Thursday, June 25, 2015

Sara Cox and Scott Mills at The Hyde Park Vet Dog Show in aid of Pets As Therapy

We did it!

The weather held and we basked in glorious sunshine all afternoon.

So many dogs and people, it was a great fund raising event in aid of Pets As Therapy


Sara Cox and Scott Mills were joined by Hanna Attwell (owner of one of last year's winners), James Lacy (Lily's Kitchen), Jennifer Dubois (Pets As Therapy) and Michelle Middleton (Carter Jonas) on the judging platform.

They picked clear winners for the waggiest tail, mixed breed dog, puppy, senior dog and dog the judges would most like to take home.

Carter Jonas are very generously going to match our fundraising efforts, so if anyone wants to make further donations to this very worthwhile cause, cheques or cash donations can be made at the clinic any time over the next two weeks.



Many thanks to our other sponsors and benefactors who helped make the day such a success: Lily's Kitchen, Royal Canin, The Pets Pyjamas, Natural Instinct, Red Dingo, The Dog House, Vetplus, Canagan, Pet London, Protexin, Kruuse, Bayer, Novartis, Kong, MSD and Agria Pet Insurance.

We'll keep you posted with the total raised...

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Pets win prizes at the Hyde Park Vet Dog Show Wednesday 24th June



Everyone's a winner at the 

in aid of Pets As Therapy!

Wednesday 24th June 2015, 4.00-6.00pm


    Download your registration form now at Dog Show 2015 


    But let's just cut to the chase... This is what you can win! Our various sponsors have
helped put together some fantastic prizes for Wednesday's Dog Show:

    In each category, the First Prize includes an engraved silver cup, a Lily's Kitchen Hamper, a Red Dingo Collar and Lead set, 3 months supply of Milbemax and Advocate, a £20 voucher for the HPVC Pet Boutique and a Pet London toy.

    The Runner-up gets a Royal Canin Gift Set (including a slow feeder, a small bag of lifestyle stage dry food, and a treat handle), a Carter Jonas Lead and a pack of Natural Instinct Lamb Lites.

    The Goodie Bags for the first 50 entrants includes a 500g bag of Canagan Free-range Chicken, Pet food can covers, Stationery (pens, sticky notes, note tabs), a Frisbee, a Flea comb, a pack of Poo bags, a 500g Natural Instinct tub, Lamb Lites and Rogzlites.

    So hurry up! Register now using the downloadable entry form


    There are 5 competition classes:

1: The dog with the waggiest tail

2: The best crossbreed dog

3: The best newcomer for dogs under 18 months old

4: The best golden oldie (dog, that is) for those over 8 years old

5: The dog that the judges would most like to take home


    We ask for a minimum donation of £5 for each entry, with all funds raised going to Pets As Therapy, a maximum 2 classes per dog, one person only in the ring with each dog, Sara Cox and Scott Mills, will be joining the judging panel!


    If you need any more information drop in at the clinic, email us on hydeparkvet@aol.com or call 0207 723 0453, otherwise, we look forward to seeing you on the day

    And don't forget to register now at Dog Show 2015

Thursday, June 18, 2015

How to be happy?

Is it time for a reworking of this (reputedly) Chinese saying?

"If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk 
If you want to be happy for a week, kill a pig
If you want to be happy for a month, get married 
If you want to be happy for life, have a garden"

In this world of Health & Safety concerns about binge drinking, suggestion 1 can no longer be recommended.


As for suggestion 2, it may well be considered OK if you're a Bear Grylls wannabe faced with that or starvation, but if you're just on some weird voyeuristic reality TV show featuring people in bikinis looking hungry, I don't think it works for me. The pig was virtually tame, for goodness' sake. 

No further comment on Suggestion 3

And now I'm old and grey, I'm allowed to sit and admire my small garden and take delight in seeing healthy bees do their normal bee things while in the rest of the world, the mighty agro-industrial business does it's best to kill off the natural world around us. We need more bees.

But luckily there are plenty of variations on the theme:

"If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else." 

Or try this

"If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk; If you want to be happy for three days, get married; If you want to be happy forever, make a garden"

Curiously, the English version is quoted as being:

"If you want to be happy for a year, plant a gardenIf you want to be happy for life, plant a tree"

Some would say that getting a puppy would do the trick

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

What to do if you get Woodcock in Soho

Being over 50, I think I'm allowed a certain degree of cynicism about social media, and Twitter in particular. I subscribe to the viewpoint that the clue about Twitter's utility lies in the first 4 letters. But I may yet be wrong.

And yes, I am aware of the logical inconsistency of writing about it on social media.

Picture this: a young man has lived for 4 years in London and on the morrow is leaving, possibly forever, to make his way elsewhere in the big wide world.

How better than to spend one's last lunch in the capital in the company of friends in a nice restaurant in Soho?

Approaching the door of said establishment, he scans the terrace (as was his habit) and sees, to his surprise, a very pretty bird sat over in the far corner. What can she be doing here, he asks himself and goes on in for his lunch.

Emerging into the afternoon light a few hours later, he sees her still there, looking decidedly ill at ease. Full of cheery bonhomie and determined to do one last good thing, one final fanfare, one parting shot for London, he approaches her.

Her feathers are a little ruffled, she makes no attempt to escape him as he approaches. Boldly, he sweeps her up into his arms and heads for the exit.

A few moments later, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, he has located the nearest veterinary clinic and makes his way to us.

"I've found myself a bird."

"Indeed you have."

"What is it?"

"Err."

"I'm leaving London, I have to pack my flat, my bags, get to the airport, I can't possibly look after her..."

We took her in as the clinic was closing. What to do? I eyed up her long beak (she had already acquired gender, as you may have noticed, but without the benefit of major ornithological insights) and was reminded of Aesop's fable of the fox and the stork. Would we need to feed her with the aid of a long necked vase?

Some bright spark suggested we take a photo and put it up on Twitter with a request for identification and assistance.

Within half an hour, we had two correct answers: one from Clive Elwood (managing director for Davies Veterinary Specialists) and the other from the brother in law of one of the clinic staff. They had spotted the tweet and identified her as a woodcock. In Soho. Imagine.

Migrating, apparently, and sometimes they get confused over cities and fly into buildings.

The following morning, she was collected by those wonderful people from the London Wildlife Trusts so that they could take care of her and gently rehabilitate her back into the world she came from.

Twerp twats herself on a building, vet tweets on Twitter and all is well...

Monday, June 15, 2015

Chips with everything

Pet identification microchips. There's a dull topic for you.

We already encourage all dog owners to have their dogs microchipped. It forms the essential basis of identification for a pet passport, potentially confirms the ownerhip of a dog in case of dispute, but on a more cosy domestic note, it allows for the reuniting of lost pets with their owners.

Our best story from the clinic was of a Westie than ran out of the owner's front door IN LONDON one evening and disappeared, not to be found despite a thorough search of the area.

Gloom and despondency in the home.

Unbeknownst to them, the following day a little old lady was walking in her local park IN COVENTRY and spotted a slightly bedraggled little Westie wandering around, but thought no more of it.

Until the next day in the same park, the same dog was still there, now cold, wet and hungry. She took her home, delighted with her new companion. All went well until a couple of weeks later, her new little dog slipped on the stairs and started limping. She took her to the local vet who found the chip and contacted the original owners. They were reunited on.... Christmas Eve.

Joy in the home!

So chips work. And it's worth mentioning that from April 2016, all dogs will have to be microchipped and registered on a central database by the age of 8 weeks old. Not quite sure how that's going to work, but it's there in the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2014, so watch out.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Badgering the government

I very much appreciate the widely held concern about the fall in wholesale milk prices and 
the poor returns that dairy farmers are able to achieve in the current market.

Add to this the on-going difficulties with TB control and the farce of the badger culls, and we 
have a beleaguered industry in quite a state of crisis.

Milk is a great source of energy, protein and calcium if you don't have anything else to eat. And a cow is a great way of converting vegetation that is relatively indigestible for humans into a steady supply of such nourishment. It's also mobile and fresh, which is especially useful when you don't have a fridge. But the above have limited value in our society and I can't help noticing that our shops are now full of skimmed, low fat or even non-dairy dairy products, partly because many of the base constituents of milk are actually quite bad for us as adults, especially given the relativeabundance of other food types. Is the elephant in the room not the issue that we all consume far too many dairy products anyway and that the industry is therefore bigger than either our economy, health or environment can sustain? Last time I checked, I was weaned when I was about six months old.


Thursday, June 11, 2015

Rabies, Tollwut, Rabia, even Rabbia, it's all the Rage

We're lucky in the UK in that we don't have rabies to contend with. Unless you're a Daubenton's bat, in which case you apparently have a 10 in 12,000 chance of having the rabies-like European Bat Lyssa Virus.

The last recorded death from handling an infected bat in the UK was in 2002, so we effectively don't have rabies, and yet most of us really don't realise just how lucky that makes us.

As animal lovers, if we come across an unknown dog or cat, our concerns mostly centre on whether we're going to get to say hello properly, or whether they'll try to avoid us.

We don't have to worry about whether there's a risk of an unprovoked and uncharacteristic attack that could give us a fatal illness (rabies), which is how it is in many other parts of the world. In fact, world wide about 100 children die of rabies every single day.

Hence the Mission Rabies campaign, actively supported by our colleagues at Davies Veterinary Specialists.

It might seem as if rabies is a far distant problem, but just across the water in France it's a different story. In fact most years they have a case or outbreak and this year is no exception.

Last month, a seven month old puppy that had initially been illegally imported into France from Hungary without identification or vaccination, was then taken to Algeria where he escaped, but was eventually found again and brought back to France.

Once there, he had contact with numerous people, several of whom he bit and was finally taken to the vet who correctly suspected rabies. He was placed under quarantine but died overnight.

The standard regulation zone that has to be set up around a rabies incident restricts the movement of all cats, dogs and other carnivores and any unvaccinated animals simply have to be euthanased.

So... if you're going abroad, remember rabies vaccination for pets is essential, particularly if you want to bring them back to the UK. Back in the day when we used to have to blood test them all, as many as 1 in 20 used to fail after the first vaccination, so although the law does not require it, you might want to ask your vet to take the blood test anyway.

It's better than rabies.

Monday, June 8, 2015

"Shock figures reveal the menace of out of control dogs"



"Shock figures reveal the menace of out of control dogs" was today's front page headline in the Evening Standard.

And then, later in the same article it says "the number of dangerous dogs seized by police fell from a peak in 2009/2010.."

So less out of control than 5 years ago, then?

And this in the context of a headline from the same august journal almost exactly a year ago (11 May 2014), which said "Huge rise in number of dangerous dogs seized, figures show".

But still less than in 2009/10. You've lost me now.


Sunday, June 7, 2015

Boxing clever when you have pets

Boredom.

Not something I have a great deal of time for, I have to admit, but I wouldn't mind, now and again, to be able to sit staring at the wall, going errr.....

But for many urban pets, boredom can be quite an issue. It's OK if your canine or feline boredom threshold is very high and a lack of anything immediate to do triggers rapid onset of a deep and satisfying sleep, but if not, there lies trouble ahead.

Bored dogs pine, bark, chew and destroy. Cats over-groom and stress themselves into cystitis, and most pets will be more likely to over-eat and stack on the weight. Not a good combination.

The curiously-named Temple Grandin, quite apart from being famous for her autism, is one of the great animal behaviour gurus, and amongst many other things, loves cardboard boxes and paper bags. And this is why:



- They are cheap, easily available and destructible, and are great for environmental enhancement for pets. Try these: 

- Use paper bags to hide small bits of dry food or treats so they have to work a bit for their next snack.

- Cardboard kitchen or toilet roll inners can have food held in place by a piece of scrunched up paper at each end.

- Use sheets of cardboard to hide the sight of something scary such as a neighbouring predator cat.

- Hide food treats amongst scrunched up paper in a cardboard box

- Cardboard boxes are great to get into and out of, hid in, pounce out of or sleep safely in.

Hiding places are particularly important for our pet 'prey species' so make them simple and easily replaceable hideaways. Bunnies and guinea pigs really don't like a high visibility lifestyle.

And if you find yourself with enough time to be staring at the wall, check out Temple's Ted Talk


Saturday, June 6, 2015

Seals of Approval

As we make our weary ways to and from work in the busy, polluted and often dangerous (for those of us who cycle) streets of London, it's easy to forget that we are surrounded by wildlife.

The birds, the bees and urban boxes might be more obvious, but The Zoological Society of London report that the seal population of London is on the rise.



They're in the Thames, obviously, but numbers counted have risen from a previous level of 685 to last years figure of 938. And they've been spotted as high up the river as Teddington Lock.

Find more about the ZSL seal survey work

And if you want to make your garden or terrace more wildlife friendly, try these top tips:

1. feed the birds
2. provide water for them to drink and bathe
3. grow stuff, ideally native species with flowers. We need to be especially nice to the bees
4. avoid garden chemicals
5. plant a tree. If you don't have space, join one of the schemes that will do it for you elsewhere
6. let your garden get a bit untidy  - don't weed too much

Now you don't need to do a Joanna Lumley and invite the foxes into your front room, but for the hardcore, you could do worse than joining the London Natural History Society


Thursday, June 4, 2015

The Hyde Park Vets Summer Dog Show June 24th 2015!!!!

Every year for the last few years, coinciding with the Connaught Street Summer Fair when the street is closed to traffic, the vet clinic has held a dog show. 

White picket fencing, red carpet, prizes, celebrity judges and loads of dogs with proud owners prancing up and down the runway... Check out the photo gallery of the 2014 Dog Show  with celebrity judges Jennifer Saunders and Claudia Winkleman





And this year, with Sara Cox and Scott Mills as part of our celebrity judging team, it could be you on show!

But before we go any further, click here for your Dog Show entry form

Apart from being a piece of urban madness, we do it for charity. In the past we've raised money for The Mayhew Animal HomeThe Street Animals of Morocco and The Cinammon Trust.


This year it's all in aid of Pets As Therapy a national charity that provides therapeutic visits to hospitals, hospices, nursing and care homes, special needs schools and a variety of other venues by volunteers with their own friendly, temperament tested and vaccinated dogs and cats. There are currently around 4,500 active PAT visiting dogs and 108 PAT cats at work in the UK. Every week these calm friendly dogs and cats give more than 130,000 people, both young and old, the pleasure and chance to cuddle and talk to them. They visit a staggering half million bedsides each year.


Even better, our opposite neighbours Carter Jonas have offered yet again to match every penny of the first £1500 we raise - so roll up, roll up, every ten pounds you donate costs an estate agent a tenner.


It doesn't get better than that.


Mark the day in your diary. Wednesday 24th June, 4-6pm


Be there!

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Can I get a disease from being scratched by my cat?

Can't help noticing that AOL - for some reason best known to itself - has chosen to feature a piece on Cat Scratch Fever this morning.

Always love a good scare story.

So what it's all about?



Cat scratch disease is an infection caused by a bug called Bartonella henselae that can be carried by cats. But dog and monkey bites, pins pricks, thorns, splinters, ticks and human to human contact have all also been suspected as sources of infection, so it's a bit harsh to blame it all on the cats... 

Signs of  infection are redness or swelling around a skin wound a few days after the injury, followed by swollen local lymph glands and in many cases a fever, headache and a general feeling of being unwell. 

If in doubt you're best to see your doctor: treatment is likely to be a simple anti-inflammatory medication and sometimes antibiotics.

Cat scratch disease is nothing new - it's been around for years and we see it VERY rarely, so no need to panic

General advice for animal owners is quoted as:


  • keep your cats free of fleas (but that's a good idea anyway).
  • try to avoid getting bitten or scratched by your cats, and especially by kittens (also a good idea). 
  • If you do get bitten or scratched, wash the wound straight away (hmm, also a good idea)
  • don't let your cats lick any open wounds you might have (you know this, surely).
  • if you feel unwell, go to see your doctor (but that's quite good advice under any circumstances)
  • err that's it