Lungworm
News
December 2007
Its Happy Birthday to our Warwick branch which has been open for a year.
Paula Bailey, Samantha Carrington-Brown, Hugh Duffin and Stephanie DeMoulin are the vets who have been working here during the last twelve months. Paula is famed (by us and our clients) for her special interest in lagamorphs-rabbits to most of us. She has been on specific CPD this year to absorb more up to date inovative veterinary information on the new discoveries in rabbit medicine and management.
There have been great new in-roads in this area with more and more people keeping rabbits as pets and realising that they deserve the same standard of health care as dogs and cats. Nutrition, anti-biotic protocols, anaesthesia, digestive system and behaviour were some of the areas targeted with lots of new and exciting ways of curing or managing rabbit health problems. Rabbits are treated entireley differently than other pets when it comes to veterinary treatment. The drugs and their administration, dosages, handling , diseases, parasites and just about everything is different to that seen for other pets. Pat Thopmson, our vet nurse assistant/receptionist also attended the same rabbit CPD as Paula and Warwick sees a lot of rabbit keeping clients. We also see Jane dexter's rabbit rescue, on an alsmost daily basis (please take a look at her interview) therefore this month's pet of the month had to be a rabbit.
Samantha Carrington-Brown was an honours graduate from The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons based in London-same place Hugh graduated from.
Sam's initial area of special interest is equine and she goes out on a lot of horse calls. She also however has seen her fair share of other species and has already delved into difficult areas of chemotherapy and surgery to great success. Needless to say she is extremely popular with our polo clients, especially as she groomed at a polo yard before qualifying as a vet.
Anyone who is not new to The Animal House will already know about Hugh and his multiple areas of experience and interest. He is our orthopaedic star with more cruciate repair ligaments under his belt than I thought humanly possible within a normal practice.He's up to all sorts, including work for the Donkey Sanctuary (on his day off)I know we don't see large animals, but donkeys come under the equine category. So do mules and he's seen them this week too. We are also seeing a LOT of bladder reconstruction surgery (Hugh again mostly)so please do be careful what food you are feeding your dogs and cats as this can heavily influence the production of bladder stones which can lead to this tricky and expensive operation. If you're not sure which foods have a protection against bladder stone production then give us a call and we can let you know.
Stephanie DeMoulin has been a treasure but she is leaving us to go and work for an animal charity in Malaysia. She worked with us as a highly recommended long-term locum and proved herself to be a thorough technician and a very pleasant lady. She would often be seen after the surgery had closed and all the in-patients were settled still writing up notes thoroughly and preparing for the next day. Believe me after a 12 hour day this shows commitment to your profession.
Also at Warwick we have Becky Barnsley, Theresa Duffin (me!) Pat Thompson, Gemma Patterson and Lynsey Ward regularly on reception, with Pat Thompson, Jojo Shanley, Keyley Hutchinson in the nursing role. This does chop and change as we like all our staff to work at both Warwick and Rugby and we like our receptionists to take on as much of a nursing role as possible without being V.N's and we also have our V.N's work on reception. This is intentional and quite out of the ordinary these days. We think it gives our clients better information on first contact with the surgery over any animal problem and it means the receptionist who took your call could well be the nurse actually caring for your pet. More knowledge is more power!
It takes quite a sprinkling of staff to achieve this as there are certain duties that only a qualified V.N. must undertake, similarly there are many things that only a qualified veterinary surgeon must do. Where unqualified and training V.N's are back-of-house they are support staff and also can observe and assist a great deal which gives a better understanding than just 'theory'.
We have to thank Pat too for getting our extremely full weight clinic up and running at Warwick. Pat is a whizz at this and we're seeing brilliant results. It comes in handy for all sorts of reasons but especially where a pet has sore joints, a lot of sore-joint patients benefit by change of diet in many ways and a number of these are heavy enough to put extra stress on the joints. We see a lot cutting down on anti-inflamatories and pain relief medication after they have slimmed down a little-the best help for problem joints. We multi-task here by giving a food that makes pets feel full, without being calorific and it also includes glucosamine and other beneficial natural additives which help with arthritic conditions.
If you're not sure if your pet is under or over-weight if you pop them in to either surgery we can weight your pet easily and accurately and let you know depending on their size and type where they are in the best weight area.
Our big problem at the moment is lungworm. I know its not very Christmassy and we're getting on for December, but we are seeing so many cases of it at the moment that we thought we had to do something about it. We've decided to make lung worm our Christmas initiative. Why?
We've covered this as our hot topic of the month so please read through as it explains all in detail. In short we are seeing a lot of cats in particular with symptoms taht lead us to diagnose lung worm and it is entirely avoideable by using the right wormer. Our routine wormer does this. Please be encouraged to either start or keep up regular worming with a reliably active product which will target the worms your pets are exposed to. Regularly it is mentioned that people buy their wormers from the supermarket and are not pleased when they then discover their pet has worms. Unless you use a product which has been stored correctly, is in-date and has the correct ammount of active ingredient and wide ranging action you may as well not bother.
Do not assume your vet's anti-worm medication is more expensive that the supermarkets' as often it is not and if it were, it is cheaper than something that does not work. You only need to give a grown-up cat 4 pills per year of a certain prescription product to be successful and the same with the adult dog. Dosage is equally important and your veterinary surgery will advise on how much you need of which product and how often for your individual pet depending on their age and weight.
It is also important to target the specific parasites your pet will come into contact with. The vets is a great source of information as we deal with this on a regular basis and have up to date information and the adility to prescribe. Makes me cross when a see a poor creature suffering from a parasite related condition (of which there are many), not because their owner hasn't bothered but that the product they were encouraged to buy came with inaccurate or no advice and was not likely to do the job anyway. So we are promoting buy a year's worth of wormers and get the last quarter year free.
The logic is that if you commit to a year's worth you have it to use and not be tempted to think its not so relevant during the cooler part of the year. This is important right now because due to climactic conditions worms and fleas are a year round problem. It is no longer 'flea season' or 'worm season' with winters greatly reducing the number of parasites around. We have not before seen this number of cats with lungworm at this time of year. The damp and mizzly conditions are seeming to allow these little devils to flourish. All is not lost as we can prevent them being a problem so thats the good news.
We have also preapared a specific Christmas/New Year fact sheet to help avoid the common problems we see at the surgery at this time of year. Prevention is better than cure, so this will contain lots of tips to aid you not having to see us for nasty things over the holiday period. We much prefer if you come along with a healthy pet for preventative check and a fuss of your pet than if you have to come in for avoidable accidents. We're always there to see your pet whatever they need.Pets do feel better about a visit to the vets if they come in as often as possible to get to know us and have a positive experience. If ever they do need to come because they are in a desperate need of veterinary attention this helps them feel better. We have lots of regulars who come in just for a chat and to familiarise a pet with us without any need of any treatment. Please feel free to do this. Its a good opportunity to ask questions that you may no think of if you only see your vet for big problems.
Finally a happy Christmas to all, especially our staff who have consistently worked their socks off all year. Please look out for next months news as we have big plans for January to open up all sorts of extra services we will be offering.
For more news visit the news archive.