Who are the best vets in Bunbury, Eaton, Australind and Gelorup?

So who are the best vets in the Bunbury, Eaton, Australind and Gelorup area? The truth is, it depends on who you ask.

As with doctors and many other professions, people want and expect different things from their vets. The variations can be in personality, experience, gender, opening hours, practice policies, cost,   consult length, and many other factors.

·         Personality – this is a big one. It’s important to find a vet that suits you. For example, we have a vet called Gabby. She is wonderful at bonding with clients and their pets. She is an incredibly caring person, and many people who have experienced her style love her. We get some clients come from over 100km away to see her. Another of our vets, Andrew, is a bit more clinical and a “straight shooter”. He is very straight forward, and while that may not be for everyone, he also has a very dedicated following of clients. This is why we employ vets with different personalities. It’s so we have a vet for everyone

·         Experience – How much experience is ideal? After 5-10 years you have seen most things, but you are ALWAYS learning. Once you have more than a few years experience you need to be working hard to keep up to date with your knowledge. We make sure our vets work hard to continue learning. Experience is a great thing, but a lot of experience without ongoing learning is not ideal

·         Gender – I occasionally hear people say “my dog doesn’t like men”. We’re not offended if that is the case. We’ll happily book your pet to see a female vet if requested

·         Opening hours – obviously a vet needs to be open when you need them. You also need to be able to access them if you have an emergency outside of their normal opening hours. If you phone your vet clinics number at any time, you should be able to talk to a vet

·         Practice policies – some practice policies help guide the clinics standards and ensure clients walk away happy. For example, our policies include everyone getting a written estimate, all clients being treated equally, etc

·         Cost – the cost between clinics is going to vary, and it does so for many reasons. These reasons include location, experience and qualifications of vets, level of care (such as anaesthetic monitoring equipment, heat blankets, infusion pumps, etc), equipment levels, consult length, etc. In fact, there are dozens of reasons

·         Consult length – consult length can vary quite a bit. I have worked in clinics with 5 minute consults and I found it impossible to do a good job every time. By doing short consults we could do more per hour, which kept the cost a bit lower but gave very poor value. We do 20 minute consults, which means we can spend the time we need to with your animal and don’t have to rush

The list goes on. It is always worth talking to your friends with pets to see who they recommend. You can also check out clinics websites and Facebook pages to see if you like the way the clinic projects itself.

Finding a vet that you really like can take a bit of work, but it is worth it in the end.

Snake Season is Here.

We are already hearing reports of snakes being seen in the South West, and with Summer just around the corner it is important everyone knows what to do if their pet is bitten or found with a snake.

If you find your pet with a snake, take it straight to the vets (phone first to let them know you are on your way). Even if your pet looks fine, it may still have been bitten. Many dogs and cats will appear normal for even a few hours after envenomation, but may then collapse and die rapidly. You will rarely be able to find puncture wounds from a snake bite, so don’t waste time looking for them.

A common sign of snake bite, particularly in dogs is sudden collapse followed by an apparent recovery. If your dog does this, especially after being in bush or an area where snakes may be, treat it as an early warning sign that your dog has been bitten and seek emergency treatment.

Cats may have an acute collapse similar t dogs, or may appear weak and limp.

“Home remedies” such as Vitamin C do not work. Please don’t waste valuable time trying any treatments at home as you may lose the chance to save your pet.

Rapid treatment not only increases the chance of survival, but also tends to lead to a faster recovery and less antivenom being used as it deactivates the venom before it has a chance to bind to the sites in the body where it causes damage.

Most pets will survive snake bites with rapid treatment. If you are concerned your pet may have been bitten, please phone your vet immediately and seek their advice.

Teething Puppies

 

Teething Puppies

Although owning a puppy is an absolute joy most of the time, it can come with a few headaches. We are often asked how to stop puppies from chewing everything in sight. My top tips for minimising puppy destruction are:

·         Give the puppy toys it can chew. It may sound obvious, but owners often fail to provide toys for puppies. Chewing is a natural behaviour designed to strengthen jaws and help teething, so you need to provide something to chew. If you don’t provide anything, your puppy will find something itself

·         Remove things you don’t want chewed. Puppies aren’t born with a sense of what they can and can’t chew. If it is valuable, keep it out of the puppies reach

·         Avoid mixed messages. Don’t provide old shoes to chew or other such objects as the puppy can’t tell the difference between an old shoe it can chew and a new one it can’t

·         Training is essential. Puppies can be intelligent creatures, and if you don’t provide adequate mental and physical stimulation they can get bored, which can lead to destructive behaviour

·         Ensure they have food to chew. Make sure the food you feed your puppy needs chewing. Tinned or “wet” food can be more palatable than biscuits, but it is often higher in fat and bad for their teeth. Biscuits and raw chicken wings and necks can provide good chewing opportunities.

·         Only tell them off if you catch them chewing inappropriately. It’s a golden rule of dog training that you can only tell them off when you catch them performing the bad behaviour, including chewing the wrong thing, toileting in the wrong place, barking inappropriately, etc. You can’t tell them off if you get home and find things destroyed, as this can create anxiety problems and may make the destructive behaviour worse

For all puppies, we recommend Puppy Preschool. We run Puppy Preschool on Monday evenings, with the course lasting 4 weeks. It is a great chance to pick up handy tips on training and behaviour, as well as a chance to socialise your puppy in a safe and controlled environment. By attending Puppy Preschool at a vet clinic, it has the added advantage of teaching your dog that the vets is a fun place to come, so vet visits aren’t a scary and unpleasant experience for your pet.

August is Pet Dental Month

August is Pet Dental Month

The Bunbury and Eaton Vet Clinics will be running a Pet Dental Month promotion throughout August to raise awareness of pet dental problems, prevention and treatment.

An initiative of the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), the aim of the campaign is to educate pet owners about the benefits of annual dental health checks and regular tooth brushing.

It is known that four out of five dogs and cats over the age of three years have some sort of dental disease which may go unnoticed by their owners.

Pets often won’t show pain. Even pets with sore gums, infected mouths and broken teeth will continue to eat so owners may not see any problems.

So how can you tell if your dog or cat has a toothache?

Your pet’s breath should not smell bad. Bad breath is a sign of infection. Gums may be red and inflamed, the teeth caked with tartar, or they may start dropping food.

Annual dental health checks are an ideal opportunity for owners to find out if their pet has existing problems which have gone unnoticed. Dental health checks also help ensure bacteria and poisons from dental infections do not break into the blood-stream and spread to distant organs like the heart, liver and kidneys.

We also recommend regular tooth brushing and many cats and dogs can be trained to enjoy having their teeth brushed, especially if you start at an early age.

About 80 per cent of adult animals have some degree of dental disease which normally becomes more severe with age, so make sure you take advantage of the Pet Dental Month. Prevention or early intervention is the best option for your pet’s ongoing health.

During August, the Bunbury and Eaton Vet Clinics will be offering a $20 discount on dental checks. It is also an opportunity for your pet to have a full health check and discuss any other issues you may have.

 

Allergy Season is Coming

With many plants starting to flower, we are starting to see the first cases of pollen allergies coming into the clinics.

The most common signs of pollen allergies in dogs is itchiness and inflammation affecting the paws, ears, groin and armpit, though any area can be affected. In cats, we tend to see scabs forming over large parts of the body.

Our treatment of allergic skin disease has changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. We used to believe that the pollen affected the dog by them breathing in the pollens, which would then get absorbed and affect the dog systemically. We now believe the allergies are actually coming from the pollens directly contacting the skin.

For cats with allergic skin disease, we find it is often associated with episodes of stress. We focus our attention for cats on minimising stress, controlling other things that may irritate the skin such as fleas, and use medication where required to settle things down.

For dogs, we often find they have secondary infections with bacteria or yeast if not brought in to us early. Owners may notice a bad smell, little lumps covering the skin and reddening and roughening of the inner surface of the ear. If an infection is present, they need veterinary attention.

To help minimise the risk of infection and to reduce itchiness, we recommend bathing dogs with allergies once weekly with and oatmeal based shampoo such as Episoothe. This is left on for around 10-15 minutes then rinsed off. This is then followed with a leave-in conditioner such as PAW Nutriderm. We also find that zinc and fatty acid supplements such as Nutricoat applied to the food once daily can dramatically reduce itching in some cases. These products are all available without a consult from both our clinics. For the more severe cases, we may use antihistamines and other medications such as steroids, but we try to minimise the use of these products.

If your pet becomes itchy over spring (many people notice it coincides with their hay fever flaring up), it may have an allergic skin disease. As usual, early intervention and treatment is the most successful, and we can help you build a maintenance program suited to your pet.

Breeding Your Dog

Breeding Your Dog.

I frequently have clients say to me that they want to breed from their bitch, which is often for reasons such as “everyone loves her and lots of people have said they would love one of her puppies”, or they are hoping to make some money from selling the puppies.

For anyone who wants to breed their bitch, I always ask them to consider these points:

·         The pound, SAFE, SWAR and rescue organisations are already full of puppies that need rehoming. Many of these have been bred because “everyone wants her puppies”, but the reality is many people struggle to find good homes for all the puppies they breed. Also, for every puppy that is born and gets a home, that’s one more rescue dog that doesn’t get a new home

·         Things can go wrong. She may need a caesarean, develop eclampsia or have other complications. When things go wrong it can occasionally be fatal. You may also end up needing to hand rear the puppies for up to 4 weeks, which is very time consuming and tiring

·         You have to be prepared for it to be expensive. If she needs a caesarean in the middle of the night, it will cost over $1000. Then you have the cost of feeding the bitch and puppies, vaccinations, worming, flea treatments, etc. You will probably not make money and you could  lose a lot

·         Early desexing prevents mammary tumours (breast cancer). We recommend not breeding a bitch until her third season to allow her to fully mature, but the risk of mammary tumours increases with each season. By the time they have had their third season, they have a 22% chance of developing mammary tumours

·         There is no benefit to the bitch’s behaviour. Having puppies doesn’t settle a bitch down. It may have the opposite effect as I have known children to be bitten by bitches protecting their puppies

If you would like more information on breeding, desexing or if you have any other questions, please phone us at the Bunbury and Eaton Vet Clinics and talk to one of our qualified staff.

Landlords: Please Consider People with Pets

Landlords: Please Consider People with Pets

Every Week we receive calls from people seeking assistance to rehome their pets because they can’t find a rental property that will let them have animals.

The Australian Companion Animal Council is working to encourage more landlords to consider pet owners as tenants, and have released their list of ten good reasons for landlords and managing agents to consider renting to a pet owner:

1.Pet owning tenants are generally willing to pay more rent.

2.Pet-friendly properties rent faster.

3.Responsible pet owners can make excellent tenants.

4.Tenants with pets want to hold longer leases.

5.Reduce your advertising spend as pet-friendly properties rent much faster.

6.No more problems with hidden pets.

7.Most Australians feel their pet is part of the family and care for them as such.

8.Reduce animal euthanasia; animal welfare agencies indicate that as many as 30% of dogs and cats are surrendered by owners who are unable to locate adequate accommodation.

9.Even considering pets will not necessarily lock you into a pet-particular outcome.

10.Pet application and agreement forms are available to help landlords and managing agents implement a successful pet management policy and help tenants understand how to responsibly manage pets. Forms are available from www.acac.org.au.