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Prevent Losing Your Parksville Pooch with Microchips or Tattoos
Parksville Animal Hospital provides a wide range of surgical procedures to maintain your pets’ health. Contact us today for an appointment.
We provide:
Surgical Procedures
We understand that even under the best circumstances, any kind of surgery can be a stressful experience for both you and your pet. Our veterinarian and staff are highly skilled, and well-equipped for all routine—and many non-routine—surgical procedures, including:
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Spays & neuters
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Growth/tumour removal
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Caesarean sections
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Wound repair
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Gastrointestinal surgeries
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Eye surgeries
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Urological surgeries
Your pet’s comfort is important to us so we have adapted many different levels of pain management into our surgical procedures, from sedation to post-op home care. We also use modern EKG, breathing, pulse ox, and blood pressure monitoring devices to ensure that your pet is safe throughout the entire procedure.
Most elective surgeries are scheduled for weekday mornings. Patients will be admitted in the morning between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m.
For your pet’s protection, we recommend that all necessary vaccinations be up-to-date at least 10 days prior to surgery.
Fasting
It is important to fast your pet before the surgery; having food in the stomach may cause your pet to vomit while under anesthetics. Under general anesthetics, your pet’s swallowing reflexes will be diminished; this will put him or her at risk of aspirating (inhaling) vomit into the lungs. This serious complication can be avoided by removing your pet’s food after 8:00 p.m., the evening before the surgery. It is okay for your pet to have water.
Pre-Anesthetic Blood Work
We strongly recommend that all animals undergo pre-anesthetic testing prior to any procedure requiring anesthesia. Although we perform a thorough physical exam on each surgical patient, it may not alert us to any health problems your pet may have. Blood work will help us to identify any liver or kidney problems, blood clotting ability, or infection, prior to starting the procedure.
IV Fluids
IV fluids are used to maintain your pet's hydration level and blood pressure during the surgery. They also help to ensure a smooth and fast recovery by working to flush the anesthetic drugs out of your pet's body with less stress to the liver and kidneys.
Permanent Identification
Some form of permanent identification on a pet is very useful in case of loss or theft. Microchips are the most reliable because they are traceable to a 3rd party database. All veterinary hospitals and most animal control organizations have the ability to scan and identify a microchip. The microchip itself is the size of a grain of rice and is injected under the skin between the shoulder blades. It can be given without anesthesia in some cases, but since it can be a little painful, we prefer to microchip pets at the time of the spay/neuter, or any other procedure requiring anesthesia.
Tattoos are also available at our hospital. They are usually done in the right inner ear flap. Tattoos are less reliable than microchips because they can fade over the years. This is a painful procedure; therefore it is done strictly under sedation. Any animal undergoing a procedure that requires sedation is eligible for a free tattoo.
