Dogs do not sweat the way we do. They lose heat almost entirely by panting, and on a Coast summer day with high humidity that mechanism simply stops working. A dog can go from fine to in trouble in the time it takes to walk back from the beach to the car.

Who is most at risk

Flat-faced breeds first: pugs, bulldogs, French bulldogs, boxers. Then anything overweight, anything elderly, anything with a thick double coat, and any dog that has been running hard. Puppies too, because they do not know when to stop.

The signs, in order

It usually progresses like this

• Frantic panting that does not settle when the dog rests
• Very red gums and tongue, thick or ropey saliva
• Unsteadiness, seeking shade or lying down and refusing to move
• Vomiting or diarrhoea, sometimes with blood
• Collapse, glazed eyes, seizures

If your dog is panting and will not stop, and will not get up, you are already past the point of waiting to see.

The first five minutes

Before anything else

• Move to shade or air conditioning immediately
• Wet the dog with cool, not cold, water — tap water is right, ice water is wrong
• Put them in front of a fan or the car’s air vents if you can
• Offer small amounts of water but do not force it
• Phone us on the way, so we can be ready

What not to do

Do not use ice or iced water. It constricts the blood vessels at the skin and traps heat inside, which is the opposite of what you want. Do not cover the dog in wet towels and leave them, for the same reason. And do not assume that because the panting has eased the danger has passed: the organ damage from heat stress often shows up over the following day, which is why we want to see the dog even if it seems to have recovered.

People sometimes ask why a healthy pet needs a check-up at all. The honest answer is that the yearly visit is where most problems get caught while they are still small, still cheap, and still fixable. Dental disease, heart murmurs, weight creep, lumps that have been there a while: all of these are found at the annual check far more often than by owners at home.

Before you arrive

Bring any medication in its packaging, and a note of anything that has changed: appetite, thirst, energy, toileting, behaviour. Small changes you have got used to are often the most useful thing you tell us.

The examination

Nose to tail, in the same order every time so nothing is missed. Eyes, ears, mouth and teeth. Heart and lungs. Abdomen, by hand. Skin and coat, lymph nodes, joints and gait. Weight and body condition. It takes about fifteen minutes and your pet is on the table for most of it.

The most common thing we find at an annual check is dental disease. The second is a lump the owner had not noticed.

What we are actually checking

The short version

• Teeth and gums — tartar, gingivitis, fractured teeth
• Heart rhythm and murmurs, breathing sounds
• Weight trend against last year, not just the number
• Any lumps, and whether a lump has changed
• Joint range and any stiffness, especially in older pets
• Vaccination and parasite cover, brought up to date if due

After the visit

You leave with a written summary of what we found and what, if anything, to do about it. If we recommend something further, we quote it in writing before anything is booked. And your record in the client portal is updated, so the next visit starts from what we know rather than from scratch.

A cat that keeps visiting the litter tray, crouching, and producing nothing — or a few drops — is not constipated. In a male cat it is almost always a blocked urethra, and a blocked urethra is life-threatening within a day or two.

What is happening

Crystals, mucus or a small stone lodge in the narrow urethra and urine cannot get out. The bladder fills, pressure backs up to the kidneys, and potassium builds in the blood until it affects the heart. Male cats block far more often than females because their urethra is longer and narrower.

The signs

Call us immediately if you see

• Repeated trips to the tray with little or nothing produced
• Crying out or straining in the tray
• Licking the genital area more than usual
• Urinating outside the tray, especially small amounts in odd places
• Vomiting, hiding, or a cat that seems suddenly flat and unwell

If a male cat has not passed urine in twelve hours, do not wait for the morning.

Why it cannot wait

Most blocked cats we see arrive after a day or two of “waiting to see”. By then the kidneys are stressed and the potassium is high, and what would have been a straightforward catheter under sedation becomes intensive care. The earlier the call, the simpler and cheaper the fix.

What we do

Relieve the blockage, flush the bladder, correct the blood chemistry and keep the cat on fluids until things settle. Then we talk about diet and water intake, because a cat that has blocked once is more likely to block again, and most of the prevention happens at home.

We do not sell insurance and we do not recommend a provider. But we do see, several times a month, the moment an owner learns their policy will not cover the thing in front of them. This is about avoiding that moment.

What it is for

Insurance is for the bill you cannot plan for: the cruciate repair, the snake bite, the foreign body surgery. It is not, in most policies, for vaccinations, dental work or the annual check. Buying it to cover routine care is usually a bad deal.

The clauses that bite

Read these sections first

• Pre-existing conditions — anything noted on a record before the policy started, even if it resolved
• Waiting periods — often 30 days for illness, six months or more for cruciate ligaments
• Annual and per-condition limits — a $10,000 cap sounds generous until you meet an orthopaedic quote
• Bilateral conditions — if one knee has been treated, the other may be excluded
• Dental — frequently excluded entirely, or only for accidents
• Age limits and premium increases as the pet gets older

The policy is cheapest the day you buy it and the pet is youngest. That is the day to read the exclusions.

Questions to ask

Is dental covered, and under what circumstances? Does the limit reset each year, or is it per condition for life? What counts as pre-existing? Can you choose your vet? How are claims paid — to you after the fact, or to the clinic directly?

Our honest view

For a young, healthy animal, a comprehensive policy taken out early and kept continuously is usually worth it, because the alternative is making a medical decision under financial pressure. For an older animal with a history, it often is not, and a dedicated savings account can be the better tool. Either way, decide before you need to.

Between about three and fourteen weeks of age a puppy’s brain is unusually open to new experiences. Things met calmly in that period are filed as normal for life. Things met badly, or not at all, tend to become the fears and reactivity we spend years managing later.

The window

By the time most puppies come home at eight weeks, nearly half the window has already passed. You have roughly six weeks. That is not a reason to panic; it is a reason to be deliberate.

What to cover

Aim for calm exposure to

• People of different ages, sizes, and appearances — hats, beards, wheelchairs, prams
• Surfaces: grass, sand, tiles, gravel, a wobbly board
• Sounds: traffic, vacuum cleaners, thunder recordings at low volume
• Handling: paws, ears, mouth, being lifted, being brushed
• Other dogs — vaccinated, known, and calm
• The vet clinic, for a visit where nothing happens

The goal is not to make the puppy love everything. It is to make nothing a surprise.

How to do it well

Short and positive beats long and overwhelming. A two-minute visit to a car park with treats does more than an hour at a busy market. Watch the puppy, not the clock: if they are shrinking back, tucking the tail or refusing food, you have gone too far and it is time to leave.

When vaccination and socialisation collide

The old advice was to keep puppies home until fully vaccinated at around sixteen weeks. That advice protected them from parvovirus and cost them the socialisation window. The current balance is to socialise carefully from the first vaccination onward: carried in public, on clean surfaces, with vaccinated dogs you know, and in a structured setting like puppy preschool, which is run in the building your puppy will keep coming back to.

Dogs do not limp when they have arthritis in both hips. They slow down, and slowing down looks like getting old. By the time a dog is visibly stiff, it has usually been in pain for a long while.

What you might be seeing

The quiet signs

• Hesitating at stairs or the car, or needing a run-up to the couch
• Sleeping somewhere new, often lower and softer
• Shorter walks by choice, lagging behind, sitting down on the way
• Slower to rise in the morning, stiff for the first few minutes
• Licking a joint, or a change in temperament when touched there
• Less interest in play, or in other dogs

Owners almost always say the same thing after we start treatment: I did not realise how much pain she was in.

Why it gets missed

Because it is gradual, and because dogs are stoic, and because “slowing down” is what we expect old dogs to do. The change is easier to see in hindsight, which is why we ask about it directly at the senior health check rather than waiting for you to raise it.

What helps

A lot, and most of it is not dramatic. Weight management is the single biggest lever. Then anti-inflammatory medication, joint supplements with evidence behind them, controlled exercise rather than none, and changes at home: ramps, rugs on slippery floors, a raised bowl, a warm bed. For some dogs, acupuncture or regenerative treatments add real benefit on top.

The conversation worth having

If your dog is over seven and any of the signs above sound familiar, book a senior check and say so at the start. Treating arthritis early does not just make an old dog more comfortable; it often gives back a year or two of proper walks.

By the age of three, most dogs and cats have some degree of dental disease. By eight, most have it seriously. It is the single most common finding at an annual health check, and the one most often deferred because the animal is “still eating fine”.

What we see

Tartar you can see is the least of it. Red or receding gums, a smell that has become normal to you, a preference for soft food, chewing on one side, a paw at the mouth. Cats hide it best of all; they just eat a little less and lose a little weight.

Below the gum line

The damage that matters is under the gum where you cannot see it: infection around the root, bone loss, teeth that are loose or dying. This is why we take full-mouth radiographs before any dental work. Roughly a third of the problems we treat are invisible on a conscious examination.

Animals do not stop eating because of dental pain. They stop eating when they cannot physically manage it, and that is very late.

Why it matters beyond the mouth

Chronic oral infection is a constant low-level load on the body. It is linked to heart, kidney and liver disease, and it is a source of daily pain that animals simply live with. Treating the mouth often changes an old pet’s energy and mood in ways owners did not expect.

What a dental actually involves

Under a general anaesthetic

• Full-mouth radiographs first, so the plan is based on what is actually there
• A written quote before we go further, agreed with you by phone
• Scale and polish above and below the gum line
• Extraction of any tooth that cannot be saved, with pain relief built in
• A recheck ten days later, and a plan for keeping it that way at home

Pet food packaging is designed for the person buying it, not the animal eating it. Most of the words on the front are legally meaningless. Most of the information that matters is on the back, in small type.

The front of the bag

Claims that carry no regulated meaning

• “Premium”, “holistic”, “natural”
• “Human grade”
• “Grain free” — not a health benefit for most dogs, and linked to heart disease in some

The ingredient list

Ingredients are listed by weight before cooking, which means fresh meat, mostly water, floats to the top even when the food is mostly grain. Look for a named animal protein in the first few ingredients and be sceptical of splitting: “pea protein, pea fibre, pea flour” listed separately so no single one has to appear first.

The best food is the one your animal does well on, at a healthy weight, that you can afford to keep buying.

The guaranteed analysis

Protein, fat, fibre and moisture, as minimums and maximums. Useful for comparing two dry foods to each other; nearly useless for comparing a dry food to a wet one without adjusting for moisture. Ask us and we will do the maths.

What we actually recommend

A complete and balanced food from a manufacturer that employs veterinary nutritionists and does feeding trials, fed in the right amount for a healthy body condition. That is nearly the whole of it. Life stage matters, some medical conditions need specific diets, and we will say so if yours does. Bring the bag to the wellness clinic and we will go through it with you.

For decades the answer to “when should we desex” was six months, for everything. The evidence now says the right time depends on what kind of animal you have, and getting it right matters more for some than others.

Where six months came from

It was chosen because it reliably precedes the first heat in female dogs and cats, which prevents unwanted litters and reduces mammary tumour risk. Those benefits are real. What has changed is our understanding of the costs in some breeds of desexing before skeletal maturity.

Large breeds

In large and giant breed dogs, desexing before the growth plates close is associated with higher rates of some joint problems, cruciate injury and certain cancers. For these dogs we often recommend waiting until twelve to eighteen months, and we talk through how to manage a female through a heat cycle if that applies.

A Labrador and a Chihuahua are not the same animal at six months. The plan should not be the same either.

Small breeds and cats

Small dogs mature earlier and the joint concerns are much less pronounced, so five to six months remains a sensible window. Cats we still recommend desexing at four to six months: the population and behaviour benefits are strong and the downsides are minimal.

How we decide with you

Breed, expected adult size, sex, your household, and whether there are other unsterilised animals around. We go through it at the puppy or kitten’s first visits and write the plan down, so it is not a decision made in a hurry later.

A kitten arriving home is small, fast and mostly asleep. The first month sets up the next fifteen years, and most of what matters is straightforward if you know the order.

The first 48 hours

One room, a litter tray, water, the food they were already eating, and a quiet place to hide. Let them come to you. Keep other pets separate. Resist the urge to show everyone.

The first visit

Book it in the first week

• A full check — heart, eyes, ears, mouth, coat, belly
• Vaccination timed against what the breeder or shelter has already given
• Worming and flea cover appropriate to weight
• Microchip check, and registration transferred to your details
• A desexing plan written down for later

Bring the paperwork you were given. Half of what we need to know is on it.

Setting up

One more litter tray than you have cats, somewhere quiet. Scratching posts before the couch gets discovered. Kitten food, because the nutrient balance is different from adult food. Windows and balconies checked, because kittens have no fear of heights and no judgement.

The two things people forget

First, that the microchip is only useful if the registry has your current phone number — the chip does not update itself. Second, that lilies are lethal to cats, and a surprising number of new-kitten households have a bunch on the table.