Francisco Landines examines Goldendoodle Heidi’s ears in his mobile office while Heidi’s owner Claudette assists.
Heidi the Goldendoodle has had just about enough.
She has a lot of hair deep in her ears, which first has to be twirled around the tweezers and then plucked out in tufts.
The young dog from south-western Germany also has a bad smell coming from her ear.
It’s possibly an inflammation, says vet Francisco Landines.
He tells the owner of the now very indignant Goldendoodle to come back next week.
But Heidi is not sitting in a normal veterinary’s office. Landines operates a mobile practice from a former ambulance converted into a treatment room.
The 39-year-old vet has been operating the van-turned-vet office since last June.
While there are mobile vets who make house calls, Landines is the only one in the region who has a veterinary practice on four wheels, equipped with ultrasound, operating table, ventilator, anaesthetic and much more.
He estimates that there are perhaps eight to 10 of these mobile vet offices created by converting vehicles into surgeries around the country.
The state veterinary association does not have any figures on this, says its president Heidi Kubler.
There are companies, she adds, such as Berlin-based firm Felmo, which employ mobile vets.
They now work in 14 regions across Germany and also travel to households.
However, treatment is only provided at the pet owner’s home and Felmo says its vets specialise in dogs and cats. Landines also treats other small animals such as hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and tame rats.
The response has been enormous. Just a few months after opening his doors, Landines has become very popular, mainly through word of mouth.
Many pet owners know him from before, when the Venezuelan-born owner still worked as an employee in a veterinary practice in the region.
And unlike a stationary practice, Landines has no costs for employees: He is assisted by the owners or carers of the animals.
Like 61-year-old Claudette, who holds Heidi in her arms the whole time during the hair plucking procedure, supported by her sister Diana, who also had her dog Arnie examined by Landines.
Arnie, who is treated in the living room, needs pain injections every four weeks and patiently keeps still on the sofa. The mobile vet is “great”, Arnie’s owner says.
“It’s a relief for everyone: For the animal, who feels so much safer here at home, and for me, because the vet comes here and I can spare Arnie the anxiety of travelling to a practice,” says Diana.
Whether mobile vets are a trend is difficult for the president of the State Veterinary Association, Kubler, to judge.
“I would think that the costs would have to be a third higher than if the pet owner came to the practice with the animal,” she points out. For non-mobile people, however, it is definitely a very good alternative if they can call someone to their home.
A visit by Landines to the pet owner’s home is actually more expensive than a visit by the pet owner to an in-patient practice, as Landines himself says.
He charges for the journey, in addition to the current scale of fees for vets.
Payment is made in cash or by card and the invoice is sent by email. The pet owners don’t mind the higher costs at all. “It’s definitely worth it to me,” says Sarah Stork-Degen from Graben-Neudorf near Karlsruhe.
It saves a lot of time, as nobody has to travel to a practice with the animals.
Her three cats, Landines’ next patients this morning, need to be vaccinated. Landines also diagnoses a bladder infection in her tomcat Jacky.
The travelling vet now has around 400 clients and drives up to 100km every day for his six to eight appointments, but he’s not complaining. He makes a good living, he says, and is very busy.
Of course he competes with local vet offices in the communities he serves, but he says some pet owners now prefer his services to travelling to a practice. On the other hand, the number of veterinarians in private practice is falling both nationally and statewide, as a recent response from the Baden-Wurttemberg Agriculture Ministry to a conservative party enquiry revealed.
Kubler also believes inpatient practices are on the decline.
The demand for vets is there, but “we are running into a shortage”, she says.
While there are still enough vets, she says, this is likely to change in the next few years.
The reasons are similar to those usually cited for the shortage of human doctors.
Part-time work is favoured, bureaucracy is a deterrent and the risk of self-employment and having their own practice is now too high for many vets.
Chabo and his owner Caroline Zordel leaving Landines’ mobile veterinary office.
Back in the vet mobile, tiny canine Chabo is next in line. The 11-year-old Russian toy terrier has a birthday today and is set down on the metal couch by his owner. Caroline Zordel fears the animal has a heart defect and Chabo’s joints are also hurting.
Landines strokes Chabo, listens to him and carefully moves the animal’s limbs, then gives the all-clear. Chabo’s heart is fine, his movement is normal. The only problem is with his teeth.
Chabo has to come back.
Or rather, Landines has to come back to see him again next week. – dpa/Anika von Greve-Dierfeld
