Dorrigo Veterinary Clinic

15/11/2024

A big "Thank you" to everyone involved in organising and running the Farm Safety Day today.
A great roll up, and great kids.
Stay safe on the Farm.

07/11/2024

I thought Cara was our most casual employee, but she appears to have been replaced by someone else… might need to start performance reviews for staff.

23/10/2024

Its amazing the changes that have taken place over the past 38 years I have been practicing.

Keeping rural vet clinics open is no easy task, as three rural veterinary experts explained to a Rural Press Club of Queensland lunch on International Rural Women’s Day last week. But the forum also heard why signs are looking brighter for the profession...Read More

03/09/2024

Spring has definitely sprung
Cara proving to be more than just our morning tea connoisseur, taking a cracking photo of one of our calves today

15/07/2024

It is really lovely to have clients that are prepared to go the extra mile

08/07/2024

Receive a free worming tablet for your pet with each Bravecto purchased at the clinic during July, August and September. Details in clinic.

25/06/2024

It's probably a good time to talk about workplace safety!
In the last couple of weeks, both Cara and I have had trips to the hospital due to head injuries we have sustained working with cattle. I can promise you, nothing takes the shine out of the job more than a trip down to Coffs in the back of an ambulance!
Hopefully you will forgive us if we refuse to work in set ups that are not safe. By that, I mean things like head bails that let go and kick gates that don't hold. If its not safe for us, then its not safe for you either, and no-one should expect to get injured at work.

17/06/2024

Apart from being one of a handful of specialist veterinary parasitologists and a dear friend of mine, Dr. Matt Playford has a similar unfortunate passion for lycra and cycling.

🐄🐂 Don’t miss our Animal health & Nutrition information evening THIS WEDNESDAY 4.30pm

13/03/2024

Looking for their new home. 3 wonderful, male working kelpie pups. Please contact the clinic on (02) 66572416

06/12/2023

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas/ New Year period with family and friends. From everyone at the Dorrigo Veterinary Clinic

13/10/2023

Dear clients, we have been advised by our normal suppliers of syntocin (oxytocin) that it will be unavailable for the foreseeable future. We will update you if these circumstances change.

09/10/2023

Hi Folks. I'm sorry to say that Cara, Hannah and Chris have all succumbed to the dreaded lurgy. We'll only be treating true emergency cases today,and hopefully back on deck tomorrow. I apologise for the inconvenience.

10/09/2023

Jack Russel owners beware

04/09/2023

I fear that there is going to be a lot of talk about student debt and gender balance. Really the fundamental problem is that farm animal practice is not profitable enough to pay vets what they are worth. If practices could afford to pay a vet $200k, there wouldn't be a problem. For 30+ years, every vet business consultant has been telling me that they key way to make mixed practice more profitable, is to do more small animal work. Unless farmers are truly prepared to value and support veterinary practice, they won't have them.

The state’s peak farm group has laid out a plan for government to resolve an acute shortage of large animal veterinarians in country NSW.

01/09/2023

After a sad week saying goodbye to a few favourite patients, it is nice to enjoy a small win.
T8 last Wednesday decided to demolish Cara’s garden and then throw herself under a fence. With lots of persistence and adjustments to her electrolytes (bloods attached) we successfully have her back up on all fours.

29/08/2023

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Please keep your pets up to date with their tick preventative.

22/08/2023

Feeling very honoured

Abbey took her final stroll up and down the driveway today.
It was slow, measured, stiff and wobbly.
She stopped and stood in the warmth of the early spring sunshine with an air of vagueness about her.
Just being.
Existing but not really living.
The brief moments of fun and pleasure in life had all but disappeared over the last few weeks.

Many years ago she was driven to the vet surgery on the night of one of the vet's daughters High School graduations.
It was around 10pm and the urgency of a hole through her chest and into her lungs from a staking- chasing bunnies of course, that whippets are such specialists in, had both the vet and his graduating daughter at the clinic ASAP.
Her lungs were stitched up via her ribs and by 3am surgery was complete.
She was always a bit tender over her ribs after that, but we all lived to tell that tale.
And the other time she bravely bowled in to break up a bull fight and had her entire front paw degloved by a hoof.....
And the multitude of stitches repairing skin tears all over her head and body.....
And that horrible great cyst thing that needed removal...
And the mammary gland growth....
I told her once, if she lived to 10 years of age she owed me a dollar a day, at least, just in vet bills. She could repay me by just being herself. Just by being a dog.
Apparently, she took that debt to heart and continued to repay it for an extra 6 years.
As only a dog would do.
She was 2 months off being 17. A remarkable age for a farm whippet who tend to run hard through life chasing those bunnies and foxes and feral cats.....
It was the same vet, with another daughter, also a vet, who visited this afternoon and helped Abbey on her inevitable way.
We all said our goodbyes.
Over my adult years, I have farewelled 8 much loved hounds. We know that feeling, don't we? But give a thought to the vets who farewell so many more, at their own hands.
Dogs they have tended to from puphood to end of life hood. Every single one of them impacting on them in some way.
It's not a task I think I would handle well.
I'll farewell Abbey in my own way, but to every vet who does that really heartbreaking job for us, Thankyou.
Thankyou.

01/08/2023

Content warning

Where there’s blood (and pus), there’s healing

** Cow was anaesthetised and local anaesthetic used prior to surgery.