What are the opening hours?

Monday 8:30am - 5:30pm Tuesday 8:30am - 5:30pm Wednesday 8:30am - 5:30pm Thursday 8:30am - 5:30pm Friday 8:30am - 5:30pm

https://www.facebook.com/104276319446243/

Bernie's Vet Visits

Home
Australia
Armidale, NSW
Bernie's Vet Visits

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Bernie's Vet Visits, Veterinarian, Armidale.
(3)

19/02/2024

Yet again I have failed to reply to a couple of people who asked me questions on facebook. My apologies, I forgot that I even had a page for about two weeks so didn't see the enquiries. I am more reliable if you ring me on 0412457440

03/02/2024

The tests I did were highly suggestive of leptospirosis but did not confirm it. However it was not ruled out, and is still very likely the cause of the dog's illness

30/01/2024

I am just letting people know I may have seen a dog in Uralla yesterday with leptospirosis. The owner realised last night that she has a lot of rats around and the dog hunts them, and has symptoms highly suggestive of leptospirosis (lepto). It is vomiting, it is off it's food, it's pretty crook, and it is extremely jaundiced. Jaundice makes the skin, tongue, lips and the whites of the eyes turn yellow. There is a vaccine for lepto. I am letting you know because there is a small chance that a dog with lepto could possibly spread the disease to people. It is a serious disease in people and could land you in hospital. So if your dog is mysteriously ill, excercise good hygiene, and consider getting a vet to check it out. I want to be clear that lepto has not been confirmed in this dog as yet.

13/01/2024

I will be going to the blue mountains for about 10 days on Friday morning January 19 2024. So if you are thinking you need to arrange an appointment with me and your pet then don't forget to give me a call and book in now!

08/01/2024

There are several thing at the old surgery that I am giving away for free before I sell the building. There is an old solid steel desk. I have no idea how old it is, Joe O'Brien was using it before I bought the surgery from him in 1986. Very heavy, weighs about 120 Kg at a guess. I can not assist with the movement and transport of this item, so please make sure you have people to help you. There is also a clothes dryer, a small column heater, and some containers of things such as turps, Shellite, various paints, and some painting gear. Call me on 0412 457 440 if you’re interested.

27/12/2023

My niece is in fourth year vet science and works as a veterinary nurse. Over Christmas lunch she told me this story:

One Saturday morning a client came into the practice with a large dog. They had been hitting a tennis ball for the dog to fetch on a local golf course when the dog swallowed the ball. The veterinarian induced vomiting to try and get the ball back. The vomiting did not produce the ball, which was removed via surgery later.

What it did produce was a bit more startling, especially for a vet nurse with a hangover on a Saturday morning. Apparently the dog had been rummaging in the rough at the golf course. This time the rough had well and truly lived up to its name. What came up was a pair of men’s underpants containing a large lump of human faeces.

Medication was not required to induce vomiting for my niece.

24/12/2023

This is our Christmas tree at home. When we bought it we had no idea how well it would double up as a pot belly stove for winter. Merry Christmas to all 🎄🎅

I wont be available on Christmas day but back on deck on Boxing day.

24/12/2023

Chocolate warning for pets

Most people know by now that chocolate is poisonous to dogs. Every Christmas or Easter I get one or two enquiries. Dark chocolates are more toxic than the other varieties. A five Kg dog that eats a couple of squares (like the standard Cadbury block squares) of dark chocolate is not at risk of dying. The poisonous substance in chocolate is theobromine from the cocoa. Dogs are much more sensitive to it than people. The poison affects the dog like an overdose of caffeine, causing the heart to sp*ed up, sometimes dangerously so. There is a very easy-to-use calculator on google, which will help you to decide if you should call the vet.
Symptoms take 6 to 12 hours to show up. They include:
Vomiting
Diarrhoea
Restlessness
Tremors
Fast heart rate
Trembling
Seizures in extreme cases

If it is less than 2 hours since the chocolate was eaten, and you have used the calculator to work out that the amount eaten is dangerous, make the dog vomit if you can. If a veterinarian is not available and you don’t have epicac at home, forcing the dog to drink lots of salty water will work. If the dog is already showing mild symptoms, forget the vomiting. Keep the dog as calm as possible for 2 days. If symptoms are severe, get to a vet ASAP.

Other lesser known foods poisonous to dogs are onions (anaemia), grapes (kidney failure) and macadamias (mild nervous system impairment).

Remember my posts are not to assist people through the diagnostic minefield, only your Vet can diagnose the problem. And please remember to phone the Vet before you head there, they may have to prepare for an emergency or advise you to go elsewhere.

13/12/2023

Cat Urolithiasis

As I said in my previous story about bladder stones, the story is different between cats and dogs. Cats can get the same sorts of stones as dogs (except for the urate stones – I am not aware of a cat breed that has the same problem as the dalmation dogs). However, it must be a lot less common as I have never removed large stones from a cat. Much more commonly cats get tiny stones, as big as a small grain of beach sand. They seem to build up until there are thousands of them in the bladder. These tiny grains combine with proteins and other stuff in the urine and from a larger mass, a bit like blue metal pebbles in concrete (a matrix). In female cats they do not tend to cause a blockage. However, in males they are much more likely to fail to pass out of the urethra. Soon more and more lumps of the matrix and grains collect in the urethra, no urine can pass, and the cat is in serious trouble. If a cat squats too often as though it wants to p*e, and only a tiny dribble comes out, it may have a cystitis or some other problem which needs attention. If no urine at all comes out, you are probably dealing with a complete blockage. These are a real emergency and should not even be left overnight. There will often be a hard mass in the lower abdomen, from the size of an egg up to the size of a tennis ball, and touching it will cause a lot of pain.

Most of these can be treated by giving an anaesthetic and placing a catheter in the bladder via the urethra, or p***s. This can be quite difficult, and sometimes impossible. Sometimes surgery has to be performed. This involves amputating the p***s, and cutting the urethra open down at its narrow part. The urethra is then remodelled, and the cat looks a bit like it has had a s*x change from the back.

Both male and female cats which show lots of microscopic crystals or the bigger grains in the urine generally benefit from being placed on a specialised diet. One can mess around with tablets and dietary modifications to try and avoid the expense of the specialised diet, but many cats will then relapse. The occasional cat will relapse even when placed on only special food. These cats require multiple treatment strategies.

Remember my posts are not to assist people through the diagnostic minefield, only your Vet can diagnose the problem. And please remember to phone the Vet before you head there, they need to be able to prepare for an emergency or advise you to go elsewhere.

12/12/2023

I've lost this piece of gear. I think it fell out of my car but I'm hoping I left it at someone's place.

If you recognise it please give me a call.

03/12/2023

Bladder Stones
The kidneys remove various substances from the blood so they can be excreted from the body in the urine. These are substances which would poison us if left to accumulate. Many of them are electrolytes (charged elements or compounds dissolved in the water which makes up most of the urine).

Bladder stones are more likely to form where the concentration of some of the excreted substances is unusually high, where the urine is way too acidic or alkaline, or where infection or other trauma leaves debris in the urine which assists crystals to form. The crystals can then coalesce into stones.

So, urine which is too alkaline or too acidic can form stones. Stones can lead to infection. Infection can lead to alkaline urine, causing the most common stone.

A couple of hundred years ago sailors were prone to bladder stones. Because their water supplies were often very low or of very poor quality they did not drink enough water. To conserve body fluid, their urine was chronically highly concentrated. Matthew Flinders suffered from bladder stones from his early twenties. He was unusual in that he worked out his stones had formed in alkaline urine, so they were likely to dissolve in acidic urine. He achieved this by drinking lots of vinegar. A monk in the thirteenth century with bladder stones designed a metal rod with a sharp tip, which he poked up through his p***s into his bladder. He would then position the tip of the rod against a stone and hit it with a hammer. For the next few days he would be in agony as he passed the small, jagged pieces of stone, then he would repeat the exercise. It only took him eighteen months to get rid of them all. Apparently he consoled himself with the prospect that earthly suffering increased one’s chances of a place in heaven. Sadly he never patented the technique.

The following narrative applies mostly to dogs. The story in cats is quite different.

The first thing a Vet will do when bladder stones are encountered is to check the pH of the urine and look under the microscope for crystals. These steps can help to identify the composition of the stone(s) and help avoid their recurrence once removed. Radiographs (Xrays) are useful in most cases to see how many stones there are and if any small ones are down along the urethra (which must be removed). Some Vets will use additional imaging such as ultrasound or MRI because some stones will not show up on Xrays.

Most will then proceed to surgery. This will be urgent if the urethra is blocked. Mammals start to die within a few days of being unable to pass urine. The surgery is almost always simple and free of complications if urine is still able to be passed.

The first picture is of a jar full of stones I removed from a Lhasa Apso dog in 1987. The dog weighed about 4 Kg. Unfortunately much of the collection has dissolved to form the layer in the bottom of the jar. My nurse always said if the dog had gone for a swim it would have sunk! It came in for a sore eye, and I felt the stones during a pre-anaesthetic health check. I felt them rub together and when the dog passed a few drops of urine the owner commented that it was always doing that. A few changes to the diet were made, and the dog was encouraged to drink a lot more water. The stones did not recur.

The next picture is of a stone from a dog presented because its urine was obviously bloody. There was only one stone present. This stone was of the type normally found in alkaline urine however this dog’s urine was mildly acidic. So to prevent recurrence the dog’s urine was kept a bit more acidic with tablets and the dog was induced to drink more water. Its urine is monitored for blood, and to keep the urine at the right pH by adjusting the dose of medication.

The last one was a single stone removed from a Dalmation. Dalmations are unusual in that they can have very high levels of uric acid in their urine. This is the compound that causes gout. This dog was placed on allopurinol to help with uric acid excretion. It needed close monitoring, as the stones can quickly form again, and can form in the kidneys. The kidneys were Xrayed and no stones were seen. I have once removed a kidney which had ruptured in a Dalmation due to urate stones forming after commencing allopurinol. This was in 1988, and more advanced imaging was not readily available. The owners moved away about a year later and I was unable to follow up.

So, SIGNS OF BLADDER STONES include blood in the urine, constant straining while only passing a small amount of urine, or no urine at all where a complete blockage is present, abdominal pain, or a hard palpable lump in the abdomen, where sometimes two or more stones can be felt to grind against each other. All these symptoms can also be caused by other diseases.

Remember my posts are not to assist people through the diagnostic minefield, only your Vet can diagnose the problem. And please remember to phone the Vet before you head there, they need to be able to prepare for an emergency or advise you to go elsewhere.

26/11/2023

Time to meet our dogs!

Ziggy and Coda 😀

13/11/2023

Could mushrooms be keeping us all in the dark?

On Saturday morning my son phoned me worried about his dog Indigo. She had been in the yard for about two hours. The yard has a compost heap and she had been in it too. My son and his partner had found her at the door shaking. There is a video showing this below. She had a wide stance when she walked and her back was slightly hunched. The other video (in comments) shows Indigo conscious but looking like she is dreaming. Maybe she is hallucinating.

My initial suspicions were either snail bait, a snake bite, something toxic in the compost, or deliberate poisoning by a neighbour. But I am always cautious about even raising the possibility of deliberate poisoning. In nearly all cases it is probably the least likely event. Still, I asked if the dog had been barking a lot i.e., enough to irritate a neighbour – it had not been.

Snail bait will cause muscle twitching instead of ‘shaking’. You can put your hand on the thigh or cheek muscles and can often feel little twitches firing off.

Snake bite will cause twitches or shaking, and sometimes staggering. If snake bite has caused twitching or shaking then other symptoms such as severe incoordination, dilated pupils, drooling or vomiting would be expected. But I could not totally rule out a snake bite.

Other issues to consider were Indigo could have been having an epileptic seizure, have toxoplasmosis, have cryptococcal meningitis and many more ...

Throughout my career, about once or twice a year, I have tentatively suggested that similar cases may have been due to mushroom poisoning. Some of the dogs I have seen also showed altered behaviour along with the shaking. Usually there is a spontaneous and unassisted recovery over several hours. It is rare to find any evidence to support the proposition it may be mushrooms, but the evidence has emerged a few times in the past … and it did here too!

Indigo is twelve months old, so she is still a young dog. It is more likely that young dogs would experiment with their diets than older dogs.

As Indigo was drinking and eating well and not vomiting (and noting it was a Saturday morning when Vets can be run off their feet), I advised my son to phone their local Vet and warn them they may be coming in later with an emergency. I told my son and his partner to watch Indigo for any deterioration. I forgot to tell him to collect a urine sample if possible – so don’t forget to do this because the sample can be used later, especially to rule a snakebite in or out.

Indigo improved steadily over the next few hours without veterinary intervention.

The next day the possible culprits were found (photo in comments) – chewed up mushrooms found in the compost heap! While this does not prove the mushrooms were the cause of the event, it is certainly supportive.

As I said to my son’s partner, the way to prove it would be to feed some of the mushrooms to the dog and see if it happens again. She understandably did not want to do this! Nor would she try them out on the neighbour’s dog!

Remember my posts are not to assist people through the diagnostic minefield, only your Vet can diagnose the problem. And please remember to phone the Vet before you head there, they need to be able to prepare for an emergency or advise you to go elsewhere.

11/11/2023

🐶🐱 Only one week until our FREE microchipping day in West Armidale!

📅 Date: 18 November
🕒 Time: 9am - 12pm
📍 Location: Niagara street off-leash area near the bike track, 24a Niagara Street

Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to enhance the safety of your four-legged family members! Remember, it's completely FREE!

Share this post with your friends and neighbors, and let's make Armidale a safer place for our beloved pets! 🐕🐾🐱

07/11/2023

I want to talk about one of our more interesting snakes. I have ever seen only five or six of these. I accidentally killed the first one I saw, out at the end of the Castle Doyle Road when I was about 15 years old. It was about 60cm long. I still have it in a bottle of 70% methylated spirit (pure metho changes the colour of the specimen more).

There are five species, and I think they are found throughout Australia, including Tasmania. They are often found when only about 15cm long but can be as large as a metre long.

The bandy bandy is a very pretty snake. The bands make it quite different to any other Australian snake, except some of the sea snakes. Just to add to their uniqueness, when threatened they often twist part of their body around so that they confront their opponent with a circle standing up off the ground. Google has videos of this behaviour.

Most of the bandy bandys I have seen have been brought in dead, either killed by the family pet or the pet owner themself, who is concerned that their pet may have been envenomated. This is pretty sad.

The venom of the bandy bandy is very weak, causing a mild local reaction. On top of this, they are a docile snake with a small mouth and tiny fangs. They are therefore regarded as practically harmless. There is a myth that if you are bitten you will have one seizure for every ring counted on the body.

The bandy bandy’s diet is almost exclusively the blind snake. Blind snakes are quite small, non-venomous snakes that feed entirely on ants and termites or their eggs. So this represents a very narrow food chain.

photo source: https://www.thesnakecatcher.com.au/portfolio/bandy-bandy-snake/

25/10/2023

I have been going through all the thank you cards I have received over the years at Creeklands. I came across these three, and I thought I should share them. They were done by an eight year old girl after her dog died under our care.

Some of the things that come your way can make what was already a pretty rewarding job almost perfect.

20/10/2023

Hello Armidale, Uralla and Guyra residents, $50 des*xing vouchers will be available the Animal Welfare League NSW - Armidale Branch (AWL) information stall at Bunnings (Armidale) this Saturday.

The AWL's information stall will be at Bunnings from 10:00am to 1:00pm. If you've a pet that needs to be des*xed, pop down to Bunnings and chat with AWL's friendly volunteers.

CONDITIONS APPLY

* Local area (Armidale, Uralla, and Guyra areas).
* Centrelink pension or benefit card holders.
* Not for litters unless the dog or cat parents are being des*xed so need to discuss this with a coordinator to see if any help is available.

*xingVouchers

16/10/2023

Gday Everyone
Welcome to Bernie’s Vet Visits inaugural facebook post! 😊

My new Home Veterinary Service will open 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday in the Armidale area. My Service is now mobile so I will come to you. I can meet people either at their home or any prearranged spot. For people out of town I can travel to you but there will be a travel cost; alternatively we can arrange to meet either closer to town or in town.

I will not be open after hours and weekends, but you are welcome to try and get me if you have an emergency. If it is a job I can no longer do I will refer you to a Vet Hospital.

Because I am no longer based at the surgery I will not be able to perform major surgeries, which includes des*xings. I will not be able to take Xrays.

What I can do for you includes the following:
Vaccinations
Diagnostic consultations
In house laboratory tests
Collection of samples for lab testing
Minor surgeries such as cat abscesses, minor wound repairs
Simple lower limb fractures which can be treated with a cast
Poisonings and envenomations if not yet too complicated
Grass seeds in ears and eyes
Provision of medications and scripts
Euthanasias at home

Consultations will be $90.00. Payment must be on the day.
So if you think your pet needs to see a Vet, phone Bernie’s Vet Visits on 0412 457 440

Address

Armidale, NSW

Opening Hours

Monday	8:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday	8:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday	8:30am - 5:30pm
Friday	8:30am - 5:30pm

Telephone

+61412457440

Website

facebook.com

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Bernie's Vet Visits posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.