We’re glad so few of you have met Grant
Grant Petrie has been at the core of the London Vet Clinic for over 25 years. I met Grant in the 1990s when one of my dogs, Liberty, developed a thickening of her heart muscle. This is not uncommon in cats but very rare in dogs so the cardiologists at the Bristol, Cambridge and London vet schools all wanted to examine Libby. Grant, at the Royal Veterinary College suggested medicines that sounded simple and pragmatic. I followed his advice but I liked his common sense approach so much I also convinced him to leave academia and join us at York Street.
Grant Petrie has been providing advice and care at York Street for over 25 years
You only ever meet Grant when there’s an internal medicine, heart or cancer problem that needs special attention. We don’t need to refer you elsewhere because the expert is right here on the premises. Grant is a popular lecturer at continuing education vet meetings in the UK and abroad.
Grant, who incidentally is a past President of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, remains, at heart, a teacher. He routinely organises ‘clinical reviews’ for all of York Street’s vets and nurses. The most recent reviewed how we diagnose and treat age-related joint pain in cats and dogs. One conclusion was that we create a scoring system for before, during and after any treatment. I’ll explain more next month.
My pup Honey remains very funny
It’s five months since I introduced you to Honey so here she is again with her companion, her aunt Plum. Honey is now almost 20 kilos in weight and in a few months’ time I’ll switch her over to fresh food from Butternut Box. In the meantime she’s still eating high energy puppy food.
Plum turns eleven this month. Her niece Honey is now six months old
Virbac is an independant French company, founded by a vet, that provides a sensible range of medicines, supplements, treatments and high protein foods for dogs and cats. With a candid and funny nod to honesty, they don’t call their puppy food, Puppy Food, they label it Baby Food. Honey is, of course my high energy baby. For Honey, life is one long giggle.
The vets at York Street like Virbac’s approach to feeding specially formulated foods to dogs and cats with certain medical conditions. For example they produce a ‘hydrolysed’ food for pets with food intolerances or allergies, another that’s low in phosphate for pets with chronic kidney conditions and others for pets with tricky digestive systems.
Virbac’s foods are probably tastier than others because they are much higher in protein, closer to what carnivores naturally eat. When we suggest a specialised diet for your companion and it proves tasty and effective we have arranged that you can continue to purchase it online directly from Virbac rather than needing to visit us for future supplies. We always keep a small range at the clinic when you need more the same day.
Our new website is easy to use
Our old website had problems. We couldn’t integrate it with what happens at the clinic but more worryingly, although we employed a sophisticated IT business to keep it safe it was regularly hacked. Dr Samuela Merenda, an IT-savvy vet from Sicily introduced us to Madu Silva, a web developer in Queensland, Australia and now here we are with, I hope, information that is easy to find and forms that are simple to complete.
If you are travelling with your pet, just click the TRAVEL button and the form we need you to complete is there. As well as lots of information on travel to different parts of the world.
If you want to book a behaviour consultation with Dr Natalia Bewick, simply click the BEHAVIOUR button and follow through either CATS or DOGS.
If you have friends who would like to bring their companions to us, just click the PET REGISTRATION button.
And by next month, we’ll add Grant’s JOINT PAIN ASSESSMENT form that you can complete before during and after your companion’s treatments for age-related osteoarthritis.
For people who want to see any of our other visiting consultants we are soon also adding forms for Neurology, Internal Medicine, Ophthalmology, Cardiology and Dermatology. Carers can self-refer to see a clinician just by completing a form and sending the appropriate medical records to your consultant. They will diagnose, suggest treatments and report back to the pet’s primary vet.
This is a wonderfully quirky country
In April, through the generosity of King Charles, Grant and I were invited to St James’s Palace for a charity event supporting working donkeys in Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank.
The event coincided with the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace so we had a front row view of Sheamus, an elegant but obviously bored Irish Wolfhound leading the Irish Guards back to the Palace grounds. Isn’t it wonderful that a goofy dog leads the changing of the guard parade?
Sheamus leads the Irish Guards back to St James’s Palace
Inside the Palace we watched a film, narrated by the actor Peter Egan, showing the dreadful conditions that donkeys work in and how veterinary care, paid for by the charity, improves their lives. (If the brickworks were given forklift trucks they’d simply be sold and donkeys brought back to do the donkey work.)
I find it uplifting that in the midst of the appalling misery for the people of that part of the world, there are vets who continue to care for these innocent donkeys. Learn more about the work the charity does via this link.
Until next month.
Cordially
