This Month at Vetrica

10 March 2005

Latest News

This page contains the latest news from Vetrica and Vetrica OnLine. It updates at least monthly, and will also keep you up to date with the latest news about animal care and welfare.

An archive of previous articles is also available.

New Kennel Facility

Comfortable, spacious kennels in our new kenneling facility.

At Vetrica we continue to invest in the welfare of our patients. As announced in December, our new kennel facility was completed last month. The kennel area now consists of four spacious cat sized kennels above three much larger dog sized kennels. This is in addition to a very large walk-in kennel that is able to house the largest dogs. The kennels are made of fibreglass, making them naturally warm, with excellent sound-reducing properties. This is a considerable investment, increasing our capacity considerably.

Insurance Regulations

We reported in January that the regulations regarding the completion of pet insurance forms have changed. Well, less than a month after changing the law, the financial services authority has decided that it is not possible to police, and that although it remains, it will not be enforced. So, in the spirit of this, we have decided that our official policy will remain as stated here, but we're going to ignore it, and carry on as we always did, filling in insurance forms, without fuss, free of charge, and posting them off directly to the insurance company. That's assuming you don't want to do it yourself of course!

This Month's Interesting Case

Sparky is an eight year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. About three weeks ago, Sparky was hit by a car. Initial examination revealed superficial skin wounds to the left fore-leg, which Sparky he was unable to bear any weight on. We immediately suspected Sparky as having a broken leg. First aid consisted of applying a padded dressing to support the leg, and keep the skin wounds clean, pain relief and antibiotics.

This is an x-ray picture of Sparky's fore-leg, and clearly shows his fractured ulna, labelled X.

The following morning, after Sparky had recovered from the shock of the accident, we took an x-ray picture of his fore-leg under a heavy sedation. The x-ray showed that Sparky had fractured his ulna.

Fortunately, the two pieces of fractured ulna were not displaced, and the radius, which is a shorter, but sturdier bone than the ulna was unharmed. The radius bears most of the weight of the fore-leg, and functions as a natural splint, because there is a strong ligament holding the two bones together. This means that Sparky should make a full recovery without the need for any surgery.

We applied a heavily padded bandage to support the leg and relieve pain, which we have changed on a weekly basis while the skin wounds heal.

Sparky is a good example of a potentially very serious condition actually requiring only very basic treatment. Not all dogs with broken legs will need surgery to repair them, and very often, simple bandaging will suffice. Although it will be a few weeks yet before Sparky is fully recovered, there should be no long-term adverse effects.

Special Offer for March 2005

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