Blog

Dr. Emily Lai is here to help with your Exotic Pets.

Happy furry holiday and fluffy new year!

Amid ongoing concerns about COVID-19, we wanted to reach out and explain what we are doing to ensure our hospital is safe for clients, pets and our employees.

It is never easy to talk about euthanasia and can be even more difficult when discussing it with children. The choice of how much a child will be included in the process may vary from family to family and child to child. You may want to give your child the choice by inviting them into the conversations and allow them to feel included. 

A sensational headline “Grain free foods are linked to heart disease in dogs”. How did this happen? What caused the shift in how we feed our pets?

Although you won’t find it in the recently released New Canadian Food Guide, poop is indeed a food group in Nature. It will be of no surprise to you, that although natural, it is the cause for illness for our pets and in turn the humans that share their lives.

So, I’m sitting in the Tim Hortons drive through as I watch the following scene unfold.​A parent, the family dog, and 2 children, one in a stroller, are coming to Tim’s for a morning snack. Before going into the restaurant, the parent ties the family dog to a tree on the edge of the parking lot directly behind a parked car.

The problem is very simple. I cannot be the only person who sees the inherent dangers the dog has been left in.

I have just come back from a great walk in the woods with Winston and Eevee and I am truly perplexed by the behavior of some dog owners. The same word keeps echoing in my head,“Why?!?”  Why do it?  Why go to all the trouble? It makes no sense. What has gotten me in such a state? Poop bags. Full ones. Lot’s of them. Left behind like little flags saying “Hey, look at me! I was almost responsible.. Honestly.”

It is minus 15 degrees on this 5th day of March, so why am I talking about ticks?

​In the last 5 years we have seen an explosion of these creatures in southern Ontario. At Abbotsford we have gone from seeing 1-2 cases each summer to a dozen or more. Ticks start to actively feed when the temperature goes above 4 degrees celsius. As spring is around the corner (we hope) I want to help keep these critters off our pet friends, preventing disease in them as well as ourselves.

Recently, the Canadian and American food and drug associations have put out warnings about some of the newest and most effective tick and flea preventative medications. What this tells me as a veterinarian is that our regulatory bodies are working hard to ensure the medications that we use are as safe and effective as possible. However, nothing comes from nothing. Many of the medications that we use can be considered poisons. Our job as health care providers is to weigh the benefit against the risk.

There are many times children will interact with dogs, whether you have a dog at home, with friends and family or strangers on the street; it is important for children to know about how to safely interact with dogs.

Several events over the last few weeks have highlighted for me the dangers of ordering medications (of any kind) on line, regardless if they are for our pets or for ourselves.  

Not only has laser surgery become very common in human medicine, it has become a recognizable surgical method in veterinary medicine as well. The surgical laser is often used for standard spay and neuter surgeries, oral surgeries and wart or lump removals. Because of its exceptional efficiency and precision, the surgical laser provides many benefits to both the patient and surgeon. Here at Abbotsford Animal Hospital we have been utilizing laser surgery as an effective tool for over 15 years.

This has been one of those months at Abbotsford. Several long standing patients of mine reached a point in their lives where their families have had to make a hard and difficult choice.

The role of the Veterinarian Technician is varied and complicated and is very often misunderstood.

This week at Abbotsford has been a crazy one. Every day we have had pets come in either on the verge of crashing or having just crashed. These sad cases are exceptionally challenging for many reasons. To begin with, everything is a panic. Life is being clung to by a thread. Decisions, often costly, need to be made now with no time for consideration.

More than 4,800 nominations for Petplan’s 2016 Veterinary Awards poured in from every corner of the U.S. and Canada, but in the end, just six winners took home all the bones.

Annette is greatly invested in the well-being of her clients and colleagues alike, sharing her expertise and her understanding with those around her, to the improvement of all.