Howick Village Vets

🎓🐾 From first-day nerves to proud puppy graduates! 🐾🎓

Tonight, Howick Village Vets was filled with wagging tails, curious noses and plenty of puppy pride as our gorgeous Puppy School class graduated! 🥹🐶💚

Over the past four weeks, we’ve loved watching these little ones grow in confidence, learn new skills and build positive relationships with the world around them — all under the patient and caring guidance of our wonderful Puppy School Coordinator, Steph. 👏✨

Puppy School is about so much more than learning to sit and stay. It’s a chance for puppies to learn how to socialise, communicate, build confidence and become more aware of other dogs and animals. It also gives owners the tools to understand their puppy’s body language, recognise their signals and support them as they grow. 🐾

Over the four weeks, our puppies worked on:

🐶 Socialisation and confidence
🐾 Reading puppy body language and signals
👀 Awareness of other dogs and animals
🧠 Basic commands and good manners
❤️ Helping owners better understand and communicate with their puppies

And judging by the final clip in our reel, one little graduate had such a wonderful time that they simply weren’t ready to go home! 😂🥹 It seems the clinic had become their second home. We’ll happily take that as a five-star review Pluto! ⭐️🐾

🎓 Congratulations to all our Puppy School graduates! We’re so proud of how far you’ve come and can’t wait to see you continue to grow.

Have you recently welcomed a puppy into your family? Our next Puppy School class starts Wednesday 2 September, and we’d love to help you and your puppy get off to the best possible start.

🐾 NEXT PUPPY SCHOOL CLASS 🐾
📅 Starts Wednesday 2 September
⏰ 6pm–7pm
📚 Four weeks
📍 Howick Village Vets

Spaces are limited, so get in touch with our team to enrol your puppy today! 💚🐶

📧 [email protected]
📞 09 242 4322

🐾 MEET KATRINE 🐾

Certified good girl. Professional couch model. Recent survivor of a vet plot twist 😅
She came in for what presurgical lab tests had Dr Asha prepping for a routine cyst removal. Simple, in-and-out, nothing to see here… 🙃

PLOT TWIST 🚨It wasn’t just a cyst. It was a dermoid cyst, and when we opened it up… we pulled out a long strand of HAIR that had been quietly growing inside the lump this whole time. 💇‍♀️🧵😱
Yeah. We gasped too.

🧠 OK BUT WHAT EVEN IS A DERMOID CYST??
Picture this: while a puppy is still developing inside mom, a tiny patch of skin is supposed to fold outward and become… skin. Normal, outside-the-body, doing-its-job skin. 🐶
But sometimes, that little patch takes a wrong turn 🔀 and gets pinched off inside the body instead. Whoops.
Here’s the kicker….the trapped skin has NO IDEA it’s in the wrong place. It just keeps doing its job:
🔸 hair follicles? still growing hair
🔸 oil glands? still producing oil
🔸 problem is… it’s all sealed inside a little pocket with nowhere to go 📦
Over months (or years!), that hair coils up and the oils build up, and you get a slow growing lump. Which is exactly the mystery Katrine was hiding under all that fur. 🕵️‍♀️
Important bit: this is 100% congenital,meaning it’s just how that patch of skin formed before she was even born. Some dogs carry a tiny one their whole life and never know. Others (hi Katrine 👋) need a surgery once it’s found and the outcome is usually great! ✅

🎉 THE GOOD NEWS
Katrine handled surgery like an absolute LEGEND and is already back to her snuggly, sassy, couch-ruling self. 🖤🐾
Watch the reel ➡️ to see the whole glow-up: lump ➡️ surgery ➡️ recovery cuddles 🥹

Extended by popular demand! 🌸🐾

Due to demand, we’ve extended our Scale & Polish promotion into Spring! Bookings are now open for September.

💰 $350 Scale & Polish — Cats & Dogs

✅ Pets under 7 years of age
✅ No pre-existing medical conditions
✅ Breed safety guidelines apply

🗓️September 1st to September 30th
📞 Book now: 09 2424324
🔗 Or online: www.howickvillagevets.co.nz

🐾 Friday Foreign Body: Milo’s Mystery Gag 🐾

Gorgeous 5-year-old Milo came in at lunchtime with a history of gagging and repeated “reaching”. She was still eating well, but clearly uncomfortable, and mum was understandably worried. Milo also has a bit of a track record for getting into things she shouldn’t, so we suspected a foreign body might be behind it all.

To investigate, Milo was placed under a light general anaesthetic for a full oral, nasal and pharyngeal exam. At first, all we could see was some redness, swelling and mild mucosal infection at the back of the throat. But a closer look with a dental mirror revealed a flash of green…

After careful extraction, out came a whopping 10cm blade of grass that had been lodged just behind her soft palate! 😳🌿

Milo is already looking and feeling so much more comfortable now that it’s out, and we’re expecting a speedy recovery.

🌱 Grass blades stuck behind the soft palate (in the nasopharynx) are a surprisingly common issue in cats, and persistent gagging or retching is one of the classic warning signs. Other possible culprits for these symptoms include other foreign bodies, oral trauma or burns, and even polyps! This is why a proper vet exam is so important any time gagging doesn’t settle on its own.

If your cat is gagging, retching, or pawing at their mouth and it’s not resolving, don’t wait it out, book them in with us. 💚

Meet Oakley 🐾 This gorgeous two-year-old retriever recently came in to see us for her spay and has recovered beautifully!

A spay is major surgery but is important for preventing unwanted pregnancy and reducing the risk of certain cancers later in life. Because it’s such a significant procedure, pain relief and anesthesia safety are top priorities for us every step of the way.

During surgery, Oakley received gold standard pain relief with a constant rate infusion of opioids. She then went home with a fentanyl patch in place for three days as well as anti inflammatories. This kept her comfortable through that critical post-op period.

And it worked. Just look at that smile! 😊

✨Booking your dog in for a spay?✨
Ask these important questions:
✅ Will my dog be on IV fluids throughout the procedure?
✅ What pain relief will my dog receive, during and after surgery?
✅ Can we do pre-anesthetic bloodwork to catch any hidden conditions before such a major operation?

Our vet team will be happy to walk you through all of it. 💙

❄️🐾 WINTER SMILES SPECIAL 🐾❄️

Your pet’s teeth deserve some love too! This winter, we’re making dental care easy on the wallet.

✨ Scale & Polish — just $350 ✨
(cats & dogs)

Because a healthy mouth = a happier, healthier pet — and nobody wants sneaky dental disease creeping up. 🦷💛

📋 The fine print:
🐶 Pets under 7 years
🩺 Breed safety guidelines apply
❤️ No pre-existing medical conditions

📅 July 21 – August 31 only
📞 Book now: 09 2424324
🔗 Or online: www.howickvillagevets.co.nz

👇 Tag a pet parent who needs to see this!

CatDental