Facilities

Diagnostic medicine

• Diagnostic medicine allows us to tell you what is causing your dog or cat's illness.
• This allows us to provide you with an accurate prognosis, and a relevant treatment plan.
• We have a range of equipment including radiography, ECG, endoscopy, blood analysers and microscopy which enables us to accurately diagnose your pets condition.
• The usual procedure undertaken to reach a diagnosis is to obtain a history and perform a physical examination during a consultation with you the pet owner. At this point problems are identified and by consulting with you we decide a course of action for further diagnostic tests.
• Most diagnostic procedures including radiology, blood tests, endoscopy and biopsy can be performed here at the hospital. Some advanced tests may require your pet to be referred to Sydney to a specialist centre.

Surgery

• We have a dedicated sterile surgical facility that is equipped and staffed to perform a range of orthopaedic and soft tissue surgery including bone pinning and plating, joint surgery, exploratory laparotomies and hernia repairs.
• While anaesthetised your pet is monitored using trained nursing staff and range of equipment such as our pulse oximeter to ensure that you pet has a safe and comfortable anaesthetic.
• We have a dedicated surgery suite which is isolated from the rest of the hospital to reduce wound contamination to prevent infections from developing. The vast majority of our surgical patients do not require antibitoics as all of the equipment is cleaned and then sterilised here on site using ultrasonic cleaning and autoclaving. We also use a range of disposable equipment and modern suture materials.
• Our surgery is equipped with a range of surgical instruments and equipment to enable us to perform complex surgery safely and effectively. This includes a suction unit which is used to remove fluids from the abdomen during laparotomies among other uses, and a surgical light which can be positioned by the surgeon to improve visibility.

Preventative health care

Preventative healthcare is important for the well-being of your family pet.

Health checks

An annual healthcheck is recommended for all animals. A full physical examination can detect disease processes before they start to make your pet ill and intervention may be able to stop them becoming ill.

Vaccinations

As well as the annual vaccination (where appropriate) we will discuss with you preventative measures which can be taken to improve the health of your pet. This will include heartworm prevention, worming, flea and tick control and behavioural issues.

Desexing

Desexing is recommended for all pets not used for breeding.

As well as the obvious advantage of preventing pregnancy and unwanted puppies or kittens there are other advantages to desexing. If a female dog is desexed before her first heat she has virtually no chance of developing breast cancer. Each heat increases the risk. It is still advantages to desexing older females. The incidence of pyometron (a life-threatening infection of the uterus is quite high in older undesexed bitches and for this reason we recommend desexing even senior bitches.

For the boys castration prevents prostate disease, testicular tumours and helps reduce aggression.

Desexing is also recommended in cats for similar reasons to those above and also reduce fighting, wandering and urine spraying. Rabbits should be desexed as they are often aggressive when they are hormonally active.

All animals are desexed under a general anaesthetic, receive peri-operative pain relief and are under trained supervision until recovered.

Dentistry

Dental disease is very common in our pets. Once there is a build-up of calculus on the teeth and the gums become diseased it is necessary to have the teeth cleaned under anaesthetic. This procedure is the same as done by the dentist on our own teeth. We have special equipment to ultrasonically scale the debris off the teeth and then polish the teeth up. We also have special equipment which can be used to extract teeth if they are beyond repair.

Once we have cleaned the teeth we can give you advise on how to slow the build-up of further deposits on the teeth.

Cat and small dog boarding

We have a dedicated cat boarding facility which is sufficient to house up to 25 cats. All cats in the boarding facility must be fully vaccinated prior to entry to the cattery. Bookings for holiday periods need to be made well in advance.

We have limited short-term boarding for dogs. All dogs are walked at least twice daily, and are kept in the comfortable air-conditioned confines of our hospital.