After another busy week, Your Dog vet
Vicky Payne rel ects on the amazing things
vets do in very ordinary practices up and
down the country.
Out of the
ORDINARY
It
’s a vet
’s life!
ABOUT VICKY
Holistic vet Vicky Payne
BVetMed MRCVS is
based in East Sussex,
and qualii ed from the
Royal Veterinary
College in 2001.
She uses a range
of complementary
therapies alongside
conventional medicine
and surgery.32 Your Dog May 2019An X-ray of Maisie’s stil e
joint i ve weeks post-op.I
have just seen a Boston Terrier for his annual health
check and vaccination. Nothing amazing about that
you may think, but when he i rst came to see us,
shortly after being rescued by his new owners, the poor
dog had such stenotic nares (pinched nostrils) that he
could hardly breathe.
When I i rst started in practice, it would have been
quite unusual for a vet in general practice to of er
surgery to widen the nares and to shorten the soft
palate (another feature of brachycephalic obstructive
airway syndrome, which the Boston was suf ering
from). However, we now perform these surgeries quite
often, and with good results. Advances in anaesthetics,
patient monitoring machines, and theongoing education of our vets and nurses mean that
more operations, once coni ned to referral centres, can
now be of ered closer to home.CRUCIATE RUPTURE
An all-too-common injury we see in practice is rupture
of the cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) and I have another
suspected case booked in for X-rays soon. The causes
of CCL rupture are complicated, and are thought
to include genetic predisposition and hind limb
conformation, as well as environmental factors such as
neutering and obesity.
There are a number of dif erent ways to manage
dogs with CCL ruptures, but it can surprise
owners to i nd that they don’t always need to
go to a referral hospital to get advanced surgery
done. At our clinic, we of er a lateral suture
stabilisation, which is suitable for smaller dogs
and temporarily
stabilises the joint
until muscle growth
and scar tissue do
a more permanent
job, or the MMP
technique, which
changes the
mechanics of the stil e
joint, so the cruciate
ligament isn’t required.
In some cases, we
do still refer to
orthopaedic specialists
for a dif erent surgery
called a TPLO, but
being able to perform
a common orthopaedic
AnXrayofMaisie’sstille,jj
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aaMaisie having laser therapy to
enhance her wound healing.CLICK TO LISTEN
32-33 Vet Diary CS(SW)ok.indd 32 02/04/2019 08:47