Services

Our team of fully qualified Veterinary Nurses are always available to offer advice and assistance with the care of your pets. They regularly attend meetings and courses to enable them to improve the services they are able to offer you.

The nurses currently run clinics for overweight pets and 'Puppy Parties' for puppies between 8 and 12 weeks, in addition to routine appointments for follow up care after certain surgery.

If you would like an appointment with a nurse to discuss any aspect of your pet's welfare, please phone or ask at reception.

All of our Veterinary Nurses are fully Trained Veterinary Health Advisors and are always on hand to help

Please note that certain medicines are legally designated PML or POM which means that repeat prescriptions can only be dispensed if an animal is being regularly seen by a veterinary surgeon and his or her authorisation has been given.

Not only are these examinations required by law, but they also give the vet the opportunity to monitor your pet's response to the prescribed drugs and to ensure that there are no undesirable side-effects. After all, we talk of a year of your pet's life being similar to seven years of our own, and you can be sure that your GP wouldn't prescribe 3 or 4 years of medication without giving you a check-up!

If you require a repeat prescription, we would be grateful if you could phone the surgery first, preferably giving us 24 hours notice, to enable us to obtain the necessary authorisation.

If you wish, you may request that the veterinary surgeon issues a written prescription for supply at a different pharmacy. There is a charge made for the provision of this document, and the veterinary surgeon can accept no liability for the quality or authenticity of any medications that we do not supply.

VPet, Arthromid, Librela and Cartrophen

All our vets are passionate about pain control in our older animals. We are aware almost every patient at some point will be afflicted with arthritis. Arthritis is a challenging progressive condition however we are now in a better place than ever to help with the two major impacts it can have on our pets’ lives: 1) Pain 2) Reduced function. We have many medications from oral, to injectable and even Joint injections using steroid injections which can help control the pain and inflammation that comes hand in hand with arthritis. We also (with recent innovation in the field) use multiple medications including the Cartrophen, VPet and Arthramid injections which actually help modify the disease process. A number of our team members do hold the VOA individual certification and we do have acupuncture in house. All our team members would be happy to assist you and work out a plan for both you and your pet.

We take pride in being a practice that really cares about the health of your pets and we aim to prevent them from becoming ill as much as to help out when they do.

Routine vaccinations of dogs, cats and rabbits against the major infectious diseases, many of which can be fatal, will help to keep your pets healthy and happy.

In addition to this, it provides an opportunity to give your pet a thorough health check each year in order to detect problems before they may become serious.

It is our practice policy to send out reminders of booster vaccinations to help you ensure continued protection of your pets.

Puppy Parties are designed to help the youngsters learn to socialise and advise new owners on the routine care needed for a new dog.

We run Puppy Parties on a regular basis to give the young pups a chance to mix with others their own age, and to get them used to other people handling them besides their owners - useful for visits to the vet! Early socialisation is so important to the behavioural patterns in later life. At the same time our Consulting Veterinary Nurse is on hand to give advice on routine dental, feeding, worming care, pet insurance, etc.

As a 'first opinion' practice we are well qualified and able to carry out a huge range of examinations, investigations and operations on your family pets. However, inevitably there may be occasions when it would be of benefit to your pet to consider referring them (and you!) to a specialist, for either further in-depth investigations (e.g. MRI & CT scans) or surgery.

We are fortunate in having a number of specialist referral practices in the area, so you can rest assured that should there be occasions when we feel it may be beneficial to refer you for specialist care, we have a wide range of options available.

As all requests for Prescription Medicines must be authorised by a veterinary surgeon, we request that wherever possible you contact the surgery at least 24 hours prior to collecting a repeat prescription. This will enable us to check, authorise and pack your prescriptions ready for collection.

Please remember that in order to comply with our legal requirements, it is necessary for us to re-examine your pet from time to time before issuing further medication. The time interval between these examinations will vary to some extent, depending on the nature of the condition being treated and the medication prescribed. We apologise for any inconvenience this might cause, but the monitoring of any ongoing illness is essential for your pet's best health.

We are very proud to be able to offer weight clinics to help our patients stay as fit and healthy as possible. This is particularly important given weights role in a number of common diseases. For more information or help with any weight management concerns please book an appointment with the nursing team, we run weight management clinics on a daily basis, and we are happy to help and offer support for you and your pet on your weight management journey.

Below are a few simple diet tips.

• Weigh your pet’s food on digital scales for accuracy. Using a cup to measure out quantity is not an accurate method as the amount of kibble will vary each time with a cup. This means some meals will contain more kibble than others resulting in more calories making it hard to keep weight stable.
  Try this at home, use a cup to measure out a quantity of food, then place the amount on the digital scales to weigh the amount, without cheating and weighing the food, first See if you can get the same amount of kibble each time you use the cup. This should help indicate that using a cup is a non-accurate method for weighing food. Digital scales are best.
• If your pet is on a dry food, you can use food from its total daily allowance for treats during the day. This is a great way of making sure your pet is not overindulging in treats, meaning more calories. It can help keep your pet’s weight under control and your pet will still feel satisfied he/she is receiving a treat but not gaining extra calories.
• Try Puzzle feeders to slow down the speed at which your pet eats. This gives the stomach chance to acknowledge the food being processed.

We do have a practice van and as some have experienced with sufficient prior warning this has allowed us to do some home visits for special situations. Building on this, as our team has expanded, we are keen to extend this offer for more routine visits (like vaccines, Librela’s, Solensia’s, cytopoint, health checks, blood pressures and even blood tests). This will be staffed by one of our nurses and our lovely Vet Hazel Curtis. Current selected dates are:

• Friday 3rd March
• Friday 12th May
• Friday 16th Jun

If we have good uptake this may well be increased. If this is something you may be interested please do not hesitate to call the clinic on 01794513157 to check prices and availability as we look forward to this exciting new venture.

We are very fortunate to be able to offer completely separate dog and cats wards. Our cat ward is located in a lovely quiet part of the practice and has multiple kennels of different sizes to accommodate all of our different sized and shaped feline patients. We always have a pet remedy diffuser running and have little ‘Cat Caves’ for our shyer patients. We even have a separate examination table in the cat ward to minimise their requirements to be moved around the practice.

Our dog ward can cater for any size of dog with two lovely big walk-in kennels present as well. The whole ward was just recently refurbished with lovely see-through doors allowing easy monitoring and most importantly great patient safety for their stay. We have the luxury of having an enclosed garden to walk them in throughout the day so they can relieve themselves.

All kennels in both wards are equipped with orthopaedic mattresses and lots of blankets to make your pets stay as comfortable as possible and we are always happy to have blankets from their home be brought in to make them more settled.