About Us
17th November 2017 by Andrew Turkington
The main Parklands Cookstown and Dungannon surgeries are purpose built and designed buildings allowing us to provide the most optimal environment for examining, treating and nursing your pet.
The premises are built to Royal College Standards and have hygienic, sealed and easy to clean floor surface allowing us to maintain the highest levels of hygiene possible.
- The premises are well lit with natural light, well ventilated and is a secure, CCTV monitored and alarmed premises.
- Free and spacious car parking areas is available with disabled access and disabled public toilet facilities. There are several bins and bag dispensers in the car park for convenient disposal of your pet’s waste.
- There is a large, bright and airy main waiting area with comfortable seating, with an additional separate quiet waiting area for owners with feline patients.
- Toilet facilities are available.
- You may wish to hitch your dog up on one of our dog parking posts so you can explore our retail area. We stock a range of high quality life stage and prescription diets, pet beds, shampoos, toys, collars, leads, feeding bowls, chews, treats and many other pet accessories.
- The receptionists will weigh your pet before meeting the vet or nurse.
- Your pet is examined in a spacious, well equipped examination room. Small scales are available for weighing the small and exotic patients.
- The examination rooms are equipped with an otoscope allowing detailed examination of your pet’s ear and an ophthalmoscope for detailed examination of your pet’s eye, including the cornea, lens and retina. In all eye problems, we routinely use a digital tonometer to check the fluid pressure of your pet’s eye, special dye tests to assess your pet’s cornea and Schirmer tear tests to check your pet’s tear production.
- We aim to provide detailed unhurried and thorough examinations. Pets’ records are stored on a secure modern computer data base which is backed up daily.
- The clinic has modern laboratory facilities including blood analysis machines allowing us to provide vital details about your pet’s internal health within minutes.
- Before a major surgery – your pet’s bloods will be checked to ensure that there are no hidden health problems so that your pet’s surgery can be as safe as possible.
- A simple stick test allows us to instantly check your pet’s urine for infection, diabetes and crystal formation. If your pet is thirstier than normal or wetting more than usual or is over the age of 8 years, please bring a urine sample with you to the examination.
- We have a high powered microscope which is invaluable for checking your pet’s skin for parasites such as mites, for checking ear swabs for the type of ear infection your pet might have and for checking smears from your pet’s lumps for cancer cells and to determine the type of lump.
- Our lab has facilities to check your cat for the presence of serious viruses such as feline AIDs or feline leukaemia.
- We are able to screen your pet for ringworm with a Wood’s lamp and have facilities to carry out fungal and bacterial cultures.
- Our lab also maintains a range of rapid tests that can screen your pet immediately for lungworm, Canine Parvovirus and Giardia infection.
- For more challenging cases, our clinic uses the services of a world class professional external laboratory, Finn Pathologists.
- Parklands has a well equipped dental suite with facilities for descaling, polishing and extracting diseased teeth and retained deciduous (milk) teeth.
- To assist us in making a diagnosis, our diagnostic imaging room is equipped with digital radiography allowing us to obtain a very detailed view of your pet’s bones, abdomen or chest.
- We have a powerful ultrasound scanner which is vital to diagnose and monitor heart conditions, to assess for internal tumours of the abdomen, to screen breeding bitches for pregnancy and to check vital organs including the liver, kidneys, spleen, bladder and eyes.
- We have a number of endoscopes which are used to visualise your pet’s windpipe, stomach, oesophagus and colon and for taking internal biopsy samples or retrieval of foreign objects from inside your pet.
- Our electrocardiogram (ecg) machine is used to help diagnose and monitor heart conditions. We use a digital blood pressure monitor as an important tool in evaluating your pet’s cardiovascular system but also to screen for high blood pressure in older cats – this is important in preventing retinal haemorrhages, kidney damage and heart damage.
Parklands Veterinary practices have well equipped operating theatres.
- We use the gold standard in pet anaesthesia, namely piped oxygen with scavenging and safe gaseous anaesthesia in the form of Isoflo or Sevoflo – this allows us to have a very high success rate in our surgeries, even in elderly cats and dogs.
- While your pet is under anaesthetic, a qualified nurse monitors all your pet’s vital signs including blood pressure.
- An ecg also monitors your pet’s heart rate, a pulse oximeter checks your pet’s blood oxygen levels, a capnograph checks your pet’s carbon dioxide levels and your pet’s temperature is digitally monitored – this allows us to pick up any problems very early during an anaesthetic.
- We can also perform positive pressure ventilation so allowing open chest \ heart surgery
- Heat pads are used to ensure your pet remains warm during longer surgeries.
- We are equipped to deal with most surgeries such as neutering, fracture repair, cruciate repair, patellar luxation, ear canal resections, corneal lacerations, tumour removal, amputations, skin grafting, scent gland removal, thoracotomy, gastric torsions, intestinal foreign bodies, bladder stone removal and many more.
- Some surgeries can be carried out with local anaesthesia and sedation avoiding the need for a general anaesthetic – we use cryosurgery to freeze off small lumps and our diathermy units allows us to cut skin without losing any blood and also to treat ingrowing eyelashes.
- We maintain a high level of clinical hygiene and our autoclaves, blood analysis, anaesthetic and X-ray systems are inspected on an annual basis to ensure optimal performance. We have facilities for carrying out a wide range of chemotherapy protocols on pets with cancer.
- Our clinics have on-site accommodation for our vets and nursing staff so your pet is never alone, even at night.
- Intravenous fluids are a core component of our treatment for sick pets and we use automatic infusion pumps and syringe drivers to ensure that your pet gets the correct amount of fluids.
- Critically ill patients benefit from our piped oxygen and oxygen tents, incubators and warm cosy kennels with Vet-Beds.
- We have facilities for blood collection and blood transfusions and can provide a rapid emergency response to acute trauma patients, such as pets that are involved in road accidents.
- We maintain a range of antidotes for common poisons.
- Our kennels have underfloor heating to allow a comfortable quiet and restful stay. Cats stay in a peaceful separate ward away from the canine patients and pheromone diffusers, Adaptil and Feliway, are used throughout the wards to keep stress levels to a minimum.
We have separate isolation facilities away from the main wards allowing us to deal with infectious diseases such as Parvovirus, Canine Cough and Cat Flu, without posing a risk to other patients. Our main working areas, kennels and isolation facility all have separate ventilation systems so that air from infectious areas is always moved away from the main areas. We operate a foot bathing system and barrier nursing in our isolation area.
While we recommend that you bring your pet to the clinic for treatment to make the most of our facilities and to keep your costs to a minimum, we do offer an animal ambulance service for the vet to visit your pet on house call or to collect your pet and bring to the clinic for treatment.
We are proud of the facilities we offer but don’t just take our word for it – our team will be more than happy to allow you tour our premises at any time, to see behind the scenes and to see where your pet will be staying.