Meet the surgeons (but mainly their pets)

As well as Fiona and Chris we also have two assistant veterinary surgeons at Wakefield Westgate, Arleta and Justyna. 

Teofil

Arleta joined the team in 2016. She particularly enjoys surgery and is looking forward to starting a certificate in emergency and critical care. Arleta qualified in Poland back in 2009 and worked at a mixed animal practice. In 2014 she fancied a big change, took a leap and moved to England. Here she worked in a few small animal vets, including the PDSA, before she decided to settle with us. 

Teofil enjoying the shade

She has one nine year old cat called Teofil, who lives back in Poland with her parents where he has a lovely big garden and his human slaves (Her mum and dad). Teofil came into Arleta’s life when she was informed by a woman there was a kitten roaming the streets. Arleta went to look and she found him hiding in a bush. He had no obvious owners and was not micro chipped so Arleta took him on as her own. He is a very well behaved cat for the most part. He waits to be invited to sit with you patiently and will not take food from anybodies hand, he will only eat it once it has been placed on the floor. Teofil also knows which part of the pillow is for him and which part he should save for Arleta's head.

Bartek the goat

Growing up Arleta’s family always had animals including dogs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, pigs and goats so she was always very interested in becoming a vet. Her main responsibility growing up was looking after the goats. She had a favourite goat called Bartek who was very well trained and answered when she called him. 

Baby Benia

Justyna joined Wakefield Westgate Vets4Pets earlier on in 2018. She qualified in 2014 and completed an internship in Poland at a busy small animal practice. She moved to the UK with her husband after they both decided they wanted a change and to further their careers. 

Justyna has one cat, Benia who currently lives with Justyna’s parents. Benia was brought into her first practice when she was a very tiny kitten. She required bottle feeding and Justyna offered to take her home for the weekend whilst the practice was closed. The rest is history and she was adopted by Justyna! 

Benia is always watching

Benia loves playing fetch with crumpled up bits of paper. In the morning she brings Justyna and her partner balls of paper in bed to wake them up. They throw them across the room and she brings them straight back to them.

Benia comfy in a pot

She likes hiding in places she shouldn’t like open refrigerator doors, cooking pans and the neighbours apartments if they leave their doors open long enough!

Benia also likes to investigate everything brought into the house including handbags and the food shopping. She has a love of plastic carrier bags, which she likes to hide inside of and jump out on unsuspecting passers-by.

Justyna always had a high sensitivity to animals and enjoyed looking after her pets growing up so as she got older, becoming a vet seemed like a natural decision. 

Wakefield Westgate are starting a blog

As a team we’ve decided to start writing our own blog. This will give us the opportunity to share the goings on inside our vet practice. We’ll let you know of any interesting patient cases, let you meet the team and see our own pets. We will also aim to give out plenty of helpful pet advice and share links to valuable websites.

 Chris and Fiona

To begin with we thought it might be nice to know a little about the practice. So, if you didn’t already know, we are located inside the Pets at Home store on Westgate Retail Park in Wakefield. We are also affiliated with Castleford Vets4Pets with our Joint Venture Partners being Fiona and Chris Coutts. Fiona is based here at Wakefield and Chris is mainly based at Castleford. Fiona took over the practice and started working here in 2013. They are both full time veterinary surgeons.

Together they have a twelve year old cat called Warrick. Fiona took him on when he was brought to her place of work by a lady who had found him under her car. He had fractured both his top and lower jaw and had severely damaged his eye. It was suspected that he had probably been hit by a car. They fixed his lower jaw by putting a wire in to secure it back together. The top jaw looked like it would heal well on its own and he required his eye removing as it was too damaged to repair. He was only around four months old and had no microchip or collar, so Fiona took him on. She called him Warrick after her favourite character in CSI Las Vegas.

Warrick has caused them a fair amount of stress with his various ailments and illnesses including but not limited to:

Warrick and his favourite dinosaur toy

• His jaw fractures and eye removal (enucleation)
• Vomiting and stomach endoscopy which resulted in a special sensitive food.
• Swollen legs (from sitting on the hot radiators too long) 
• Dental work with teeth extractions. These were because he had developed Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions (FORLs) so he was then put on dental dry biscuits.
• Due to the dental biscuits he put on a fair amount of weight when he got to middle age. He also took a liking to eating things he wasn't supposed to like a TV antenna, ribbons, plastic bags, wallpaper, the actual wall and lilies (these are usually toxic, though thankfully these type weren't)
• Cystitis and a blocked bladder due to urinary crystals. This required him to be anaesthetised to pass a catheter through his urethra to flush away the crystals.
• A luxating patella, which is the knee cap sliding abnormally over the knee joint. This required surgery to fix as it's quite painful. 
• More vomiting with a suspected foreign body. He had surgery and more endoscopy to investigate and they found small legions in his stomach. With medication this has since settled down.
• Now whenever he gets a little stressed his cystitis flares up again. This was recently triggered by next doors building work going on. 

Obviously Fiona and Chris are very glad after this list that they have Warrick insured and that they have such a friendly team to help out when he is sick!

As we go a long, we'll aim to introduce all our staff here at Wakefield Westgate Vets4Pets and try and give you a little insight about what goes on inside a vets practice. If you want any information about the illnesses and conditions mentioned above, give us a call on 01924 566766.