Life ban for mobile vet
A mobile veterinarian has been banned for life after being found guilty of unprofessional conduct for castrating three guinea pigs during a house call in the South West in 2012, then leaving the unconscious pets, two of which later died.
Kurt Alexander was also found guilty of professional misconduct earlier this year after it was found he administered a potentially lethal drug to another pet guinea pig, named Nibbles, which also later died.
The State Administrative Tribunal has said that Alexander "remains a risk to the public" and that his conduct was so serious that "he is permanently or indefinitely unfit to practise".
The tribunal found Alexander fell substantially short of the professional standard reasonably expected of a veterinarian when he injected Nibbles with a drug which was detrimental and potentially lethal to guinea pigs in April last year.
The tribunal found that Alexander, who had conducted an online search for notes on the drug after a label warning about guinea pigs fell off the vial, should have appreciated the risk.
