Leaving your pet at the vets can be a daunting prospect but inevitably there are certain treatments that require a stay in hospital – be it just overnight recovering from surgery or a longer stay whilst on fluids and intravenous medication.

Despite owners' concerns the vast majority of cats and dogs actually cope very well with a stay in hospital. They may get slightly bored but generally these patients need rest anyway so better to be bored and treated here than bored and getting worse at home.

Many cats and dogs in the hospital will be on intravenous fluids and again, owners wonder how we manage this. Intravenous fluids tend to go into the front leg of a cat or dog and then we bandage the catheter firmly in place – remarkably not many of our patients pull these IV catheters out.

Inevitably, you do get the occasional patient that is determined to rip out anything that is attached to them and they will need a plastic collar (in the lampshade style) to ensure the IV fluid line stays in place. We then disconnect the fluids to take dogs out to the toilet and reconnect it when they get back into the hospital.

For those that are very poorly we have incubators which can supply heat and oxygen directly to the patient. For large dogs that cannot fit into an incubator we have special wrap around heated beds called “Bair Huggers” (first developed for human medicine and now widely used by vets).

So if you are advised that admission would be the best thing for you pet try not to worry – they are in good hands and they will cope better than you think.