JMICAWE spends a year Working From Home!

Bluebell (Director Cathy Dwyer's dog)
playing in the snow. 

We have just reached a milestone that no one expected or wanted – it is now a whole year since the JMICAWE team packed up our bags, plants and coffee mugs, said goodbye and headed off to work from home in the light of the pandemic, never expecting that we would still not be back in the office a year later! 

Whilst we all remain healthy, thankfully, and are blessed that we are able to carry on working from our homes via Teams, Zoom and every other means of communicating, it has been a difficult time for many. Most of the JMICAWE team have been relying on our pets for comfort – whether that is dog walking, riding horses or enjoying a cuddle with the cats that occasionally make an intervention into the Team meetings. So we are all appreciative of the benefits to our mental health and well-being that our pets bring. 

However, it is also important that we remember to take care of our pet’s welfare too, so it is a mutually beneficial relationship. Of increasing concern is that the high demand for puppies during the pandemic has created the perfect opportunity for unscrupulous breeders to offer puppies, often at very high prices, that have come from puppy farming backgrounds. 

As it is currently not possible to visit the puppy at home with its mother, it is harder than ever for buyers to be able to check that their prospective new puppies have had a proper start in life, and the mother has been properly taken care of. A number of charities in the UK have put together a resource that is designed to help UK buyers be assured that their puppies and parents have been kept under good conditions: https://puppycontract.org.uk/. You can also find more resources about Covid and pet welfare on the JMICAWE website here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/covid-animals

Perhaps you have not been able to work from home and have time on your hands, or are considering a change in career? Whilst we have not been able to do our usual travelling and visits to run workshops etc, the JMICAWE team has been hard at work creating online resources to support animal welfare education, often in collaboration with others. We have worked with Wild Welfare to create an educational resource looking at welfare of c
aptive wildlife, and have developed our own resources to support veterinary nursing students. 

We have worked with the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India to develop a postgraduate distance learning course on animal welfare which launched last year, and has an amazing 850 students on the course. We are also working with University of Queensland and collaborators in China to develop a course on animal welfare for students in China. And our Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are still freely available and continue to be very popular. You can find out more about all our activities by signing up for our newsletter, following us on social media, and checking out our courses and resources on our webpage: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre. Lastly, we hope to be able to meet up again in person very soon, but until then we hope to be able to keep you entertained and educated in animal welfare via other means.

JMICAWE Team Update - COVID-19

Coronavirus and JMICAWE

In these difficult and challenging times we at JMICAWE just wanted to update you on our response and activities. As of last week we have moved to working from remotely and will not be in the office until told otherwise. Our teaching is now on line or suspended, dissertation students who were planning to travel for their projects are now being offered different areas of research and we are looking to support our students remotely as much as possible. As with everyone else, the most important thing is that we limit the spread of the virus and practise social distancing and isolation as much as we possibly can.

However, we are still working hard to promote animal welfare and to support teaching practices that help veterinary students and others learn more about animal welfare. At the moment we are working on our provision of on-line resources that can be accessed remotely anywhere in the world, from your homes if need be. We are working on promoting better welfare for farm animals, companion animals, street dogs and wildlife, and will be adding to our resources in this area through the summer.

Remember also, if you are at home and wondering how to fill your day, there is a lot of excellent learning material on line, including our own MOOCs (on animal welfare, dog and cat behaviour and poultry behaviour and welfare) so why not consider signing up for some free on line learning? There is more information about our courses and MOOCs here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/cpd 

We would also like to remind everyone that dogs and cats and other companion animals are not carriers of the virus; and there is no need to relinquish pets to shelters, which will be quickly overwhelmed and unable to care for these animals, especially if rehoming rates dry up. Please see some advice from Nancy de Briyne of Federation of Veterinarians of Europe here:

‘Just wanted to inform you that FVE made a special webpage for COVID and the veterinary profession. You can find it here: https://www.fve.org/covid-19-faqs/ and some leaflets together with FECAVA.
We also specially call for owners not to abandon their pets, which seems a worry in some countries. Please keep on spreading the word that at this moment, there is no evidence that animals can become ill and spread the virus further. IDEXX and other companies already tested thousands of dogs and cats on COVID, and all cases were negative. Two dogs so far in Hong Kong tested weak positive without being sick (both owners had COVID). Further tests showed that there was no evidence that COVID made the dogs sick or that the dogs could spread the virus. Pet owners should always maintain good hygiene practices (including handwashing before and after being around or handling animals, their food, or supplies, as well as avoiding kissing them) and under no circumstances should they abandon their pets. If an owner has COVID, close contact with family members, including pets, should be avoided.’