The Provincial City & Municipal Veterinarians League of the Philippines recently held their 21st PCMVLP Annual Convention & Scientific Conference at Subic Bay Travelers Hotel from May 21 to 23, 2025. And I had the privelege of speaking in front of our esteemed veterinarians on the second day of their conference. With this year’s theme of “The Future of Local Veterinary Service: Innovations and Solutions”, it was very timely that I spoke about the innovations and targeted solutions that Pawnec has developed in the past several months. 

Who are our veterinarians from the provinces, cities, and municipalities?

The roles and responsibilities of local government veterinarians, as defined by the LGU Veterinarians’ handbook, is to:

deliver needed veterinary services to the community and ably integrating with and complementing the programmes of the Bureau of Animal Industry in managing animal health, animal health threats, and associated human health risks, implementing sustainable livestock production and ensuring food and nutrition security and people’s livelihoods, quality and affordable veterinary services through the application of modern veterinary technologies, effective implementation of livestock programmes with a strong legislative support.

That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t? The encompassing roles and responsibilities in itself shouts “Overburdened veterinarians!”

I don’t want to pass that burden to you so I’ll only talk about managing animal health, animal health threats, and associated human health risks— the regulation and management of pet populations that’s increasingly putting a heavy strain on our LGU veterinarians’ capacity.

The Explosive Growth of Pet Friendliness and Pet Humanization

It’s widely known that the COVID-19 pandemic brought sweeping changes to our lifestyle. It forever changed how we go shopping, dine on-the-go, or work from home. But the swift rising trend of pet ownership brought a new generation of pets, the Puppy & Kitty Boomers! Yes, they are an entire generation of our dogs and cats!

Pet Pulse insights on Brgy. Bagbag, Quezon City

It’s old news that pet ownership skyrocketed during the pandemic. But the relative slowdown yet steady rise of pet ownership after the pandemic gave rise to the post-pandemic Puppy & Kitty Boomers. Just like the post-World War 2 Baby Boomers, these pets emerged as a distinct generation of dogs and cats after a global crisis.

The complex vaccination necessities that should have been the basic foundation of raising a puppy and kitten from a litter by an ethical breeder is overwhelming for the uninitiated pet owner.

This valuable insight from our Pet Pulse intelligence highlights a distinct demographic trend with their own unique puppyhood and kittenhood that shaped their personality and lifestyle shared between the pet and their human companions. We see a lot of first-time and uninformed pet owners. The complex vaccination necessities that should have been the basic foundation of raising a puppy and kitten from a litter by an ethical breeder is overwhelming for the uninitiated pet owner.

Why are sold puppies or kittens released to owners without proper vaccinations on time? Why are people who cannot provide basic care for pets, or even for themselves, allowed to own a pet?

Makati City’s Ordinance No. 2009-009, which governs animal regulation and control, includes a section in Article III that would prevent me from owning five dogs and three cats in my three-bedroom house. According to their pet licensing and registration policy, a household is limited to a maximum of two adult dogs and three adult cats.

These local government unit (LGU) policies are not unique to Makati City, but it’s the implementation of the law that makes the difference. The uncontrolled growth of post-pandemic Puppy Boomers and Kitty Boomers, unregulated sale of puppies and kittens, increasing trend of abandoned and neglected pets, rabies infections, and animal welfare offenders continue to overwhelm the basic veterinary services that our LGU veterinarians provide.

We expect between 1.5 to 2.4 million new puppies and kittens in 2025 yet we only produced 92 and 633 licensed veterinarians in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

In our latest Pet Pulse estimate, there could be between 24 to 28 million dogs and cats in the country under the care of less than 5,000 clinical veterinarians. The under-regulated and steady rise of pet ownership, and the elusive passing rate of veterinary licensure examination is problematic. We expect 1.5 to 2.4 million new puppies and kittens in 2025 yet we only produced 92 and 633 licensed veterinarians in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The celebrated pet-friendliness and pet lovers are widening the gap in our LGU veterinarians’ capacity in managing animal health, animal health threats, and associated human health risks—a meteoric gap in our pet’s health, safety, and overall public health.

It’s not uncommon for me to meet a city or municipal veterinary office with a solo veterinarian and a staff of three or five, responsible for tens of thousands of pets relying on them for registration, identification, and vaccination.

What Makes Truly Pet-Friendly?

We’ve often celebrated and adored communities, establishments and institutions for being pet-

friendly and condemned those who imposed the slightest limitation on welcoming pets. When you walk along the beaches of Australia or along the parks of Callifornia, you’d see more “Pets are not allowed” signs than inviting “Pet-friendly” stickers on establishments. Yet these undeniably pet-loving nations have healthier and safer havens for pets than the usual gimmicky pet-friendly fad of Philippine establishments. Rabies, parvovirus and other vaccine preventable infectious diseases are a distant threat in these parts of the pet-friendly world but it remains a daily threat to our pets.

With the availability of scientifically advance vaccines from Boehringer Ingelheim, Zoetis, HIPRA, and Merck Sharp & Dohme, and free access to rabies vaccines like the ones in Quezon City, thanks to the heroic efforts of our overburdened LGU veterinarians led by its new Division Chief, Dr. Rey Camuta del Napoles, it’s as shocking as the Philippine Polio outbreak in 2019 that puppies and kittens still die everyday from rabies, parvovirus, distemper, ehrlichiosis, leptospirosis, and other vaccine peventable diseases.

The Ambiguity of Pet-Friendliness and Vaccination

Less than a year ago, in June 2024, I met with the executives of a pet-friendly hotel in Makati City that proudly welcomes between 600 and 800 pet guests annually. This translates to approximately six pet guests on any given day, considering an average stay of three days and two nights. This is not a niche service; it is a regular occurrence for this hotel and many other pet-friendly establishments like it. To maintain the high-quality hospitality for which the hotel is renowned, it invests substantially in housekeeping to conduct deep cleaning of its designated pet-friendly rooms after each pet guest's stay. For a business that relies heavily on third-party booking platforms such as Agoda, Klook, or Booking.com, even the sight of a tick crawling on the wall of another room can result in a 1-star rating. This not only undermines the standard of hospitality they work so hard to uphold but also has significant financial consequences for their business.

I then asked how could they avoid this and maintain the balance of pet-friendliness and the overall safety and convenience to the rest of their hotel guests, their immediate correct answer is “we request a guest to present their pet’s vaccine card upon checking in.”

I presented my own pet’s vaccine card and asked, “Would you admit my pet into your hotel?”

”Yes, sir.”

”Why so?”, I asked.

”Because it has a veterinarian’s signature and a vaccine sticker.”

If you guessed that the hotel receptionist was not remiss here, you are wrong. In front of her managers, I pointed to the date that reads “August 2020”, the vaccine is almost three years past its validity. And don’t get me started on the type of vaccine if one reads,

Modified live canine distemper virus, canine adenovirus type 2, canine parainfluenza virus, canine parvovirus, inactivated Leptospira interrogans ser. Canicola, L. interrogans ser. Grippotyphosa, L. interrogans ser. Icterohaemorrhagiae, L. interrogansser. Pomona vaccine.

Arguably, vaccine stickers shorten it to 5/L4 or DAPP + L4. But vaccine stickers don’t display the drug’s indication of target disease. I can’t blame the hotel. Vaccine cards are a medical document intended for veterinary professionals, not hotel receptionists or mall security guards.

Vaccine cards are a medical document intended for veterinary professionals, not hotel receptionists or mall security guards.

A dog’s typical paper vaccine card

You see, I admire this hotel because by its standards, they’re already a cut above the rest. Many hotels, restaurants, and resorts display pet-friendly labels without the slightest clue of what makes for a genuinely friendly stay for a pet parent and their pet, let alone what makes a pet truly friendly to the others with whom our pets share our public spaces with. It’s quite common ramblings in the forum of Pet Friendly Resorts, Hotels, Restaurant, Parks, etc. Community about the misgivings and embarassment of a misleading pet-friendly claim of an establishment, alienated by its misguided policy on pet-friendliness.

A Chihuahua wasn’t permitted to ride the MRT and LRT in spite of LTFRB’s Memorandum Circular No. 2011-004 with MC 2019-019, as shared on Who’s Your Pupper? Facebook group.

The question remains unanswered, “Until when is a vaccine valid?”, “Which vaccine sticker to look for in a card?”, “Why is my dog not permitted entry?”

The medical jargons, complexities, and ambiguity compound the enduring question, “Is it pet-friendly?”

Time to Turn the Gimmicky Pet-Friendly Gateways Into Regulatory Checkpoints

Pet owners are unlikely to fulfill their fundamental and legal responsibilities if they can evade them, as I once did. When asked to register their pets with the government, many pet owners respond, “What for?” The recent advancements in veterinary medicine and technology have rendered the basic responsibility of vaccinating pets against just rabies outdated. The national law requiring pet vaccinations was enacted in 2007, which was a year before mobile internet, smartphones, and social media like Facebook became widely popular. This was also nearly a decade before modern anti-tick and flea medications received FDA approval for veterinary use.

PAWS launches the Certified Pet Friendly Seal for establishments

We register our SIM cards, vehicles, and professions, among other things, to protect the welfare and interests of the general public. So why do pet owners seem to get away with having unvaccinated and unregistered pets? Why can people operate as backyard breeders without facing enough liabilities? Unlike the examples I mentioned, pet owners are not compelled to comply due to the lack of proxy checkpoints and the practical utility of these licenses, permits, and IDs in our daily lives. I cannot drive a car or practice as a pharmacist without a license, nor can I travel without a passport or visa. Nowadays, you can't even use a smartphone without a registered SIM card. But when it comes to pets? There's little regulation, and we can often get away with almost anything.

The issue is that it takes a licensed veterinarian or an experienced veterinary assistant to spot a vaccine's purpose and its expiration date. Licensed veterinarians cannot be the sole guardians of pet regulations in our communities. We need those who are responsible for pet-friendly environments, such as animal welfare officers and other frontline workers who interact with pets, to be trained or equipped to validate a pet's identification and vaccination status. This way, they can engage in more safe and informed interactions. We’ve already authorized non-veterinarians, called trained vaccinators, to administer vaccinations under the supervision of local government veterinarians. Therefore, the gatekeepers of pet-friendly places should also serve as the proxy checkpoints for responsible and law-abiding pet ownership.

Gatekeepers of Pet-Friendly Places Can Augment Our Outnumbered Veterinarians

So how do we equip the gatekeepers of pet-friendly places, the mall security guards, hotel receptionists, or barangay animal welfare officers to effectively become proxy regulatory checkpoints? Without resorting to self-promotion of our eHealth Card, it would be unrealistic and naively idealistic to claim we can train them and educate the public. But the upcoming initiative by the Bureau of Animal Industry to digitize pet registration and vaccination that was unveiled at the 21st PCMVLP conference validates the need to make it idiot-proof with easy-to-understand color-coded signals. The uncertainty surrounding our technology’s legitimacy with regulatory compliance is finally addressed by BAI’s very own digital vaccine card.

The uncertainty surrounding our technology’s legitimacy with regulatory compliance is finally addressed by BAI’s very own digital vaccine card.

 

There were sideline discussions on potential public-private synergism between Pawnec’s eHealth Card and its unreleased equivalent software from BAI. This has lead to a tentative continuity of discussion in BAI’s office in June, regardless of the outcome, we are open to directly integrate and even share some of our advanced features favored by veterinarians, which have been proven and tested in our pilot clinics, to benefit the industry.

I’ve been hearing stories from veterinarians, young and old, about the moving target of Zero Rabies. Older veterinarians tell a time when it was still Zero Rabies by Year 2010. Younger senior veterinarians remember Zero Rabies by 2020. The target keeps moving that it’s almost wishful thinking to talk about Zero Rabies by 2030.

Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The paper and sticker-based pet registration and vaccination record system has not withstood its test of time, needing a pandemic-scale of health disaster to overcome CoVID-19 with a radical shift in vaccination tracking. We need an industry-wide paradigm shift to achieve Zero Rabies by 2030 by first radically switching to modern systems of regulating pet ownership and tracking vaccination records. Thanks to the regulatory weight of our innovative peers at the Bureau of Animal Industry, acknowleding that a digital format is a more efficient proof of vaccination, the pendulum of regulating pet ownership and tracking vaccination records is ready to swing toward the outnumbered LGU veterinarians’ favor.

Licensed veterinarians are indeed the backbone of our pet-friendly communities. Almost everything in pet care begins and ends with them. But we can’t break their backs by overburdening them with laborious and petty processes. In the age of agentic AI and AI automation redefining the future of work, when you equip non-veterinary gatekeepers to be the extension of a veterinarian’s order to register and vaccinate pets, to make safe and informed interactions with pets, we are in effect bridging the widening gap between our outnumbered veterinarians and our rising pet population.