May was an exciting month for the practice. We have finally completed the building work out the front and have been able to get it ready to use. The team grouped together and cleaned all around the new reception and consultation rooms before moving the furniture through and setting the rooms up so they’re ready to go.

Now that the space has been built we will be getting new furniture to make the reception more dog friendly and allow for reactive dogs to be sitting in their own space out of sight of other dogs

We’ve all be eager to open up our new reception, but the building work has continued throughout April. We’re so close to having our bigger reception space, but we just need to wait a little longer.

We have however, had the opportunity to welcome 5 beautiful puppies. The mum of the puppies went into labour in the early hours of the morning and gave birth to 3 pups, but due to her struggling to produce anymore, she had to be bought into the practice in the morning for our assistance. After giving her some oxytocin she gave birth to another pup but unfortunately this little one did not make it. She then had another dose of oxytocin but we ended up having to get mum into theatre for an emergency c-section; during the surgery Victor retrieved 2 more pups. When mum woke up, she had 5 beautiful puppies waiting to feed. We now get the opportunity to watch these puppies grow over the next couple months when they come in for their health checks and vaccinations, getting ready for their new homes.

We also had the opportunity to welcome Antonio to our team. He will be working with us as our second vet. He seems to have settled in well and has been working closely with some of our clients, ensuring they get the treatment they need.

We had another emergency back in March, involving one of our own! Beth, one of our VCA’s, consulted with Victor as her pup Gizmo had eaten one of his toys. Beth brought Gizmo into practice and was advised on imaging and possible retrieval of said toy

The endoscopy showed more than we expected! The toy had been chewed into multiple pieces, and due to the material, had slightly swollen in size. After a long procedure to remove all the individual pieces of the toy using endoscopy forceps, Gizmo’s stomach was emptied and cleared. He was then woken up from his anaesthetic and recovered back in wards with Beth by his side.

Thankfully, Beth knew to seek veterinary advice, otherwise Gizmo could have become quite poorly. If the toy wasn’t retrieved, the toy could have gotten stuck in his bowel, causing a blockage. This would have needed major surgical intervention, and even caused possible complications, which we wouldn’t want!

During February we had the opportunity to get some lovely photos of all the staff and the practice. We all had professional photos taken to upload onto our website as well as some photos and drone footage of the outside of the building. Some of the photos we were able to include our own pets, what fun day this was for all the staff and animals!

Towards the end of February in the late afternoon/evening another veterinary practice phoned us with an emergency; Nala had diarrhoea for a few days and had taken a turn for the worst; she needed to be referred to us with a GDV (twisted stomach) and needed specialised care. She came to us in the evening, and we rushed to operate straight away. Nala had a GDV which is life threatening and needs to be treated as soon as possible. Nala was in theatre for nearly 3 hours. It was quite a difficult surgery, as they didn’t know if she would survive the operation as she also developed sepsis before she even made it into surgery. But thanks to the team on call, Victor completed the surgery with the aid of Nurse Will. After a long procedure, Nala woke up and was recovered by the team. With close care over the next 24 hours, she began to show positive signs, Nala’s family came to visit and spend time with her as well as giving her enough rest so she could recover and head home the following day.

This month we had our first BOAS surgery; Rodney is a little French Bulldog, who had restricted airflow causing him to find it difficult to breathe.

Here with the care of our clinical team Rodney underwent general anesthesia to have part of his nostrils removed and his soft plate at the back of his mouth taken out. He recovered quickly and was able to go home later on that day, due to this surgery, it meant he was able to breathe better and was more comfortable. 

We also had a second visit from Louie. Louie is also a French bulldog that came to visit us a few weeks ago for a TPLO surgery. He has been recovering well from this operation, however, came back for another visit due to eating something he shouldn’t have. He had grabbed and eaten a very large rib. This meant that he had to be anaesthetised and x-rayed to confirm that the rib was still in Louie’s stomach. Victor then placed a gastroscope into Louie’s esophagus and stomach and grabbed the rib using a special loop placed down the scope. He tried to guide the rib up and out, but it was not budging! Victor’s quick thinking led to a second, smaller scope being inserted alongside the first one. A second loop was carefully placed around the other end of the rib, to angle it upwards, making it parallel to Louie’s esophagus. With some careful driving of two scopes at once, the was gently pulled out!

At the beginning of December, there were some new CCTV cameras fitted in the car park, monitoring who comes in and out.

With this being the first winter at Catmose vets, and Christmas drew nearer, we decorated our reception for the first time getting the team in the festive spirit. Although, we will be able to do a better job next year as we will have our second reception area, meaning there will be more space to decorate and hang our Christmas toys for your pets.

We’ve also had the opportunity the support local charities, helping them raise money for dog who are living on the street; the money raised meant that these dogs were able to have a meal.

As well as the caterpillars coming in for their emergencies before Christmas, due to being the only out-of-hours service in Oakham we ended up helping 6 pets over the course of our 3-day closure; one underwent emergency limb saving surgery, and we had a cat that was hospitalized with sever hypernatraemia and had intensive care over the hospitalisation period, this cat wouldn’t have survived without our care.

We have also had some further building work happening as we have had the ceiling under the mezzanine fitted and the air conditioning and ventilation installed throughout the ground floor. 

He did this by using a long extension line with a needling into Pudding neck muscle, this meant that we removed the need for Pudding to be restrained. Victor then performed the minor procedure by creating a sterile field just outside of the trailer door, with Will assisting, as well as gently covering up Pudding’s eyes and ears, while Kim monitored his parameters. Once he was awake Pudding was straight back to his food bucket and nestling in his bed. We then sent off the results, waiting to hear if we need to take steps to treat or remove the mass.

November has been another month where we have continued to build up our clients and business. This has been down to word of mouth but also the rugby club providing us with some space to advertise our banner. We have also had the opportunity to promote our practice throughout Oakham town which has been building our name and cliental. We would just like to thank everyone for their support in our progress.

We had two new members of the team starting, Will and Beth.

We have completed our lab and are using it regularly, here we are able to take bloods and run diagnostic tests that will give us results in less than 5 minutes. We have also used the Imagyst, an AI microscope, for urine and ear cytology – it can also be used to examine bloods and faecal samples, giving us an indepth AI analysis or to read samples from lumps and give us a detailed report from a pathologist within 2 hours (the machine scans the sample and a pathologists writes the report for us, no need to send the samples away and wait for days!).

We have also been busy with the second part of our building project, as we had a mezzanine fitted to provide us with a second floor.

It was also during October that the first orthopaedic surgery took place at Catmose Vets. Dougie had a TPLO after breaking his cruciate ligament and we stabilised his knee using a surgery called tibial plateau levelling osteotomy; Dougie was a very good patient and was using his leg well within ten days of surgery.

Our reception, consult room and main hospital area are up and running. We also have 6 private parking spaces directly outside the front doors, this is to allow you to get your pets into the practice safely. Plus extra spaces in the car park in case your pet needs some extra room.

We had our two receptionists, a nurse and one assistant starting to work throughout September, joining Victor and Kim.
We have welcomed our first few clients through the door, one of them being a staff pet, Reggie, after hurting his leg.
We’ve also had clients in taking advantage of our free health checks when they register with us. Here Victor has examined the animals all over, checking in their mouth, weight, coat condition, listening to their heart and much more. He has also been answering any questions their owners have had. This offer is continuing until the end of December 2024, so register and book in now for a free health check check.

We’ve had our first in patient, Paisley, who was hospitalised with medication over night, while monitored by our vet, Victor and head nurse, Kim; fortunately Paisley was doing much better the morning after and he was discharged.

Our consult room and reception are complete and ready to use for when we open in September. Our main theatre room is also complete; however, we’re still waiting on our equipment so we can set up the room. Theatre is kitted out with a new easy-clean wall coating, allowing us to further reduce the risk of surgical infection. Out the front and inside of reception we have had our signs put up and stickers attached to the doors so you can see where we are, although Google maps isn’t quite up to date yet.