Summer 2004

April this year saw the 15 th anniversary of the 'takeover' of the clinic. On the 1 st of April 1989 (an auspicious day to choose) Carl and Sue Gorman took over from Allan Henderson. Things have changed a great deal in that time. For one thing, a single vet practice has grown to one which has the services of six vets. We have had a major extension. The clinic has been equipped with a full laboratory, endoscopes, ultrasound machine, automatic X-ray developer, ECG machine, high speed dental machine, extra kennelling and many pieces of surgical kit which allow us to perform a huge range of procedures. 15 years ago the nearest thing to a computer here was a large word processor which took up half the office. It used gigantic floppy disks the size of LP's (remember them?) to store about half a dozen letters. Now the practice is fully computerised, which not only allow us much more efficient management of records and information, but provides a convenient scapegoat for the occasional little glitch ( 'It must be a computer error.'). Our head nurse of 15 years ago, Nikki, is still to be found looking after reception, so not everything changes. Many of the young puppies and kittens we remember seeing through their first months are still coming in to see us as well.

Who know what the next 15 years will bring us…

Pet Passports

The PETS travel scheme Is well established now. New documentation is now available to replace the original forms. The new certificates take the form of a little pet passport (above). One benefit is that the passport will enable pets to travel to any EU country without the need for further health or export certificates.

It should be remembered that the PETS scheme is solely designed to protect human health, and makes no provision for preventing disease in travelling animals. Consequently we have seen increasing numbers of pets suffering from a variety of unpleasant diseases caught in foreign climes. In particular, the various diseases which are carried by ticks, mosquitoes and sand flies are a major concern.

It is your responsibility to ensure that if you travel with a pet, you do all that you can to protect it from exotic diseases. It is not sufficient to treat your pet with a wormer and tick treatment 24 to 48 hours before return to the UK , as required by the PETS scheme. In order to prevent parasites such as heartworm, pets need regular treatment with agents effective against these parasites. The medications involved are often different to those which we use routinely in this country, so seek advice well before travelling.

We have produced a hand out on the diseases which are a potential risk. Please ask at reception for a copy.

Next charity project:

You have been very supportive of our charity fundraising events in the last few years, so we thought it was time to tackle a bigger project, with your help. Fiona Marshall introduces our next charity which we will support.

Falkland Veterinary Clinic to Sponsor a Hero!

We are all familiar with those wonderful, patient dogs carefully guiding blind people around our towns. You may even be aware of dogs which assist deaf people. But do you know of Dogs for the Disabled?

These helpful hounds are trained to assist disabled people with practical tasks- tasks that many of us take for granted. For example if a dog can be trained to simply open a door, then a disabled person is no longer housebound.

Dogs are trained at a purpose built facility near Banbury and training lasts about 8 months. Each dog learns through his own natural instincts, based on five main task areas: obedience, retrieving, pulling, pushing and speaking on command. A fully trained dog will have a range of skills allowing them to:

•  Open and shut doors

•  Retrieve items like slippers, even crutches and pick up those annoying dropped items like keys and the remote control for the television.

•  Bark to raise the alarm in an emergency

•  Help a person dress and undress

•  Even empty the washing machine!

These amazing canine heroes start off helping people by providing solutions to practical problems but end up enriching the lives of the disabled in so many other ways. For example the assistance dogs are a friend to break the ice with, something that is so important in relieving the isolation that many disabled people experience. The dogs are a reason to go out and get some fresh air and a reassuring wet nose when the going gets tough. Many disabled clients say their confidence and self-respect returns when they are partnered with one of the dogs.

The staff at Falkland Veterinary Clinic is so impressed by these clever dogs that we are going to raise funds to sponsor our very own Dog for the Disabled. We'll follow him through his puppy socialising and training before he is matched carefully with a disabled person. We will be thrilled to support a partnership that will truly change somebody's life.

Help the Falkland Veterinary Clinic sponsor a Hero

We'll be advertising our fund raising activities in the clinic soon- from coffee mornings to sponsored half marathons!

Fiona is being modest, as she is kicking things off by entering the great south run in October, a 10 mile road race.. Altogether, we need to raise £5,000 in order to sponsor a dog, which we hope to achieve over the next two years.

Vaccine safety

Yet again this year we have seen another press frenzy over the safety of vaccinations. This year it was pet vaccinations, and the cause was a letter from a group of veterinary surgeons questioning the need for regular booster vaccination. What was not made clear was that all the signatories of the letter were practising homeopaths, and so were inherently suspicious of vaccinations.

In common with the overwhelming majority of vets, we keep a close eye on the evidence about vaccinations, and at the moment we are sure that it is best to follow the advice of the vaccine manufacturers. Already our vaccine suppliers, Intervet, have been able to reduce the frequency of vaccination against parvovirus from yearly, to two yearly, and just recently to three yearly. Other components of the vaccination still need yearly boosting. In the human field, the controversy over MMR vaccinations have been seen to lead to outbreaks of measles, and recently it was reported that cases of mumps have increased dramatically. If we allow the percentage of vaccinated pets in our region to fall too far, then all our dogs and cats will be the more at risk from outbreaks of deadly diseases.

In the past speculation about the safety of vaccines has largely been based on hearsay and anecdotes. This April the results of the first properly designed large scale study of dog health following vaccination were released by the world renowned Animal Health Trust (AHT) in Newmarket . Thestudy – nicknamed POOCH (Practice Overview of Canine Health) found that their research results clearly demonstrated the absence of any deleterious association between routine vaccination and signs of ill health.

The AHT's research took the form of an epidemiological investigation to evaluate the evidence for any temporal association between vaccination and ill-health in dogs. In total, more than 9,000 postal questionnaires were sent to the owners of a randomly selected population of dogs and just over 4,000 of these were returned and analysed. No temporal association was found between vaccination and ill-health in dogs after adjusting for potential confounders, such as age.

The study population consisted of dogs that had used the services of a veterinary practice within the previous 12 months. The British veterinary practices contacted were randomly selected from a national list. Dogs were then randomly selected from the computer databases of the 28 practices that agreed to participate. On receipt of the owners' completed questionnaires, details of the dogs' vaccination history were confirmed with the veterinary practice.

The survey found that older dogs in general exhibit more signs of illness, including chronic lameness, stiffness and bad breath, and that frequency of these signs increases continuously with age. However, the results demonstrated that recent vaccination (within a period of 3 months) did not increase thesigns of ill-health by more than 0.5% and could well actually decrease them by almost 5%.

More information is available from the AHT website.

Parasite gallery

Ear mite

This issue we feature ear mites. These little creatures are common in dog and cat ears. They may cause anything from very mild symptoms of irritation all the way up to severe ear infections and soreness. Typically they encourage the production of thick dark wax in the ears.

Once identified, ear mites are easily treated, but remember that all in contact pets must be treated as well.

Home grown parasites

Meanwhile…..

With every newsletter we seem to have new products and agents to talk about in the war on fleas. You may have seen the advertisements for the new Frontline preparation, Frontline Combo. This not only contains the existing drug, effective against fleas and ticks, but also has an agent to prevent fleas breeding. Even the most effective insecticide cannot prevent every flea from laying some eggs. These can continue to be a source of reinfestation, particularly if you are a bit late with the next dose of Frontline. By preventing fleas from breeding, you will plug this hole in your flea defences. At the moment we achieve this with a household spray, such as Acclaim. Frontline Combo will do the job of both spot-on and spray.

A new version of Advantage flea treatment is now out. Called Advantix , it contains a chemical which kills ticks, and is also supposed to repel ticks, mosquitoes and sand flies. This would make it a useful product to use when travelling abroad. It is not suitable for cats.

Good news about kennel cough

Kennel cough is a common and irritating complaint. The name is misleading, as this is a highly contagious disease that is easily caught by a dog which has nev er even seen the inside of a kennel. We do have a vaccine, but until now it has only been licensed to last for 3 mont hs, which meant we had to plan when to use it. The vaccine has now been granted a licence for a full year's immunity, which will make it a much more useful preventative tool.

With the new proven length of immunity, kennels are more likely to require that dogs coming to stay have had the vaccine. Book an appointment now.

An apology…….

We would like to offer sincere apologies. In a genuine attempt to improve your comfort, we have installed air conditioning in parts of the practice, including the waiting room.

This would appear to have jinxed the remainder of the summer, for which we are truly sorry.

A little help with writing the newsletter