About us
Two Sussex vets who decided the consultation belonged in your home
Sussex Home Vets is an independent practice run by Joe Sharps and Rachael Butler, providing home veterinary care across Sussex, Kent and Surrey.
Our story
Built around longer appointments
Between them, Joe and Rachael have worked in first-opinion practice, out-of-hours emergency work and mixed practice across the South East for close to forty years. The pattern they kept noticing was the same: ten-minute slots, frightened animals, and owners leaving with half their questions unasked.
So they built a practice with no waiting room. Sussex Home Vets exists to give pets a calm examination and their owners a proper conversation, at home, for a fee that ordinary households can plan for.
What we stand for
Less fear, better medicine
A calm patient is easier to examine and safer to treat. Removing the journey is the simplest way to lower a pet’s stress, and it improves the quality of what we find.
Plain advice on cost and options
You hear the realistic options, including doing nothing, with prices given before we act. We will say when something is not worth putting your pet through.
Care plans made with you
You know your animal better than anyone. Plans are agreed together and adjusted as life changes — a new puppy, a house move, a diagnosis.
Dignity at every stage
From the first kitten vaccination to the last afternoon in the garden, we try to make each visit gentle for the pet and bearable for the family.
Your veterinary surgeons
Rachael Butler
Veterinary surgeon & co-founder
Rachael’s interests are senior medicine, chronic pain and the anxious patients other practices struggle to handle. She is usually the one on the floor with a nervous collie, taking as long as it needs.
MRCVS · 07845 176339
Joe Sharps
Veterinary surgeon & co-founder
Joe’s background covers emergency and out-of-hours work, internal medicine and travel certification as an Official Veterinarian. He handles most of our Animal Health Certificate appointments.
MRCVS · 07955 315930
Registered Practice Number 7714824 · Company Number 15171927 · Regulated by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
How it works
Home veterinary care, from first call to follow-up
Step one
Get in touch
Ring or email with your postcode and a sentence about your pet. We will tell you what a visit involves and what it costs.
Step two
We come to you
An unhurried appointment at home, usually up to an hour, with the full examination done where your pet is comfortable.
Step three
Agree a plan
Findings explained in plain terms, medication dispensed or ordered, and any tests, imaging or surgery arranged with a local practice.
Step four
Stay in touch
We follow up, keep your records, and remind you when boosters or senior checks are due. You always know who to call.
Continuity of care, including the parts we do not do ourselves
Being a home visiting practice does not mean working alone. When your pet needs an anaesthetic, x-rays, ultrasound or a night on a drip, we arrange it with local practices whose teams we know, share the history, and pick the case back up the moment your pet is home.
Out of hours, emergency cover is provided by Vets Now in Tunbridge Wells and Eastbourne. Everything that happens is recorded in one place, so nothing has to be explained twice.
Come and meet us — at home, with your pets
New clients are welcome to a free one-hour welcome appointment so we can meet properly and set up a plan for each pet.