Spay and Neuter

A behind the scenes tour! 

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Pre-operative blood work is run on the patient. This helps us verify your pet’s liver and kidneys are working well enough to process the anesthesia. Also, we check for anemia, infection, and clotting problems.

An IV catheter is placed. This helps us manage your pet’s blood pressure during anesthesia as well as helping your pet’s system flush the anesthetic drugs through more rapidly.

Pre-anesthetic medication is administered. This pre-emptive pain medication, helps sedate your pet, plus helps keep your pet’s heart rate elevated at safe levels during their course of anesthesia.

Your pet is anesthetized with an IV injection. This injection and the pre-anesthetic drugs are tailored to your pet’s specific medical needs. We use only the most current and safest drugs available.

Once anesthetized, we place an endotracheal tube into your pet’s airway. This gives us complete control of your pet’s airway and allows us to administer a mixture of anesthetic gas and oxygen.

Throughout his or her procedure, your pet’s breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and temperature are monitored by a highly trained technician as well as state of the art equipment.

And now for the procedure! The doctor performs your pet’s spay or neuter in our surgical suite, equipped with all the latest and greatest surgical equipment.

We pride ourselves in providing excellent pain control for your pet. At the end of the procedure, your pet is given an additional pain injection, plus the surgery site is injected with a numbing agent that keeps the incision numb for up to eight hours. We send home several days’ worth of oral pain medication.

After the procedure your pet’s nurse monitors his or her recovery completely, making sure he or she is pain free, warm, and wakes up smoothly.

After surgery, the doctor or nurse will call you with an update, letting you know how your pet’s procedure went.

We monitor your pet through the afternoon, making certain he or she continues to smoothly and comfortably recover from the anesthesia.

Owner education. At the time of discharge, your pet’s nurse reviews the procedure with you and goes over the doctor’s discharge instructions. We want to make sure all of your questions are answered and that you understand what your pet needs from you in the upcoming days.

Post operative phone call. We call you the day after surgery to make sure your pet has done okay overnight and to see if you have any questions or concerns.

If needed, we perform a courtesy recheck 10-14 days after surgery. This allows our staff to inspect the surgery site and remove sutures if external sutures were placed.

We hope this helps you understand what we do with your pet when they come into Orchard Hills Animal Hospital for a procedure.