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I have noticed that the number you are refering to does not indicate in which order a person signed the petition. It seems to have everyone all mixed up and no particular number represents the actual order in which that person signed the petition.

Gaz

Peter
Yes that may be so in other countries..but if its after hours here in Belize and you try to phone the after hours emergency numbers in the phone book under Veterinarians...well I have tried perhaps a hundred times and NO ANSWER..this is Belize..not the U.K. not the U.S..etc etc..that needs to be recognized..

This is in reply to Gaz's second-to-last post.

A good and moderate post, Gaz. Would that all here were like that! But I think the thrust of her letters to the Board has concerned legality and professional matters and I know she feels strongly about maintaining sound professional standards. She is concerned amongst other things that SAGA is portraying itself as a fully equipped vet clinic and is actually attempting procedures and treatments that it is not capable of doing. Given that it doesn't seem to want to stop this practice voluntarily she feels that using law is the only remedy left.

Personally I hope that SAGA does get permission for its own unrestricted vet, and I hope that the arrangement works financially. I just feel that this outcome is unlikely and people are going to have to work together. The highly polarised positions that people have adopted will serve only to make this more difficult.

Really Gaz? How did you determine this? The petition list is in chronological order by date - June 10, 11, 12, 13, 14...with chronological numbers in the same order as the dates progress. Are you actually suggesting that this is all coincidental and that the numbers are mixed up even though the signatures are organized by chron. date order? Please tell us how you determined this. That would be unusual but anything is possible.

Well from what I can see adn the thing that caught my attention was Chris Berlin who signed it before me and i signed at I think 190 ish Chris is now listed as being the 316th person to sign where as he was 100 and something before.

My number is now 212

So something is not right on those numbers

Gaz

I only know that several people to my knowledge have called the vet here (Laurie) out at night and she has always gone. And I have seen her working in her clinic past midnight. Her phone number is for a mobile phone that she apparently always has on her.

Hmmm, curious. I am still at number 28, on June 10th. Do you think the dates are also skewed in this regard? There are dates June 10 through June 14 so far. I have an email going to ipetitions.com customer service dept. to ask what their procedure is for dating and numbering signatures. I am curious because if they are just randomly numbering dates and order of signatures on petitions they really can't be used for official purposes, but the randomly dated/numbered petitions could still be used to take a pulse on issues and I doubt it will negatively impact this SAGA petition - the Vet Board will see the huge support in SAGA's favor for the vet license and that is what matters.

I really dont know but I have been keeping an eye on the list and was trying to see who signed up after me but it just was not working and did not make sense.

Now I have not been drinking today so that cant be the excuse so it must be something else

Gaz

all well said.

I don't want to raise the temperature here - I really don't - but SAGA has actually gone to extreme measures to cause trouble for Dr. Droke. There has been ill will ever since they held a rigged board meeting to exclude her from the board not long after they had appointed her (to the board). They wanted her to work like a junior employee and do what she was told and not ask questions. They particularly seemed not to want questions on financial matters, probably not because they had anything to hide but because they saw it as none of her business. This was all going on while she was still at SAGA, and was in fact the reason for her leaving. They want to employ a professional vet but don't want them to use their professionalism. Read the story of Thomas à Beckett - this approach doesn't work. SAGA has had low success in recruiting and retaining quality vets, and inability to pay a high salary is only a part of the reason - their management style has been key.

I have seen the text of Dr. Droke's letters to the Vet Board, as have many others, and they are all directed at specific breaches of law that she has become aware of. SAGA has undeniably been operating illegally and that will do them no good in their present application to have their own vet. In fact, I suspect it may incline the Vet Board quite strongly against their application. They might be prepared to "turn a blind eye" in certain cases of technical breach where SAGA had no option in order to get the job done, but with a qualified vet close by the Board will probably be quite intolerant of law breaking, especially where it has led to unnecessary animal suffering.

I am assuming in this that people understand what "breaking the law" in this context actually means. It means using out-of-date drugs which not only may have lost their effectiveness but can become poisonous, and in-expert people attempting to make diagnoses and formulate treatments when they simply don't have the knowledge base to do it. If being a vet were so easy that anyone could do it, why is there such a long period of study, exams and experience required, in all countries? It doesn't mean technicalities like not charging GST or maybe fiddling the books - we are talking about serious matters concerning animal welfare. Only recently a dog was mis-diagnosed, given inappropriate and seriously out-of-date drugs, and sent home. The owner took the animal to the real vet a couple of days later but by then it was too late. Had SAGA not pretended that they could treat the dog it may well still have been alive today. THIS is what Dr. Laurie as the only representative of the veterinary profession around here is determined to stop.