WITH reference to the article re 'out of town vet cover.'

I have every sympathy with vets wanting time off during unsociable hours and that if they've been working all day, on call all night then have to operate the following day, it is very difficult.

However as an animal lover and pet owner I think it is an absolute necessity to have local vet cover 24/7.

Firstly in the time it takes to get a very sick animal or a RTA victim to a vet's such a distance away, its only time before we lose animals unnecessarily.

Secondly, I am not alone in being a non-driver. For me to get to the vets out of hours, I have to go by taxi.

I'd go without food myself to enable me to transport a sick cat to the other end of the country if I had to but some people just can't afford a taxi to Bury or Preston and others just won't bother to go that far. So it will be the animal that suffers in the end, sad as it is but fact.

Name and address supplied.