New Health Committee appointment: Bryony Fossett

At its recent meeting, the Dachshund Breed Council approved the recommendation of the Health Committee to appoint Bryony Fossett to the Committee.

Some information from Bryony:

• I’ve been involved with dachshunds all my life and started showing at 5 years old. Since then, I’ve shown all over the UK and Europe in both major breed and handling competitions to some big successes, whilst as a family we’ve bred litters of standard longs and now I’m awaiting my first litter of miniature smooths.

• My interest in animal health and welfare has stemmed from living with the dogs and as a result, decided that veterinary medicine might be the career for me, hence I started really focusing on school work and began applying for vet schools. I was lucky enough to get interviews for all of my choices and eventually chose to study at the University of Surrey.

• I’ve had to complete lots of work experience during my journey to becoming a vet, one particularly interesting week I did was at the Kennel Club, gaining an insider's perspective of what goes on there.

• During my A-levels, one of my dogs came down with IVDD and this is when I started to get more involved with the health side of dachshunds and now, from personal experience, know just how horrible owning a disabled dog is and so when I was approached to join the health committee I was more than happy to join.

• I’m now in my second year of studying veterinary medicine and am currently learning about many pathological cases so am gaining more and more information about the kind of diseases affecting dogs and dachshunds in particular.