Just published
Why we built a UK vet directory
The CMA opened an investigation into UK vet pricing in 2024 and confirmed pricing opacity as a market-wide problem in 2025.
·8 min read·By Rene
Read the full piece →The GenoVaq journal
Writing about breeding, welfare and the work behind the marketplace.
Long-form pieces for breeders and buyers — buyer guides, founder notes, welfare deep-dives, and the case for responsible breeding made in slow editorial prose. New writing arrives most weeks.
Buyer's guides
Plain-English reads, before you buy
Practical pieces for the moment you are choosing a breeder, weighing a stud, or bringing a puppy or foal home — the kind of read worth bookmarking before the decision is made.
·8 min
What a good puppy contract looks like
The contract handed to a buyer at puppy pickup is one of the most important documents in their new dog's life.
Read the piece →·8 min
What 'KC Registered' actually means
The word 'papers' comforts owners in a way it probably shouldn't.
Read the piece →·10 min
The cost of a litter, line by line
A buyer who is comparing a £500 puppy to a £2,500 puppy is, almost always, being told the difference is profit margin.
Read the piece →·6 min
The first year of a horse's life
By the time most prospective buyers see a horse, the first year is already done.
Read the piece →·6 min
Fit for function — and for the sofa
Most of the small, serious breeders this year's journal has been writing about share a particular line of philosophy.
Read the piece →·5 min
The first six weeks at home
Most owners read everything about choosing a puppy.
Read the piece →·4 min
The questions to ask a breeder before you commit
Buying a puppy is one of the biggest decisions a household makes, yet most buyers are never told what to ask.
Read the piece →·5 min
How to read a health-testing certificate
Hip scores, elbow grades, DNA results, the X-rays from a pre-purchase vet exam — the certificates a buyer is handed are dense, technical, and rarely explained.
Read the piece →·5 min
What 'verified breeder' actually means on GenoVaq
Anyone can put 'verified' on a website.
Read the piece →Founder's notes
Slower pieces, from Rene
Founder voice. The case for responsible breeding, made in long-form prose across months of writing. These are the pieces the marketplace is built on.
·8 min
The founding-breeder promise
A marketplace works when both sides are motivated to be there.
Read the piece →·8 min
Heat in June. Litters in September.
A litter born in late September was conceived in late July.
Read the piece →·9 min
What to do in the next thirty minutes
If Monday's piece told you what to look for, and Tuesday's told you which walks not to take, this is the one we hoped you would never need: what to do in the half hour after you have found a dog or horse already in trouble.
Read the piece →·8 min
Walks you shouldn't take this week
Most heat-related vet emergencies don't happen in 32°C heatwaves on locked-up August afternoons.
Read the piece →·8 min
The hour before an emergency
Heat doesn't kill animals in a sudden, dramatic way.
Read the piece →·8 min
What popularity costs a breed
When a breed catches the public mood, its welfare typically begins to slide within a decade.
Read the piece →·7 min
What a really attentive vet does between visits
A good vet looks at the whole record.
Read the piece →·6 min
What good health testing actually looks like
"Health tested" on an advert can mean three tests or thirty.
Read the piece →·6 min
What a stud fee actually buys
A stud fee is not priced on the genetic material.
Read the piece →·5 min
When (and why) to think about banking your dog's cells
Stem cell banking for dogs sounds, to most people, like something a marketing department invented this year.
Read the piece →·6 min
What 'preventative' actually means
Most owners only think about their animal's health when something is already wrong.
Read the piece →·5 min
What responsible breeding actually looks like
Every other puppy advert claims it.
Read the piece →·3 min
An open call for partners
GenoVaq has been built quietly and deliberately so far.
Read the piece →·4 min
Why we built a free health record for every animal
GenoVaq is a marketplace for breeding genetics.
Read the piece →·2 min
Introducing the GenoVaq Journal
A new long-form home for writing about welfare, breeding decisions, and the work of building a regulated marketplace from scratch.
Read the piece →Got a topic for us?
Have something you'd like us to write about?
The journal is shaped by the questions our breeder community asks. If there's a health-testing standard, a breed-specific welfare topic, or a buying decision you'd value our perspective on, get in touch at journal@genovaq.co.uk.