Welcome to the Winter 2010 edition of our practice newsletter. It seems only a short time ago that I wrote the Spring newsletter-time seems to be moving much more quickly as I become older! We have made quite a few changes to the practice over the last year including Sunday morning opening-increasing numbers of you are taking advantage of this service. Like most of you, we plan to take a short breather over the Christmas and New Year period-in the New Year we have a number of plans to further improve our service to you and your pets.
Over the Christmas and New Year period we will continue to provide our usual twenty four hour emergency service-just phone the practice number-01926 337790 and listen carefully to the contact details for the emergency vet on call. Our opening hours over the Christmas period are as follows:-
Friday 24th December 2010:- 8.30am to 5.00pm
Saturday 25th December 2010:-10.00am to 11.00am
Sunday 26th December 2010:-10.00am to 11.00am
Monday 27th December 2010:-10.00am to 12.00 midday
Tuesday 28th December 2010:-10.00am to 12.00 midday
Wednesday 29th & Thursday 30th December 2010:-8.30am to 7.00pm
Friday 31st December 2010:-8.30am to 5.00pm
Saturday 1st January 2011:-8.30am to 12.00 midday
Sunday 2nd January 2011:-9.00am to 12.30pm
Monday 3rd January 2011:-10.00am to 11.00am
It has been a pleasure for all of us to treat and help care for your pets over the last twelve months. Pets play such an important part in all of our lives. We would all like to wish you an enjoyable and peaceful Christmas and a happy New Year.
Staff Changes
Dee Osborne worked for most of 2010 as a Saturday receptionist-covering for Julie Elliott’s maternity leave. Julie returned to her Saturday role in November. We would like to thank Dee for all her sterling work in this temporary role.
Karoline Brooks leaves her role as a veterinary nurse at the end of December. Karoline is leaving the world of veterinary nursing to start her own childcare service. We wish her well in this new role
Staff Training
Head nurse Amanda Cousins has been undertaking some further training in animal behaviour. Animal behaviour problems can be extremely challenging to resolve. Amanda’s training should enable her to help many of you with any pet behavioural problems.
Annual Health Checks
Most of you attend annual health checks. During these checks we conduct thorough examinations, discuss concerns that you may have with your pet’s health, deal with preventative health issues like worming and flea control and administer vaccinations as required. We allocate more time for our appointments than most other practices in order to have time to perform these health checks in a thorough way. Two years ago we started to give a ten percent discount for animals that come for their health checks on time. This was intended to help in a small way with the increasing financial pressures that the economic situation was putting on many families. We are pleased to announce that we will continue this arrangement throughout 2011.
Annual heath checks are good opportunities to detect diseases at early stages. Every year we diagnose conditions like kidney disease, thyroid disease, diabetes, heart disease and dental disease at an annual heath check-early diagnosis normally leads to more effective management of diseases like these and most importantly a happier healthier pet.
Dental Special Offer
Throughout December 2010 and January 2011 we will be running a special dental promotion. We will give a twenty percent reduction on the total price of a dog or cat dental treatments. This reduction applies to the whole treatment including preoperative blood tests and post dental treatment preventative care. We ran this offer last year when it proved to be extremely popular.
Dental disease is a very common finding in dogs and cats. It causes mouth pain, poor appetite, weight loss, foul smelling breath and general lethargy. Every year we administer dental treatment to increasing numbers of animals. If you are concerned about your pet's teeth book in to see one of the vets.
Vets TV
In September the staff and a few of you were involved in videoing what goes on behind the scenes at the practice. The videos are now showing on the television in reception. We hope you enjoy watching them whilst waiting (hopefully not too long!) in reception.
Veterinary Essentials
In the summer we introduced Hill’s new range of Veterinary Essentials diets to the surgery. These diets replace the Hills Science Plan range. I have recently started feeding this range to my dog and cats. They appear to be extremely palatable and the new larger kibble size is better for dog and cat dental health. The diets are formulated from consistently high quality ingredients. If you have acquired a new pet or are thinking about changing your pet’s current food you couldn’t go far wrong by choosing Veterinary Essentials. The diets are priced very competitively and members of the Heathcote Healthy Pet Club are entitled to a further ten percent discount. Ask any member of staff for further details about these diets or our Heathcote Healthy Pet Club.