When Vets Meet And Marry...

It’s a busy time for the Hamiltons as they prepare to open a specialist pet hospita.

- Jan Raycroft

IT shouldn’t happen to a vet – but it does. And definitely not Marlow-based TV veterinarian and specialist Michael Hamilton and his fellow vet and wife, Clare, but there it is… they both have allergies to the fluffier end of their ‘market’. However, when you love and care for animals, such irritations just have to be managed.

Nor does it stop you from having four-legged companions in the family home, in their case a pug called Bumble (their short coats ‘work’ for many allergy people) and a Devon Rex cat, Winston, definitely not known for being a bundle of fluff.

Michael has over 20 years of veterinary expertise specialising in small animal surgery. He lectures to veterinary surgeons all over the world on orthopaedic and surgical best practice. He worked as a Senior Surgeon at Fitzpatrick Referrals, alongside Noel Fitzpatrick, for over five years. Michael featured on BBC One’s The Bionic Vet, a forerunner to The Supervet on Channel 4. He has also appeared on The Discovery Channel’s Wildlife SOS and is a regular on Channel 4’s Vet On The Hill.

Very much a ‘local girl’, Clare is practice owner at Cherry Tree Vets in Lane End. She was born in High Wycombe, went to school in Frieth and Great Kingshill, then Godstowe and Wycombe High School. The couple met while she was studying at Cambridge: “Michael had gone back there to do some specialist training, so in a way he was my teacher!” laughs Clare. “But it’s not taboo at that level, it’s quite a common way for people with the same interests to meet. As it happens, we had a mutual friend who had always insisted that if we just met we would make a good set – that we were the ultimate two peas in a pod.”