After care
We will discharge your pet once we feel they (and you) will be comfortable at home with full discharge instructions. These will cover diet, medications, suitable exercise regimes and wound care. If you have any questions or concerns once you are both at home, we will be ready to help.
We would like to see many of our patients back, particularly medicine and oncology patients, as part of their ongoing treatment plans. We will, however, work with your veterinary practices to make the treatment path as easy and convenient as possible. We will check with many surgical patients to ensure that the wounds have healed well, and the surgery has been effective. These post-operative wound check consultation fees will be included in the initial consult fee. If it is not possible to return to us easily, we can look at photos or videos and work with your local veterinary practices to ensure your pet’s outcome is optimal.
There are some conditions, such as brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome (BOAS), where we would like to check the patients after surgery and then yearly to ensure they are stable – please see our BOAS club -link- for details of free airway assessment days.
We are a 24-hour clinic and will have staff that will be able to answer urgent advice calls anytime of the day. If your question is not urgent, we would prefer you call in normal working hours or email us, so that our overnight staff can concentrate on looking after the other animals in the hospital.
A dog eating is a good initial sign that they are feeling well. Other signs to look for in both dogs and cats are normal social interactions and interest in surroundings. Some painkillers can cause some sedation though we will warn you if this is the case.
As mentioned above, some painkillers can cause increased sleepiness. Some animals also struggle to sleep in hospital where there is activity in wards throughout the night and may need a good rest once home.
There are lots of ways we can discourage pets from interfering with wounds, from pet vests and jackets to inflatable collars and the Elizabethan collars. We will make sure you are equipped with the best and kindest method to effectively protect your pet’s wound. If you have any preference, please do discuss this with the clinician in charge of your case or a nurse.
Sometimes your pet will have a specific diet prescribed for their condition (particularly medical or dermatological patients). If they are allowed free choice, we would usually advise a low fat, easily digestible and cooked diet after a general anaesthetic or surgery, such as cooked chicken/ turkey/ white fish with rice or potatoes but the aim is to get them back on to their normal food as quickly as possible unless we have advised otherwise.
Many of the prescription diets are tailored to recovery and we can advise you on which diets we think work well. We are also using vegetable/ insect diets at Granta as they provide excellent nutrition and are sustainable.
We see this happen with many pets once they have been discharged and particularly after they have had a procedure, sedation or anaesthesia. It can take some time for the pet’s gastrointestinal system to get back to normal from the drug effects so please do not worry immediately and the quicker they get back eating their normal diet the quicker this will resolve. We are always happy to discuss this with you if you are worried.