162: Street Dogs, Brave Vetting, and the Double Life of Dr Janey Lowes
Twelve years ago, Dr Janey Lowes went to Sri Lanka on a holiday, and never really came home. Today she runs WECare Worldwide, a hospital that treats the island’s three million street dogs to a standard that you’d like your pet treated - from the worst trauma cases you can image do a highly efficient desexing service. And then, a few times a year, she flies back to locum in clinics that look a lot like yours.
This one's about what it's like to live on both sides of that line that separates the reason we became vets, and the job most of us ended up with.
We get into:
- Do-or-die medicine in a place where you're the only option
- How being the last line changes your perspectives, and what that does to your goalposts when you go back to first-world practice
- The bits of ‘normal’ practice that Janey misses the most (no, it’s not the fancy equipment)
- Charity vetting as a viable career option, not just a gap year - the good and the bad
Support WECare Worldwide:This work runs on donations, and Janey's currently raising for a new hospital by running six hundred kilometres, the length of Sri Lanka. (She’s not actually a runner…)
- Website and donations: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk
The charity takes volunteers and offers longer-term work
- Volunteer and work with WECare: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk/volunteer/
- WECare on Instagram: @wecare_srilanka
Find Janey:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeythevet
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@janeythevet
- Her book, Janey the Vet: Saving Sri Lanka's Street Dogs, is on Amazon, Waterstones and WH Smith
More from The Vet Vault:
- Everything we do lives at https://www.thevetvault.com, including our clinical CE podcasts and resources
- Come learn with us in person at Vets on Tour: https://vetsontour.com
Topics and Time Stamps
03:20 Going Viral, and the Unexpected Backlash
08:24 The Love-Hate of Social Media
10:17 The Birth of WeCare
13:24 75% of Dogs Are Unowned
13:53 Courage or Naivety?
16:35 Mid-Roll Break
18:31 Regrets? & Life in Sri Lanka
21:30 Two Lives: Sri Lanka vs UK
36:15 Are We Too Quick to Euthanise?
39:55 What We Underestimate and Undervalue in ‘normal’ Vet Life
43:22 Volunteering at WeCare
49:03 Charity Vetting as a Career
55:10 Rapid Fire Questions
59:21 Advice for New Grads