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.