Fear Free = no "Tear Spree"!
I lost my phone recently. It fell out of my pocket in a taxi on the way back from a night out and I didn’t realise until the next morning. Ashamed as I am to admit it, the loss of my phone was the cause of great anxiety. These days a phone is like an extension of your arm – and the thought of losing pictures, messages, bank details etc left me with a hollow feeling in my stomach and a cold sweat. To cut a long story short, we were separated for 3 days while the driver took a mini break to France and I was able to monitor his progress via the “find my phone app”! I was very relived to be reunited with it on his return, and in terms of stress, the whole episode was up there with the time I realised I had left my passport at home on the way to the airport and the time when I put my clothes in the wrong washing basket last week – all had potentially severe repercussions!
Fear, anxiety, apprehension and stress are emotions that are not just confined to humans, but are very much experienced by our pets too. There are many potential causes, and for some pets a visit to the vet is one of them. Whilst we do everything to make pets as comfortable as possible, and the majority are content coming to the practice (with some who LOVE a visit to the vet!), it is understandable that there are a selection who feel quite the opposite. Whilst we know that a visit to the vet is in the best interests of the pet, they clearly have no understanding of this. Take an independent cat for example: Cat’s don’t like being forced to do anything at the best of times, so being bundled into a basket once a year, put in a car and taken to a strange place off of your own turf is enough to upset the karma of many a moggie!
Eliminating stress and anxiety not only improves the experience for the pet, but also makes examination, assessment and treatment easier for a better overall outcome. It is for these reasons that at Hawthorn Vets our vets and nurses undergo additional training to become “Fear Free” practitioners. Fear Free is a relatively new American movement that promotes education of veterinary staff in methods, techniques and awareness to enable them to provide care for patients in the best possible way. Put simply, we don’t believe that any pet should be afraid of an experience at Hawthorn and certainly nothing we do should exacerbate any anxiousness or fear they already have.
For example, we use Fear Free techniques such as lickimats (a small rubber matt with delicious pastes smeared on it) to distract the patient from the job in hand. We use ultra quiet clippers when we need to clip for a blood sample and we apply cold spray to numb the area too. Our wards have calming music to distract and calm nerves. However, even with all these techniques in place, the patient can still be anxious. In these circumstances our team is taught to always advocate for the pet- we won’t keep trying a method ‘to get the job done’ if the method is causing emotional distress. In these circumstances simply giving the pet a break can help, but in some cases the veterinary surgeon will opt to prescribe anti anxiety medications and the procedure is rebooked for another time.
Whilst we aim to ensure all our newer, younger, patients never develop a fear of coming into the vets, sadly, some pets just find the whole experience extremely worrying. For these pets, our discount home visit service on a Wednesday has become a life line. Having the examination, where they feel safe and comforted can make a real difference. Our team, where practical and safe, will happily perform an examination and consult in the car park or even the back of the car, although I can testify that this doesn’t work so well in a SMART car!
If your pet is anxious please don’t hesitate to speak to any member of our team who can help devise a plan to treat your pet in the best way that works for them.
