Monday, April 9, 2012

Davies Veterinary Specialists at the Hyde Park Veterinary Centre

We've just finished the first month of our collaboration with Davies Veterinary Specialists and find ourselves looking back and asking 'How was it for you?'.

Davies London W2 brings specialist vets right into central London as a service to London vets and their clients to make it easier to have access to the highest level of veterinary excellence without the hassle of having to travel for hours to get to a hospital out of London.

For us, it's been great - world class veterinary specialists working as colleagues right here in our clinic. A fantastic source of information and encouragement for the whole team, helping to raise our standards and enthusiasm for excellence every day. Sometimes I can't quite believe the progress we've made in this last 12 months...

And what about London's other vets? What have they been saying?

1. 'What a great idea!' Thanks - that's what we thought!

2. 'Really good service, convenient and good communication'. That was the idea. We're glad it's working well.

3. 'I'm worried that Hyde Park Vet is going to steal my clients' - that's just not going to happen. This is a Davies project, and all the arrangements are made in exactly the same way as if the patient was being seen up at the main Davies hospital in Bedfordshire. Other vet's clients are definitely NOT registered at Hyde Park. Davies just use our space.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Diets for dogs with cancer

A client of ours has a dog who has been diagnosed with cancer and has recently completed a course of chemotherapy. She's only young and one of her owner's important questions was 'What can I feed her to try to keep her as healthy as possible?'

We talked about some of the basic issues and she also went away and did a lot of her own research.

The immune system is constantly vigilant for the abnormally dividing cells of cancers. When people and animals 'recover' from cancer, this is partly the surgery, medication or radiotherapy and partly the hard work of the immune system cleaning up afterwards.

To provide 'immune support', you want foods that are rich in natural antioxidants and high quality proteins and strictly limit the carbohydrates, because tumour cells generally thrive on simple sugars.

There are commercial pet foods that will achieve much of this, but an alternative is to at least consider raw food feeding (with our guidance of course) for all its natural health benefits. As you probably know, we stock and recommend the Natural Instinct range of raw foods for pets.

If you want to put together a diet yourself, go for a mix of meat and bone, and densely coloured vegetables such as broccoli, kale, carrots, raw beetroot and lightly cooked tomatoes, with small amounts of turmeric and garlic. Go easy on fruits because of the sugars, but try blueberries and pomegranate juice for their high levels of antioxidants.

For several years we have also been using the nutritional supplement CV247 for our cancer cases. It contains a combination of powerful antioxidants and salicylic acid and has been shown in many cases to be very helpful in these cases. So we were pleased to see that new research recently published in the Lancet lists yet more health benefits of aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).

This time simple aspirin has been shown to be important in cancer prevention. Don't hesitate to call us on 020 723 0453 if you need any more information

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Rabies in Holland

You read it here first: back in October I flagged up the potential problems we would face with the relaxation in the Pet Travel Scheme regulations.

I suggested that it would only be a matter of time before we had cases of rabies, and WHAT A SURPRISE!

A news report in the Veterinary Record this week tells the story of a puppy imported from Morocco via Spain, who went on to develop clinical rabies on its arrival in Holland. It had to be put to sleep, along with three other animals that had been in contact and 45 people had to have treatment for exposure to rabies.

How did this happen? The customs officers on arrival in Spain, on departure from Spain AND on arrival in Holland ALL failed to spot that this dog had not had a rabies blood test and had not waited the required 3 months in Morocco before export.

The moral of the story? The regulations are too complicated (at the clinic we deal with them all the time and still we have to keep referring to the documentation), and most importantly, rabies is still around, and sometimes quite close to home.

I believe that the decision to lift the requirement for a rabies blood test before issuing a PETS passport from the UK was a big mistake.

5 out of every 100 dogs do not respond fully to their first rabies vaccine. Without a blood test you have no idea which those 5 are.

And when the UK issues over 40,000 new passports every year, that's 2,000 pets who are eligible to travel but will not be protected against rabies.

As I said, it's just a matter of time before we have an outbreak of rabies in the UK. Make sure it's not your pet: even though the law does not require it any more, we strongly recommend rabies blood testing for ALL pets that travel.