Ann, Yes indeed those places are major "cities" not towns in fact. But our entire population is only 20 million and specialist vets are rare birds here in many areas. You have 270 million (?) in the same area as us. Not everyone lives within easy reach of the big cities and the Sydney club has tried quite a few times over the years to get specialist to "come to a show" or do clinics but with the limited number available sometime they just can't do it. Even the vet we have do our heart clinic is not a "board certified cardiologist" such as you call them in the States. He is a specialist in internal medicine who has a particular interest in hearts. Our eye specialist has degrees in vet ophthalmology and has lectured in the States. I am sure Dianne can speak for NZ and there certainly are some specialist available there but people like her live at the bottom end of the South Island of NZ - its an 8 hour drive to Christchurch if a specialist comes from the North Island - to get up to the north you have to fly (imagine trying to get 15 dogs on a plane!) or go on the car ferry - so expensive that its not practical. Especially if you work and cant take time off. I believe they have a wonderful repro specialist who is a whizz with frozen semen in the north of the south island but if you want to do something like that you have to plan well ahead for when he will be in the area. Its not just a matter of nipping to the vet to "do" chilled or frozen semen" Here, to take and freeze semen from one of my dogs - it costs about $A400.
Also our vet charges seem to be so much more than those in the States - everything is very much more expensive here. The ONLY thing that seems to be cheaper is the show entries!!!!! The law requires vets to do vaccinations and my "breeders rates" for Protec C5 is about $Aust 48 per pup. With $A35 microchip also required in my state make s pup pretty expensive to rear even before you start the health testing! Some breeds will share a specialist for a clinic and this does happen but we have no central national breed club - its up to the individual clubs in each area to do something - Australia is the same size as America so we can hardly "pop down the road" to a clinic being held in Melbourne or say Perth - That would be like flying from NY to LA and the air fare is a horrendous. The only times I get around Australia by air is when I am judging and my fare and expenses are being paid! Grin The Sydney club does 2 heart clinics and 2 eye clinics with specialists each year - pretty good going I think for a club with less than 200 members a great percentage of whom do not live in the Sydney area. - compare with the numbers and resources in UK and USA! So all you people in the good ole USA, please don't be so quick to condemn people who do not do exactly as you would have them do......we have our own way of doing things.....it may not be yours but it doesn't make us bad people. Jeanie ========================================================= "Magic Commands": to stop receiving mail for awhile, click here and send the email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20NOMAIL to start it up gain click here: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20MAIL E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance. Search the Archives... http://apple.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ckcs-l.html All e-mail sent through CKCS-L is Copyright 1999 by its original author.
