Our services

Appointments are available 7 days a week, including Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Our standard appointments are longer than the national average. We allocate 20 minutes so that there is plenty of time to listen to your concerns, examine your pet thoroughly and create a care plan.

We also offer later appointment slots Monday to Thursdays at the Portishead Practice.

Our highly experienced nurses provide a range of clinics to ensure your pet’s health and wellbeing.

Weight and nutrition clinics

A large proportion of animals become overweight, and nationally it is a huge area of concern for vets. Allow us to help you avoid the mistakes often made (or rectify the situation should it have happened already).

Our nursing staff are very keen on providing top-notch health advice to enhance the quality of life for your pets. They can offer you dietary advice and regular free weight checks to slim down the waistline of our heavier patients. A slimmer pet will usually be a much happier, healthier and more active one.

Rabbit welfare clinics
Post-operative care clinics
Pre/Post Hibernation clinics for Tortoises

Our nurses also carry out some vaccinations, dental checks, wound checks, nail clipping and lots more.

We are usually able to come to your home to see your pet if you prefer this. This can be a great option, but of course our vet practices are fully equipped with experienced staff and top-quality facilities, so they are often the best place for your pet to be seen and cared for.

When it comes to the sad time at the end of a pet’s life, we encourage a home visit where possible, as inevitably the surroundings will be familiar, and anxieties reduced. Please call us for further details and charges.

Due to the nature of our work, there may be times that we cannot leave the surgery premises at short notice unless for an emergency.

Our vets have a wealth of experience and often have areas of special interest in which they have taken further professional exams. We are happy to offer second opinions for animals registered with us and even those that are not.

If you are not registered with us, we can easily contact your original vet for your pet’s medical history and we would book you a double appointment (40 minutes) so we have plenty of time to meet you and your pet. Please get in touch for more information.

If your pet is currently under treatment with us, but you would like a second opinion from another vet, please do not hesitate to ask. If we cannot offer further expertise from one of our own vets, we can direct you to an appropriate specialist, and arrange the appointment for you. Most specialist vets will not accept an appointment request from a pet owner – it needs to be requested by their usual veterinary surgeon.

Our facilities are modern and equipped to an extremely high standard as you would expect for a busy small animal vet practice. Your pet will benefit from expertise, rapid diagnostics and superb surgical and medical care.

Our facilities include:

• Six purpose-built dedicated sterile operating theatres across three sites
• Fully equipped extensive on-site laboratory facilities
• Keyhole surgery facilities
• Diagnostic imaging – high quality ultrasound and high resolution digital X-ray
• Blood pressure measurement and capnography for increased patient safety
• Industry-leading, increased sustainability, fully monitored anaesthesia systems
• Veterinary dentistry equipment including advanced dental X-ray
• Warm, clean, high-quality kennelling and patient warming systems
• Separate wards for dogs, cats and small mammals to maintain low stress levels

We have a vast array of surgical talent and a great bank of experience within our vet team, with many of our vets undergoing further professional training in this discipline, and several already holding their certificates in surgery.

We regularly operate on pets that require a highly specific technique, or a particularly complex procedure. We do this with confidence based on that experience and our commitment to ongoing learning.

We also are able to undertake some procedures using laparoscopic (keyhole) techniques especially laparoscopic spay. There are a number of benefits for your pets such as faster healing, less pain and smaller surgical wounds.

We have access to various tools to assess and diagnose what is wrong with your pet. At each Practice we have the ability to take high quality X-rays or use non-invasive ultrasound.

CT scanning

CT scanning is an advanced imaging technique which provides an unparalleled level of detail allowing us to assess conditions in an extremely detailed way. Areas that were previously tricky to reach, such as the skull, inside the nasal cavity, inside joints, and numerous other soft tissue and bone areas are now able to be scanned and fantastically detailed images are produced.

Your pet benefits from this because we can make more accurate assessments of their condition and therefore enable a specific treatment plan to be put in place quickly. This is an incredibly useful additional service we have here!

Ultrasound scanning

Our ultrasound scanners also enable us to look inside the body without invasive surgery, and often without having to have an anaesthetic.

Scanning ‘sees’ the body in a different way to X-rays, and is especially useful for looking at soft tissue structures such as internal organs like the liver, intestines, bladder or kidneys. We can also check pregnancy, or how the heart is functioning, and can evaluate cancers and other serious disorders.

We love meeting all of your pets and we are proud to have been recognised as making the practice as welcoming as possible regardless of the species! We always aim to provide a stress free and calm environment for all of our patients and understand that every species and individual animal has its own special requirements.

Cat friendly clinic

We love cats! All of our branches are part of the International Society of Feline Medicine (ISFM) Cat Friendly Clinic scheme, with our Nailsea and Yatton branches awarded silver standard and Portishead practice awarded gold standard.

Dog friendly clinic

We were one of the very first practices in the whole country to sign up to the collaborative project between Dogs Trust and the British Veterinary Behaviour Association. From staff training to preparing the practice environment we have made sure that your dog’s visit will be as low stress as possible. We encourage socialisation and offer free visits at quiet times for our more nervous canine visitors.

Rabbit friendly clinic

The practice is a Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund (RWAF) gold awarded practice. We offer a free Rabbit Welfare Nurse Clinic and if any problem areas are identified, the nurse will book you in for a veterinary surgeon to examine your rabbit.

We also love to see:

• Guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils
• Rats and mice
• Chinchillas
• Pygmy hedgehogs and skunks
• Chickens, ducks and geese
• Parrots
• Budgies and parakeets
• Snakes, geckos, bearded dragons and other reptiles

And many more species…

Our Portishead practice has a dedicated exotics ward and dedicated consulting room especially for small furries, feathery and scaley pets. Our ward includes a calm quiet area for small mammals with plenty of space to exercise which helps us maintain our rabbit friendly practice status and is perfect for helping your pet calmly recoup and recover from illness or a procedure. They will never have to hear a bark or meow during their stay!

For our reptiles we have hospital grade vivariums that can be adjusted to each species requirements to make them feel at home. Our avian housing is up high for the best perching spot and view. For rodents we have a variety of hospital cages, houses, hides and substrate to keep them happy while in our care. For the rabbits and guinea pigs we have large ground floor housing that allows social groups to be kept together.

Having our own ventilation and temperature-controlled ward allows us to examine and exercise our patients in a safe contained environment giving them more space if required. We even have a state-of-the-art incubator to house our most poorly patients which allows us to keep them warm and toasty as well as provide oxygen or nebulise them as necessary. We can adapt all of our accommodation to suit the needs of the individual to make sure that they have everything they require for their stay. Rest assured your pet is in good hands no matter the species!

Our fantastic facilities mean that we can provide more services than before for your exotic pets:

• Neutering
• Dentals
• Surgeries and procedures to treat conditions
• Hospitalisation and boarding for medical treatment and supportive care
• Second opinions

Husbandry and how we care for our exotics pets is key to keeping them healthy and it also gives our vets clues in working out why they might be unwell. To help us treat your pet and give the best advice we might ask you to fill in a pre-appointment questionnaire and ask you to bring a faecal sample with you. Give us a call and one of our friendly receptionists can book you in and explain more.

We have many years of experience with the Shar Pei dog breed, and we are proud to say that clients travel from all around our area and further afield to use our service. Our vet Steve Tasker has developed this local and regional reputation since the late 1990’s, and now we have a team of vets all extremely ‘Shar Pei friendly’! We regularly see and treat Shar Pei for a variety of medical and surgical conditions:

• Eyelid entropion surgery
• Eyelid puppy ‘tacking’ procedures
• Reconstructive ear surgery for longstanding ear problems
• Shar Pei fever syndrome
• Skin and coat conditions
• Orthopaedic conditions

Those of you who know the breed will realise they have their own ‘unique requirements’ and will benefit from the experience we have gained over 25 years dealing with these special, and increasingly popular dogs.

The death of a pet is an event that all pet owners fear. Most of us have also lost much-loved pets and know from first-hand experience how hard it is to deal with the huge gap that bereavement leaves. Our team are trained to assist you with assessing your pet’s quality of life. We can also discuss the plans and options available for end-of-life care and offer helpful advice when dealing with this sad time.

We can carry out the procedure either at your home or at any of our surgeries. We treat all pets (and wildlife) with respect so there are also various options regarding what happens to your pet after euthanasia. Please do not hesitate to contact us and we will sensitively ensure that you have all of the information to make an informed decision.

We are open 7 days a week with late night opening Mondays to Thursdays at the Portishead practice.

However, if you need us in an emergency outside of our opening hours, please phone our normal number:

Nailsea          01275 858 628
Portishead   01275 397 449
Yatton            01934 833 685

You will hear a recorded message and will then duty vet. The duty vet will be one of our vets, who has access to your pet’s history and you will be seen at one of our practices – usually Portishead as this is where we hospitalise our more serious cases. We can see your pet at home out of hours but we want to be able to offer the best appropriate care and the practice is very much the best place – please discuss your preference with the emergency team when calling.

We do not outsource emergencies. Remember: ‘Our vets, Our nurses, Our premises, all of the time.’

Out of hours telephone advice is free.

There is a supplement for calling the vet out to see a pet at a time when we are normally closed. This is currently £160.00 (8-11pm or 6-8:30am) or £225.00 (11pm-6am) in addition to our normal daytime costs e.g. £68.00 for a dog/cat consultation.

If your pet needs to stay with us overnight and as each case is different, the level of care is planned on a case-by-case basis following consultation with the vet and you as the owners.

We have the facility for a nurse to stay at the practice overnight, where this is appropriate, for example for high maintenance or severely ill pets. Nurses work daytimes as well as being on night call.