ÎÞÂ붯»­

Plans for new Animal Wise evenings being introduced at ÎÞÂ붯»­ in the New Year have been discussed on the BBC.

The evenings are designed to equip people with the knowledge they need to care for the animals in their life – with sessions already bookable for new pet parents,  for those caring for senior pets and to help horse owners become worm wise.

Lecturer in Veterinary Nursing George Aspey is leading the new courses – and caught up with BBC Radio Shropshire’s Claire Ashford to talk about the evenings and why people should consider attending.

He said: “There can be a lot of misinformation at times that’s circulating – and if we are to seek out the answers to those questions that, inevitably, will arise we want a reliable source to go to – and, beyond that, we simply want to help those local to us.

“The New Pet Parent evening is primarily focussing on dogs and cats – that’s the first course we are running at the end of January. This will become a repeating event, with different with different focusses throughout the year and it will be the last Wednesday of every month – so that first one, the New Pet Parent evening, is for puppies and kittens in their first year of life.

“For this first evening, this is for the human part of the pet and owner duo: we will be running some more events later on in the not-too-distant future, such as socialisation events - which will absolutely be ones to bring the furry ones along to.

“But for the first one, the information evenings, that is for the two-legged end of the duo.”

The new courses are aimed to welcome guests from 5:30pm, start around 6pm and run for an hour and a half - and are open for booking now.