Neutering cats and small furries, surviving the cases that test us, veterinary nursing without borders, and the vitamin D rodenticide warning every GP team should know. The central promise: A practical two-week takedown for the moments when “routine” decisions stop being routine. When “routine” suddenly needs a rethink If you have ever booked a kitten neuter and wondered whether four months really is the sweet spot... If a rabbit GA has made the whole theatre team breat

A practical GP approach to multimodal pain plans, anti-NGF conversations and meaningful rechecks with Matt Gurney of Zero Pain Philosophy If you have ever opened an arthritic patient’s record and found an NSAID, gabapentin, paracetamol, a monthly injection and a hopeful little “seems brighter?” in the notes, this episode is for you. If you have ever wondered whether the dog is deteriorating or simply sedated, whether the cat is painful or merely “getting old”, or whether the

From nutrition and renal cysts to phantom pregnancies, ear cytology and a new three-month OA antibody: the practical points we're taking back into first-opinion practice. EPISODE PARTNERS Purina Institute sponsored this episode, in which we explore its 2026 well-pet nutrition handbook. We have also partnered with Vet Shadow, who are offering Chatty Vets listeners a discount on their clinical support service. Thank you to both partners for helping us keep making practical cont

If you've ever finished a shift wondering whether you made the right decisions... If you've ever replayed a difficult consultation on the drive home... Or if you've ever described yourself as "just a GP vet"... This episode is for you. General practice can feel relentless. We switch from blocked cats to emergency surgery, anxious owners to dental extractions, euthanasias to puppy vaccinations—sometimes all before lunch. It's easy to forget just how much knowledge, judgement a

A practical guide to hyperadrenocorticism for first-opinion vets There are some diseases that most of us feel reasonably comfortable recognising in practice. A middle-aged or older dog walks into the consult room with a pot belly, symmetrical alopecia, a ravenous appetite and an owner who's fed up of refilling the water bowl every five minutes. Cushing's disease. Easy, right? Well, maybe. And it turns out that understanding the physiology makes the disease much easier to diag

Another fortnight, another packed episode of the Chatty Vets Podcast. This month's Two-Week Takedown covered everything from the emotional reality of complaints in practice to pet travel updates, ECG interpretation, research opportunities and even the never-ending debate around joint supplements. If you haven't had chance to listen yet, here's a quick roundup of some of the key take-home messages. Complaints: Why They Still Hurt (Even When You've Done Nothing Wrong) Let's be

For a long time, regenerative medicine felt a bit… sci-fi. Something futuristic. Something experimental. Something happening in expensive laboratories somewhere far away from real-world general practice. But after sitting down with Russell Chandler on the podcast recently, both Charlotte and I came away thinking the same thing: This isn’t “the future” anymore. It’s already here. And perhaps more importantly — clients already know about it. Increasingly, owners are arriving in

For many but not all clinicians, the neutering conversation in dogs felt fairly straightforward. Castrate the males. Spay the females. Usually around six months. Job done. But the more evidence that comes out, the harder it’s becoming to justify blanket recommendations — especially in medium and large breed dogs. And honestly, I think many vets have quietly felt this for quite a while. In Episode 17 of the Chatty Vets Podcast, Charlotte and I discussed the growing evidence ar

If there’s one endocrine disease most of us feel fairly comfortable spotting in practice, it’s probably feline hyperthyroidism. You know the cat. About 14 years old. Getting progressively skinnier. Absolutely inhaling food. Screaming at 3am for reasons nobody fully understands. Coat looking a bit scruffy and “staring”. Owners saying, “but he's fine!”, and perceive the cat as not suffering, so why test him? This is at the heart of the consult with these cats. We have to

Reflections from Chatty Vets Podcast Episode 15 Veterinary nurses are the backbone of modern practice - but somehow, much of the public still has no idea what RVNs actually do. That was one of the biggest themes running through Episode 15 of the Chatty Vets Podcast, where we sat down with three brilliant veterinary nurses to talk about everything from Schedule 3 procedures and feline medicine to confidence, leadership, wellbeing and the future of the profession. And honestly?

A Dive into Veterinary Insights Episode 14 of The Chatty Vets Podcast is one of those classic Two Week Takedown episodes. We start with “just a few quick topics” and somehow end up covering half of general practice. This week, we chat about vaping exposure in dogs, Giardia, the canine microbiome, raw feeding, dentistry, retained roots, deciduous canines, and the bigger welfare questions around brachycephalic breeds. A calm, focused, linear episode? Absolutely not. Useful? We

Honest, practical advice for new grads and vets starting out in practice Starting in general practice is exciting — but it can also feel overwhelming. One minute you’re a student, the next you’re in a consult room on your own with a client expecting answers. If that feels scary… that’s completely normal. In this first episode of our Survival Guide to GP Practice, we’re talking about how to choose your first job, what to look out for, and how to survive those first few weeks.

Blog post for Ep 12: Two Week Takedown: Difficult Clients, Aggressive Patients, and Pyometra Debates Welcome back to another Two Week Takedown - where we take a step back from the consult room chaos and talk about what’s actually happening in UK general practice right now. This episode was a proper mix. The kind of conversations that don’t sit neatly in textbooks but come up every single day: Clients who don’t want your plan Patients you physically can’t treat easily The unco

It’s March. The daffs are out. The chocolate’s everywhere. The hot cross buns are “cooling on the side” (they’re not). Which means one thing in practice: toxin season is back. In this bonus episode, we wanted to pull together a practical, basic GP-friendly approach to common toxicities we see in practice. Not a pharmacology lecture. Just: How they present What to do first When to induce vomit When not to vomit When charcoal helps When intralipids are worth the risk And a CRI

Who Actually Follows the Vaccine Datasheet? (And What We Do Instead) What happens when the datasheet says one thing, the guidelines say another, and your waiting room is full? That was really the theme running through this episode of Chatty Vets. We set out to talk about vaccines, a new injection site, and Brucella — but what we actually uncovered was something bigger. Modern general practice is becoming less black-and-white. We are increasingly being asked to balance guideli

Vomiting in dogs and cats is one of the most common presentations we see in general practice. It can be straightforward and self-limiting, or it can be the first sign of something far more serious. One of the biggest challenges is that “vomiting” has numerous causes and sequelae that can be difficult to predict, so superb communication is paramount. In this post, we’re taking a practical look at how to approach acute vomiting in dogs and cats in general practice: from disting

Ultrasound—whether you’re scanning the thorax or the abdomen—is really about answering a series of simple, clinically useful yes/no questions. As your skills improve, the number of questions you can confidently answer grows. We’ll cover abdominal ultrasound in more detail in future guidelines. But for now… let’s focus on thoracic ultrasound. Is this dyspnoea primarily a respiratory problem or primarily a heart problem? Is there fluid? Do I need to tap something? Do I need d

These patients—typically bulldogs or pugs—often arrive after exercise on a warm day or even during the relative cool of the night after a hot day. In these night-time presentations, hyperthermia is a consequence of upper airway obstruction, panic, and increased respiratory effort rather than environmental heat alone. I've had many patients, especially Frenchies, arrive with frequent coughing up of thick white foamy saliva. However, their primary problem is upper airway BO

* What it is: A plasma-based nucleosome assay used for cancer screening and monitoring in healthy, asymptomatic dogs only. * What it isn't: A cancer-specific diagnostic test or a substitute for pathology. * The Goal: It acts as a non-specific biomarker of pathological cell turnover. * The Origin: Developed with the highly regarded Texas A&M Gastrointestinal Laboratory, the same team that did so much to establish B12, TLI and PLI testing within general practice. 🔬 The Biology

Client communication tips: A lot of the win here is how you frame it: What owners think: “Neuro signs” → “stroke” → “brain tumour” → “put to sleep today”. What you can say early (when appropriate): “This can look terrifying, but it's usually a balance problem rather than a stroke, and a lot of these cases improve quickly.” “Let’s check for the red flags that would make us worry about brain involvement.” “If it’s the common ‘old dog vestibular’ pattern, we treat the nausea and