops for similar reasons. The subject was even brought up in parliament recently. As ever, more research is needed, but if you think about it, this makes sense that treatments designed to kill fleas on our pets may have a collateral effect on other insects.
The problem is, if we stop treating our pets with parasitic medication altogether, then we will have lots of problems with our pets and in our houses. So, I feel we need to try and find a more sensible middle ground.
To that end we’re launching a new, concurrent, pet club now at Kelperland called the GREEN pet club, with reduced quantities of flea and tick treatment, and at a reduced cost. This is experimental! We don’t know of any other practices doing this, but as an independent practice, we can try these things and hopefully set an example.
What I’m proposing to start with is that the next time your pet is due a health check, we, as your vet, discuss whether your pet(s) are appropriate for the GREEN pet club. If so, you will only give your pet anti-flea/tick treatment every other month.
The GREEN pet club will then evolve – we can monitor all the pets within this club. Are flea infections/skin problems/lungworm more common in this cohort or not? Could we move to testing for diseases and then treating as opposed to treating first? These areas can be explored as the GREEN pet club evolves.
Some pets won’t be appropriate – for example, dogs with allergic skin disease really do need monthly flea medication. Dogs who walk in the woods a lot and get a lot of ticks are the same. A young dog who eat lots of slugs and snails might be at a higher risk of lungworm. Cats who live in a house with lots of other cats have a higher risk of fleas. And so on.
Also, you, as our clien,t may not want to reduce your pet’s medication, in which case, no problem, we’ll keep your pet on the ‘standard’ pet club plan.
Dogs and cats under 1 year old are not appropriate for the GREEN pet club as they are more susceptible to parasitic disease. The change to the GREEN pet club can happen at their first annual vaccination if we decide that your pet is a candidate for it.
What about cost? Unfortunately, the drug companies have put the prices of flea and worm medication up considerably, so we are going to have to increase our standard pet club prices – for only the second time in 8 years. This will happen automatically to your direct debit from ………….. As you can see, the GREEN pet club keeps the price the same.
| Standard pet club | GREEN pet club | |
|---|---|---|
| Cats | £17.85/mo | £15.50/mo |
| Dogs <10 kg | £18.40/mo | £16/mo |
| Dogs 10-25 kg | £19.55/mo | £17/mo |
| Dogs 25-50 kg | £21.85/mo | £19/mo |
We cannot convert your pet to the GREEN pet club other than at either their booster or 6 month health check appointment. This is because it is at these appointments that their worming/flea medication is prescribed for the following six months. If you change to the GREEN pet club you will be dispensed less flea/tick medication at that appointment, and your direct debit will be changed.
I hope that all makes sense, and we are, of course, here to answer any questions or concerns you might have about this. You can ring or email the practice, and we can discuss. Or we can discuss it at your pets’ next routine health check.
If anyone is interested in further reading on this subject, please see the studies mentioned:
High prevalence of veterinary drugs in birds’ nests.
Tassin de Montaigu, C et al. Science of The Total Environment, Volume 964, 2025.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969725000737
‘Chemical profiling of surface water and biota in protected marine harbours impacted by combined sewer overflows’, by Jasmin Uhlhorn, Keng Tiong Ng, Leon Barron, Alex Ford and Thomas Miller, is published in Environment International 2025.
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