Newsletter September 2023

Welcome to our September Newsletter! We have lots of news to share with you in this edition!

East Coast Bays Vet Clinic has partnered with Bounce Animal Rehabilitation Centre, or BARC for short. This physical therapy option is proving to be amazing for pets in the region to help them recover from surgery, injury, neurological problems, and painful conditions. Since we do lots of orthopaedic surgery and have lots of older pets that need help with their pain and mobility, this is a great fit for us and is located just across the road from the clinic. Sophie Currie, who is a fully certified canine rehabilitation practitioner, or CCRP, has a background as a senior Veterinary Surgical Nurse for many years, so this is a natural progression for her. Sophie has a wide range of treatment options to help your pet, with more exciting things to come. If you would like to discuss rehabilitation as an option for your pet with Sophie, please open the link about BARC with Sophie’s contact details.

https://bit.ly/BounceAnimalRehabilitation

At East Coast Bays Vet Clinic, we are always investing in our patients with the latest, high-quality equipment to provide the best possible care. We have upgraded to a brand new ultrasound machine with some of the latest technology. Senior Vet, Dr. Peta Norris, is our ultrasound expert with many years of experience, which allows us to get truly helpful information from this technology in our own clinic. Head Vet, Dr. Steve Gordon, who has brought laparoscopy to general practice in New Zealand, has also upgraded this technology to the latest ultra high definition 4K system now used in human hospitals. Our minimally invasive spey procedure has become a very popular option for a less painful procedure with an easier recovery for our pets. We now have four Veterinarians trained to do this procedure to a high standard. This new equipment will help Steve do even more complex procedures in the future.

New Zealand was very excited to host the Women's FIFA World Cup this year, and our team decided to hold a sweepstakes competition, even holding an awards ceremony for the gold, silver, and bronze medalists. Staff members had to pay $5 to enter, and the winner got to choose a charity of their choice to donate their winnings to. Dr. Peta came out on top with the winning team, Spain, and chose to donate half of the funds to a local cat rescue run by a very loyal client of ours and the other half to Lauren's MS Treatment fundraiser. Many of our clients may remember Lauren, who worked here as a veterinary nurse and raised funds to travel overseas to receive treatment for her Multiple Sclerosis. 

As a clinic, we believe in fear-free animal care and now have even more staff members training to become Fear Free Certified Practitioners. We currently have 13 staff members who have achieved this accreditation at different levels, and their learning means they are always finding new techniques to minimize stressful experiences for pets in the clinic and giving us all little tips and tricks to make our patients feel more comfortable during their visit. You can visit the Fear Free website by following the link to learn more about what Fear Free means and what you can do to help your pet enjoy their visits to us.

https://fearfreepets.com/about/what-is-fear-free/

Last week was National Te Reo Maori Language Week, and to get involved, our lovely Customer Care Team decorated an entire wall of our reception area with the Te Reo names for different animals. Julie also created a quiz to test the staff members' Te Reo knowledge and labeled different things around the clinic in Te Reo. Check out the awesome wall they put together!