Local vet is retiring after 47 years of animal welfare

Dr John Knight has been based at the island’s veterinary practice The Vetcare Centres – with sites in Castel and Vale – since 1988.

He has also worked in countries including China, Germany, Qatar and Saudi Arabia on a range of establishment and management projects.

‘I’ll still stay involved in various things, but the time is right to take a step back from the day-to-day,’ he said.

Mr Knight developed a passion for animals from the age of seven after being inspired by his father, who taught agriculture in Tanzania for a period.

After qualifying as a vet in 1978, he began his career at a practice in Yately in Hampshire, before moving to Regent’s Park Zoo in London.

Thanks to pioneering work involving the formation of a panda enclosure at the zoo, he was approached by the World Wildlife Fund to start a panda breeding programme, with responsibility for setting up additional enclosures in the Chinese city of Chengdu and San Diego, California.

‘It ended up working really well, I travelled around a lot ,’ he said.

In 1985, Mr Knight was seconded to Qatar, where he was tasked with establishing and managing the country’s new national zoo in its capital Doha.

He undertook a similar project a couple of years later in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

By 1988, he decided the time was right to settle down, and through a friend of a friend got in touch with Alistair Macrae, who was running the Guernsey practice now known as The Vetcare Centres in Castel.

‘I agreed to join provided that I was still able to continue my global consultancy work,' he said.

‘Fortunately I was, and that was that.’

He said the most interesting cases he had worked on at the practice over the years often involved large animals, such as cows and horses.

‘I remember an instance with this very elderly, heavy horse, had managed to twist his gut and because of his age surgery wasn’t an option.’

‘We had to try to roll him over so as to untwist him, and thankfully he got up and walked away, but that was quite a memorable story.’

Having cared for and looked after thousands of different creatures over the course of his career, Mr Knight said trying to ease people’s pain of losing an animal had never got any easier.

He recalled one occasion where he was part of a team trying to save the life of a giant panda at Berlin Zoo.

‘I was called in to see if there was any chance of saving it.

‘It was put on a permanent drip and part of the zoo was actually closed off so that I could sleep near it and keep an eye on it.

‘Eventually when it did die I had to do press interviews about it as it garnered substantial media attention.

‘There was a lot of pressure.’

In addition to his veterinary work, Mr Knight has been the president of the GSPCA since 2000, while he has acted as a consultant for a number of organisations.

Despite stepping back from daily operations at The Vetcare Centres, he will remain a director of the practice.

Reflecting on his career, he said he was grateful for those he had worked with over the years, and hoped he had contributed to improvements in global animal welfare standards.

‘I’ve been fortunate to be part of some really good work in altering the way animals are handled and treated,’ he said.

‘Even in retirement I will still aim to pass the things I have learned onwards.’