Ard-Vista Animal Hospital

10/05/2024

It's officially October!
Our favorite time of year here at Ard Vista. 🎃

If you want your pet to wear a costume for Halloween, now is the time to slowly introduce them to the concept! Keep the initial sessions short and positive, and make sure the costume is not too tight, does not limit their vision or irritate their skin.

09/28/2024

🚨 URGENT: Asheville Humane Society needs our help! 🚨

The catastrophic damage from Hurricane Helene has overwhelmed the Asheville Humane Society, and countless animals are in desperate need of safety. We’re partnering with BISSELL Pet Foundation to rescue as many pets as possible, but we can’t do it without your help!

We need emergency fosters to help us take in these animals! If you’ve never fostered before, that’s okay! Fostering is completely free—Forsyth Humane Society will provide you with all of the supplies you might need to help care for one of these animals. Every foster home we can secure is another life we can save! 🐾❤️

If you can step up to help us out, please email [email protected] with the subject line “Hurricane Helene Foster”, or check forsythhumane.org/foster for incoming animals. THANK YOU for your willingness to help and your dedication to animals in need. Please share this post to help us reach as many fosters as possible!

07/31/2024

Due to a Spectrum outage our phones and internet are currently down. If you call or email we will get back you as soon as we are able. We apologize for the inconvenience.

04/12/2024

Dont be fooled by pet of the day Bailey's size, this handsome great dane is a gentle giant and a total lap dog!

03/18/2024

Hope everyone had a happy St. Patrick's Day!

Our pet of the day, bearded dragon Vinnie certainly enjoyed the sunshine!

03/15/2024

It's the final day of Bernard's dental journey!

Overall he had five teeth extracted, and one that we are watching closely. Dr. Patton gave him a 24 hour injection of a narcotic pain medication, as well as daily oral anti-inflammatory medication. He will need to eat canned food until his sutures dissolve in about 7-10 days, but then he will be okay to return to dry food.

Bernard will need a dental cleaning with x-rays next year, and then every 1-2 years for the next few years. His dental disease may progress to where he loses the rest of his teeth, or his remaining healthy teeth may stay healthy for the rest of his life.
We do know he is going to be so much happier without his painful, crumbling teeth.

Bernard is a good reminder that cats are excellent at hiding signs of pain or illness. It's important that all cats get a yearly nose to tail exam, even if they seem healthy!

03/14/2024

Day four of Bernard's dental!

We have our dental x-ray results, and they are not pretty.
Poor Bernard has severe feline tooth resorption. This is a common, but poorly understood dental condition.

You can read more about tooth resorption:

https://www.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institutes/cornell-feline-health-center/health-information/feline-health-topics/tooth-resorption

https://vetmed.illinois.edu/2023/02/15/feline-tooth-resorption-treatment-options/

🐱 Thankfully for dogs, this is a cat only disease! 🐱

Unfortunately for Bernard, the only treatment for the type of resorption he has is extraction of the damaged teeth.

First, Dr. Patton performs a dental nerve block. Just like in human dentistry, our veterinarians make the tooth numb before we work on it.

You'll notice Dr. Patton is wearing a jacket, hair cover, mask and eye protection. Unlike during abdominal surgery, where surgeons where masks to protect the patient, all this gear is to protect Dr. Patton. During the dental, we use an ultrasonic scaler to clean the teeth and a high speed drill when we need to extract teeth. Both of these can result in bacteria, water, calculus or even teeth flying through the air!

Next, Dr. Patton carefully lifts the gums away from the teeth and underlying jaw bone. She uses the drill to section the teeth into pieces, then gently removes each piece. Finally, she sutures the gum closed back over the empty tooth socket.

After extractions, we take another x-ray to make sure all the pieces of the tooth are gone.

Once the diseased teeth are removed, Dr. Patton scales, cleans and polishes each remaining tooth.

Finally when anesthesia is over, patients recover in our treatment room, where they are directly supervised until they are able to sit up. Bernard stayed nice and warm during his dental, but for patients who get a little cold, they remain wrapped in a Bair hugger (warm air blanket) until they are back to normal temperature.

Tomorrow we will look at Bernard's post dental instructions, and check in with how he is doing at home!

03/13/2024

Day 3, and it's dental day for Bernard!

Bernard was dropped off bright and early between 7:45am-8:15am.

Before surgery, cats stay in our cat ward, a separate room that is kept quiet and warm for our feline friends. You'll notice Bernard has a cozy bed and a litter box, but no food or water.

Just like in human medicine, it is very important not to eat or drink prior to anesthesia.

When it's time for the procedure, Dr. Patton starts with an injection of a pain medication and sedative. Then we clip the hair on his leg and place an IV catheter. The catheter means pets can receive IV fluids during the procedure, and if there is an emergency can receive emergency drugs immediately.

Next Dr. Patton places an endotracheal tube in Bernard's trachea (windpipe.) This allows us to deliver anesthetic gas and prevents any of the water from his dental cleaning from going into his lungs.

While Dr. Patton starts examining his teeth, our anesthesia assistant carefully hooks Bernard up to our monitoring equipment. We measure Bernard's heart rate, his breathing rate, the amount of carbon dioxide in his breaths, the amount of oxygen in his blood, his pulse quality and his blood pressure.

Notice Bernard is wrapped in a blanket and wearing little baby socks? 🧦

Animals and people under anesthesia tend to get cold, so we use a combination of a Bair hugger (which blows warm air on the patient) warm blankets, a fluid warmer and socks to keep patients at a safe temperature.

Once Bernard is stable on the table, we start with dental x-rays.

Tomorrow we will post Bernard's complete x-rays and diagnosis... but you are welcome to post a guess!

03/12/2024

Day 2 of Bernard's dental journey- bloodwork!

In cats, our veterinarians usually draw blood from the inside back leg (medial saphenous vein.) Sometimes this is a multi person process!

There are several important parts of preanesthetic blood.

First is the complete blood count (the cbc).

This tells us about red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. We do not want to do surgery if a pet is anemic (low red blood cells) has an infection (white blood cells are our infection fighters) or doesn't have enough platelets (which cause blood to clot.)

The next section, the chemisty, give us information about how we'll the organs are functioning. Pets need to have a healthy liver and kidneys to metabolize the anesthesia drugs we use. If we know a pet has a concurrent disease, we can use different protocols to keep them as safe as possible.

In cats, we also recommend a blood test called the pro-BNP. This test looks for evidence of heart disease. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common heart disease in cats and a leading cause of unexpected anesthetic death.

Unfortunately cats with this disease do not generally have a heart murmur, so a regular physical examination will not find HCM.

Thankfully Bernard's blood values looked great, so he is ready for anesthesia.

Tomorrow we will start the dental and see what's going on with Bernard's teeth!

03/11/2024

Meet pet of the day, Bernard!

Bernard is a 3 year old domestic short-haired cat. He eats his dry food enthusiastically and loves to play fetch with a rubber ball.

At his annual exam, Dr. Patton noticed Bernard had some suspicious areas in his mouth, and recommended an anesthetized dental exam and cleaning.

This week, we will follow Bernard through all the steps of a dental cleaning.

Up next? Presurgical bloodwork!

02/15/2024

It's valentines week, and we love Doctors Ray and Jeni!

💘🧡💖💗💘💝💘💗💖

02/14/2024

💗💘💝It's valentines week and we LOVE our receptionists and assistants! 💖💝💖

Part two!

02/12/2024

😍 It's valentines week and we love our assistants! 🥰

(Part one!)

02/05/2024

Pet of the day "Archie" is all smiles for his puppy visits!

01/10/2024

Goodbye paper files!

We are hard at work making the change to digital records. This makes referrals and patient transfers easier and faster.
Plus, no one has to decode the doctor's handwriting!😅

12/19/2023

Looking for a new home!

This is Velvet, a 9 year old female spayed domestic short-hair cat. Her person is going into a nursing home.

Velvet is very sweet with her family, but does not want to live with other animals.
She can be a little spicy in unfamiliar situations.

Please contact Robert at 706-818-9808 for more details.

12/15/2023

Ard Vista Family,

Like many of you, our veterinarians have been closely following the recent outbreak of canine upper respiratory disease.

Although we have not seen local cases with the severity of those reported in Colorado, Oregon, California and other states, we are seeing an increase in seasonal upper respiratory infections.

Currently, our advice to clients is twofold:

1. If possible, avoid dog social activities, such as boarding, daycare and dog parks. If your dog must go to grooming or boarding, please be sure your provider requires proof of vaccines.

2. We are now following a NEW VACCINE PROTOCOL for all dogs in accordance with the recommendations from several boarded veterinary infectious disease experts.

⭐️We are transitioning to a three in one, modified live intranasal Bordetella, Parainfluenza, Adenovirus-2 vaccine. This vaccine will take the place of our normal oral bordetella for most dogs. This vaccine should be given every 6 months for social dogs.

⭐️We are once again carrying and recommending the canine influenza vaccine. This vaccine starts with a two dose series, and is then boostered annually.

🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕

For dogs who are up to date on their annual exam, there is no exam fee to come in for updated vaccinations.

Dogs who are at low risk for infection (no grooming, boarding or dog park exposure) can wait and update their vaccines at their usual annual exam.

Families of dogs who are higher risk should schedule these vaccines prior to their next social visit, if possible.

In order to accommodate as many clients as possible, these booster visits will be curbside visits, with a veterinary assistant bringing your pet into and out of the hospital.

If you have any questions about our new vaccine policy, or wish to speak with a veterinarian about specific recommendations for your pet, please call us at 336-765-3070 or email us at [email protected]

12/07/2023

Pet of the day Milo!

He's looking festive (and looking for a home!)

12/04/2023

This kitty, "White nose" gave us a very important reminder about dental x-rays today!

Our veterinarians were suspicious she might have some dental disease based on her red gums, but we weren't expecting to see such severe resorptive lesions...
There are holes in her teeth!

She will feel so much better without these painful teeth.

11/20/2023

Some cats find day visits stressful, but not today's pet of the day 🐱 Oliver 🐱!

Walk too close to this confident gentleman and he'll pull you in for petting!

11/11/2023

Antibiotic overuse is a big problem in pets and people!

Our veterinarians agree that bland diet (especially gi biome), probiotics and fiber resolve the vast majority of doggie diarrhea.

Veterinarians are rethinking the use of antibiotics for treating doggy diarrhea. https://news.vin.com/doc/?id=11787352

11/07/2023

Doctors Gessner, Patton and Pierce traveled to Raleigh this weekend for the North Carolina Veterinary Conference.

Did you know veterinarians in North Carolina are required to get 20 hours of continuing education each year?

CE topics we enjoyed this year included: respiratory distress in cats, mobilty loss in elderly dogs, safer anesthesia, and management of vomiting in dogs and cats.

There were also lecture rooms dedicated to exotic pets ("no spine, no problem") horses, swine, cattle and backyard chickens!

🐶🐱🐴🐮🐷🐰🐓

10/27/2023

Pet of the day 👑 Aristokat 👑 graced us with his royal presence today!

10/22/2023

Fall is the perfect time to snuggle up indoors with a good book...

We are so happy our friend Little Mombo realized this and decided to come home after weeks on the loose!

We are beyond grateful to our wonderful clients who let us put out traps and trail cameras, as well as to the Ardmore community at large for watching out for this little kitty. 🐈‍⬛

10/20/2023

This week we celebrated our 54th year of being AAHA accredited!

We are proud to be one of the oldest AAHA hospitals in the country.🐾

Ard Vista Animal Hospital was started in 1960 by Doctors Burt and Dorothy Kalet.

Dr. Dorothy Kalet was the first woman admitted to UGA college of veterinary medicine and one of the first female veterinarians in North Carolina.

The clinic was then purchased by Dr. Jeni Geisler and Dr. Ray Morrison in February 1991.

The building has changed, but our commitment to providing quality veterinary care throughout the life of your pet remains the same.