Tackling Small Animal Cardiology Cases

March 13, 2026

It is estimated that approximately 10% of dogs and 15% of cats presenting to first opinion practice will have cardiac disease of some form. You therefore have a great opportunity to have a positive clinical impact on many of your patients by picking up on these potential cardiology cases and taking some initial steps toward diagnosis and treatment with the aim of improving their long term survival and quality of life.

Bluetongue in the UK: what Ireland needs to know before the virus takes hold

August 10, 2026

A UK farm vet’s frontline account of a bluetongue season gone from mild to devastating – and what it means for vaccination strategy in Ireland this autumn.

From the Vet Space Ireland podcast with Michelle Maguire and Richard Ryan (ArchersField Vets, Kilkenny), in conversation with Jonathan Hobbs, farm vet partner at North Park Veterinary Group, Devon, and Junior Vice President of the Sheep Veterinary Society.

A season that changed everything

When bluetongue virus (BTV) first reached the southeast of England in the autumn of 2023, it looked like a containable, one-off incursion. Midge plumes had blown the virus across the Channel from the Netherlands into Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent, and government surveillance picked up a handful of positive animals. Affected herds were culled, exclusion zones were set up, and the virus did not survive the winter. It seemed, for a moment, like a lucky escape.

It was not. Speaking on the Vet Space Ireland podcast, Jonathan Hobbs, a farm vet partner at North Park Veterinary Group in Devon and Junior Vice President of the Sheep Veterinary Society, walked through how that single incursion has grown into what he now describes as the UK farming equivalent of foot and mouth disease for his generation of vets.

In 2024 the virus arrived earlier in the season, giving it enough time to establish in the native midge population before winter. It spread from the southeast towards the Midlands and along the south coast, and crucially, it overwintered. By 2025, helped by a prolonged heatwave and drought that accelerated both midge activity and viral replication in the insects, bluetongue exploded across sheep and cattle farms in the southwest of England.

“Last year was our warning shot. This year is the Dutch experience we were scared of two years ago, where twenty per cent of the national flock was killed.”
– Jonathan Hobbs

What it looks like on farm

The species picture is stark. Sheep are by far the worst affected, followed by cattle, while goats are almost always asymptomatic and camelids remain at some risk. On the practice’s worst-hit farms this season, up to seventy-five per cent of clinically affected sheep have died, which works out at roughly twenty per cent total flock mortality once morbidity and mortality are combined.

Clinical signs in sheep include painful erosions on the dental pad, cuts and crusting around the mouth and nose, swollen heads, and lameness from coronary band involvement, signs that in previous years might have been mistaken for insect stings or adder bites. Cattle tend to show milder signs, including a reddened or crusty nose, swollen teats, reduced milk yield, and some lameness. Hobbs noted that cattle cases are often overshadowed by the sheer volume of sheep cases coming through the door, even though they are almost certainly under reported.

Sheep: dental pad erosions, mouth ulceration, crusty or swollen nose, swollen heads, coronary band lameness
Cattle: nose reddening or crusting, swollen teats, milk drop, lameness, generally milder disease
Goats: almost always asymptomatic
Camelids: at risk of clinical disease

There is no animal to animal spread. Bluetongue moves exclusively via infected midges, which is a key point of reassurance when ruling out other notifiable diseases, though Hobbs stressed that every suspect case still needs to be tested, both to confirm the strain and to rule out foot and mouth disease on farms where clinical signs could overlap.

Vaccination works, and the economics are stark

Hobbs was unambiguous: the vaccine is highly effective, and the practice’s own numbers back it up. North Park achieved roughly fifteen per cent vaccine uptake among eligible stock last year, against a national average of just five per cent, and farms that vaccinated ahead of last spring avoided the barren rates and dummy calf presentations that hit unvaccinated herds hard at scanning and calving.

Out of around sixty confirmed cases at the practice this season, only one has occurred in a previously vaccinated animal, a dairy cow with a complicating BVD persistently infected animal issue on farm that likely affected her vaccine response. Hobbs was also clear that farmers should not hold back on vaccinating bulls and rams despite cautious vaccine data sheet wording. The testes are an immune privileged site, meaning bluetongue virus can persist and shed in semen for months even after an animal has cleared the virus from its bloodstream, with normal semen morphology and motility masking underlying fertility damage. A short, mild vaccine reaction is a far smaller risk than a week or more of fever and illness, or worse, from natural infection.

“A dead bull is going to give you exactly zero calves. A vaccinated bull who might be off for a day is still going to give you plenty.”
– Jonathan Hobbs

The financial case is equally direct. Using an average lamb value of around one hundred and forty pounds a head, a thousand head flock facing twenty per cent mortality could lose in the region of twenty eight thousand pounds. Vaccinating that same flock costs roughly two and a half thousand pounds. As Hobbs put it, that is cheap insurance against a loss that is now playing out on farms across the south west.

Vaccine supply has struggled to keep pace with the sudden surge in demand this season, with wholesalers issuing stock in unpredictable drops rather than the reliable next day delivery practices are used to. Hobbs’s advice to farmers who have not yet vaccinated is to order early rather than wait, given that the peak bluetongue season typically runs from September through November as viral load builds through the autumn.

Reading the case numbers with caution

One of the most important points Hobbs raised concerns how bluetongue statistics are reported in the UK. Government figures record a “case” as an affected holding, not an affected animal, and testing authorities sample only three animals per holding. A single reported case can therefore represent dozens of dead or affected animals on one farm, while a headline figure of a few hundred cases nationally can understate the true scale of an outbreak considerably.

This matters for how the disease is perceived from a distance. Vets and farmers in areas not yet affected, or in countries like Ireland looking at the UK situation from across the Irish Sea, can easily read modest national case counts and conclude the risk is overstated. Hobbs’s message was the opposite: by the time the numbers look alarming, the disease is already established and difficult to control.

What this means for Ireland

Ireland recorded a small number of bluetongue cases in the latter part of last year, and Hobbs believes that was likely sufficient for the virus to have overwintered here. His reading of the UK’s own trajectory, a quiet first year followed by a far more severe second season once the virus reaches a critical mass in the local midge population, is a direct warning for Irish practices and farmers this autumn and into next spring.

Bluetongue was also compared during the conversation to Schmallenberg virus, which is carried by the same Culicoides midge and is already well established in parts of the southeast of Ireland. Hobbs described bluetongue as essentially “Schmallenberg on steroids”, a useful shorthand for vets explaining the risk to clients who may already be familiar with Schmallenberg’s fertility impacts but have not yet seen a bluetongue case.

His central message for Irish vets and farmers is not to be lulled by a mild season. A low case count this year does not mean the risk has passed, it may simply mean the outbreak has not yet reached the threshold it needs to explode the following spring. Supporting general herd and flock health, including worm control, mineral status and nutrition, also appeared to reduce case severity and improve response to treatment on affected UK farms, alongside vaccination as the primary defence.

Sheep Veterinary Society conference, Kilkenny

Hobbs also used the conversation to flag the Sheep Veterinary Society’s autumn conference, taking place in Kilkenny from Monday the 28th to Wednesday the 30th of September. The Society is a specialist division of the British Veterinary Association, open to international members including vets in Ireland, with annual membership priced at around seventy pounds.

The three-day conference costs under five hundred pounds and includes international speakers on bluetongue alongside Irish parasite specialists, with at least half a day dedicated to vets presenting clinical cases from their own practices. Hobbs, who takes over as Society president at the event, described it as a genuinely clinically focused meeting, with much of the value coming from informal conversation between sessions. For more information go to – sheepvetsoc.org.uk

This article is based on a conversation recorded for the Vet Space Ireland podcast. Listen to the full episode at vetspaceireland.ie.

Article written by Vet Space Ireland

To contribute to the Vet Space Journal, appear on the podcast, or get involved with VSI, contact us at inspire@vetspaceireland.ie or visit vetspaceireland.ie

Vet Space Ireland is a non-profit, volunteer-powered veterinary community platform. Founded 2019.

The deal you’ll only ever do once: selling your veterinary practice

August 4, 2026

A Roberts Advisory series for veterinary practice owners

By Roberts Advisory | 4th August 2026

If you own a veterinary practice, you have spent years, or possibly decades, building something with your name on it. You have carried the late calls, the staffing headaches, the quiet worry about cash flow in a slow month, and the pride of a waiting room full of clients who trust you. And then one day, whether by plan or by a phone call you did not expect, the question arrives: would you ever think about selling?

For almost every owner, selling the practice is a thing they will do exactly once. That single fact sits at the heart of everything we want to share in this series, because it changes the odds in a way most owners only realise afterwards.

A game you’re playing for the first time

Think about what happens when an approach comes in. On one side of the table is you: an excellent clinician and a capable business owner, but someone selling a practice for the first and only time in your life. On the other side is a buyer who may complete a deal like yours every few weeks. They have a team of finance and legal people. They have seen every kind of practice, every set of accounts, every negotiating position. They do this for a living.

It is a little like sitting down to a game of chess having played a few friendly matches, opposite someone who plays at a professional level. You might be sharp, and you might do well. But the person across from you knows the openings, the middle game and the endgame in a way you simply cannot after one sitting. That is not a criticism of you. It is just the reality of experience against inexperience, and it is the single biggest imbalance in any business sale.

Your accountant and solicitor are excellent – and this is a different job

When we make this point, owners often say, reasonably, that they already have a trusted accountant and a good solicitor. So they do, and those relationships matter enormously.

But it is worth being clear about what those advisers do brilliantly, and what sits outside their day-to-day. Your accountant prepares your accounts and manages your tax. Your solicitor handles your conveyancing and your legal affairs. They are very good at those things. Negotiating and controlling the sale of a business against a professional buyer, though, is a different discipline again, and for most general practices it is not something their working week is built around. A sale is a specialist, one-off event, and it rewards those people who do it repeatedly.

There is also a quieter point about objectivity. An adviser who has known you for twenty years, who is a friend as much as a professional, can find it genuinely hard to deliver an uncomfortable message at a tense moment. Sometimes the most valuable thing in a deal is someone whose only job is to look after your side of the table, and who has no hesitation about telling you the hard thing when it needs to be said.

What it means to have someone in your corner

So what does a dedicated adviser actually change? Three things stand out, and none of them is about magic.

The first is simple experience. Someone who has been through many of these processes knows what tends to happen next, where the pressure points are, and what “normal” looks like, so that you are not reading every move as a crisis or a windfall.

The second is that a sale is a project, and it lands on top of a working life you still have to lead. While you are negotiating, you are also running a clinic, seeing patients and managing a team. Requests for information and documents can arrive from every direction and at every hour. Having one person hold all of that, and act as the single point of contact, keeps the process calm and keeps you doing the job you actually trained for.

The third is pace. Time is the quiet enemy of any deal. When a process drifts, energy fades, confidence erodes and good deals can fall apart for no reason other than fatigue. Someone whose job is to keep things moving, steadily and to a plan, protects the outcome as much as any clever negotiating point.

You don’t have to be selling to start thinking

Here is the part we most want owners to hear. None of this is a reason to rush towards the door. Most of the owners we talk to are not selling this year, and many are not selling for several years yet. But the owners who do best are almost always the ones who started thinking early, calmly and on their own terms, rather than the ones who were caught on the back foot by an unexpected approach.

Over the coming articles in this series, we will walk through what that looks like in practice: how to think about timing, how to get your numbers in order, how to make the business less dependent on you, and what a genuinely good outcome involves beyond the headline figure. All of it high level, none of it a hard sell.

Because the goal is not to talk you into anything. It is to make sure that if the day ever comes, you sit down to that one game of your life with someone in your corner who has played it many times before.

Roberts Advisory is Vet Space Ireland’s Horizons Partner and works with veterinary practice owners across Ireland on exit planning, business readiness and the sale of their clinic. We are always happy to talk to owners at any stage, whether a sale is years away or already on the table. Reach out to us at hello@robertsadvisory.ie.

Article written by Roberts Advisory for Vet Space Ireland

To contribute to the Vet Space Journal, appear on the podcast, or get involved with VSI, contact us at inspire@vetspaceireland.ie or visit vetspaceireland.ie

Vet Space Ireland is a non-profit, volunteer-powered veterinary community platform. Founded 2019.

VCI approves new accreditation standards as nurse retention crisis continues

July 30, 2026

New accreditation standards for veterinary education take effect in Ireland this week, against a backdrop of continued Oireachtas scrutiny of veterinary nurse recruitment and retention. Across the Irish Sea, a sharp rise in bluetongue cases is a reminder for vets here to keep pushing vaccination advice, while a fresh BVA intervention on RCVS governance reform echoes debates the VCI itself has faced over its own council structure.

By Vet Space Ireland | 30th July 2026

VCI’s new accreditation standards come into force

The Veterinary Council of Ireland’s newly approved accreditation standards for veterinary medicine and veterinary nursing programmes come into operation on 31 July, applying to all existing and future programmes seeking VCI accreditation. Made under the Council’s statutory remit set out in the Veterinary Practice Act 2005, the standards set contemporary benchmarks across curriculum design, clinical training, facilities, staffing and governance, underpinned by defined “Day One Competencies” for graduates.

VCI president Joe Walsh said the standards reflect both the evolving nature of veterinary practice and the Council’s commitment to ensuring graduates meet the highest standards of animal welfare and public protection. The framework was developed following consultation with higher education institutions and stakeholders across the profession, and is aligned with European and international accreditation frameworks to support the continued recognition and mobility of Irish veterinary graduates.

Oireachtas committee continues to probe veterinary nurse retention

The Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food has continued its engagement on veterinary nurse recruitment and retention, hearing evidence that nearly three-quarters of registered veterinary nurses are considering leaving the profession, unsure about remaining, or planning to leave altogether. The Irish Veterinary Nurses Association has pointed to low pay, burnout and limited career progression as the main drivers, noting an average salary of roughly €36,800 and citing unpaid placement hours as a particular concern.

The VCI has since appeared before the committee, telling members that regulation alone cannot resolve every workforce challenge, while Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon has said pay and conditions in privately operated practices are a matter for employers and employees rather than government. The exchanges suggest the issue is likely to remain live well into the autumn.

Bluetongue cases climb sharply in England

Defra figures show 54 confirmed bluetongue (BTV-3) cases in England and Wales since the start of the current season on 1 July, with the National Sheep Association reporting 29 positive cases in the last fortnight alone, 15 of them in sheep. The South West, particularly the Exmoor area, has emerged as a hotspot, with officials linking the rise to lower uptake of vaccination this season. Five further cases, in sheep in Devon, were confirmed as recently as 28 July.

Bluetongue is not a UK-only concern. BTV-3 was first confirmed in Ireland in a Co. Wexford suckler herd in January 2026, and DAFM surveillance has since identified cases in at least eight counties, including Wicklow, Laois, Louth, Monaghan, Kildare, Cork and Tipperary. The department has described bluetongue as a disease Ireland will have to learn to live with, following an EU recategorisation that treats it as endemic and under surveillance rather than something to be eradicated. Against that backdrop, the scale of the current English outbreak is a further reminder of the value of continued vigilance and vaccination advice for farmer clients here.

BVA sets out its stall on RCVS governance reform

The British Veterinary Association has published its response to the RCVS’s consultation on governance reform, which closed on 23 July. BVA is calling for reform to be delivered as a single, holistic package rather than piecemeal changes, and wants RCVS Council members, both veterinary and lay, to be appointed through an open, competitive process rather than elected, mirroring governance models used across human healthcare regulation.

The intervention keeps up pressure on a reform process that has been building since Defra’s white paper on replacing the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966, published earlier this month. For Irish readers, the debate over how a regulator balances elected representation, lay input and independent oversight has clear echoes for the VCI’s own governance, even though its statutory footing and functions differ from those of the RCVS.

References

Veterinary Council of Ireland (30 March 2026), ‘Veterinary Council of Ireland Approves New Accreditation Standards for Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Nursing Education’: https://cms.vci.ie/veterinary-council-of-ireland-approves-new-accreditation-standards-for-veterinary-medicine-and-veterinary-nursing-education/

Agriland (18 June 2026), ‘Veterinary nurses: “We are facing a retention crisis” : https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/veterinary-nurses-we-are-facing-a-retention-crisis/

Agriland, ‘Regulation alone cannot resolve every workforce challenge’ – VCI: https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/regulation-alone-cannot-resolve-every-workforce-challenge-vci/

Houses of the Oireachtas, Committee on Agriculture and Food video archive (15 July 2026 session): https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/oireachtas-tv/video-archive/committees/11989/

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, ‘Bluetongue Virus’ (case history for Ireland, first confirmed 24 January 2026, Co. Wexford) https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-agriculture-food-and-the-marine/publications/bluetongue-virus/

Agriland, ‘Bluetongue “a disease we’re going to have to learn to live with” – DAFM’: https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/bluetongue-a-disease-were-going-to-have-to-learn-to-live-with-dafm/

GOV.UK, ‘Bluetongue: latest situation’ (Defra/APHA case figures for England and Wales): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/bluetongue

National Sheep Association, ‘2026 bluetongue updates’ (24 July 2026 entry https://nationalsheep.org.uk/2026-bluetongue-updates/

British Veterinary Association, ‘BVA calls for holistic approach to RCVS governance reform in its response to the College’s consultation’: https://www.bva.co.uk/news-and-blog/news-article/bva-calls-for-holistic-approach-to-rcvs-governance-reform-in-its-response-to-the-college-s-consultation/

Article written by Vet Space Ireland

To contribute to the Vet Space Journal, appear on the podcast, or get involved with VSI, contact us at inspire@vetspaceireland.ie or visit vetspaceireland.ie

Vet Space Ireland is a non-profit, volunteer-powered veterinary community platform. Founded 2019.

My favourite thing about the heart is that it is very logical and it generally reads the rule book. If you approach heart cases with an air of calm and give yourself time to think about what you find, it won’t be long before you’re pointing in the right direction.

Tip #1 Spend time taking a thorough history

With these cases, a thorough history from the owner is vital. It’s the small things that give the big clues – for example: does the dog walk really calmly next to the owner now whereas he used to tear off all over the shop? Exercise intolerance is rarely a dog grinding to a halt on a walk, its usually far more subtle.

Key areas to cover in taking a cardiac history include:

Signalment – breed predilections can be a helpful clue
Onset of signs – chronic versus acute deterioration
Dyspnoea or tachypnoea
Presence and character of a cough
General demeanour at home – lethargy, appetite etc.
Presence of exercise intolerance
Detailed description of any weakness or collapse episodes (watch any videos if the owner has them)

Try to get a sense at this early stage of whether the owner is willing and able to medicate their pet at home – this will have a massive impact on decision making later. Spending this time building a solid working relationship with your owner now will pay dividends later if your cardiac patient requires treatment.

Tip # 2 Assess the respiratory rate and effort before you touch the patient.

Although in-clinic respiratory rates are never the most accurate (sleeping respiratory rates in the home environment are best), they will be a lot more accurate before you start examining the patient and potentially causing any stress than at the middle or end of your exam. With cats, open the door of the cat box and peek in to take a respiratory rate before you take them out.

Tip #3 Palpate the apex beat prior to auscultation.

Palpate the precordium by placing your hands over the heart on each side of the chest. Use the most distal part of your palm (over your metacarpophalangeal joints) and fingertips as these are generally the most sensitive areas of the hands for this purpose.

Feel for the apex beat:

Is it normal, pronounced or reduced/absent? A reduced or absent apex beat might suggest the presence of a pleural or pericardial effusion, reduced myocardial contractility or be associated with a generous body condition score.
Is there a precordial thrill? If so, expect a loud murmur.

This information gained prior to auscultation can help to put what you hear later into context – essentially it gives you a few clues about what you’re facing before you start to have a listen.

Tip #4 Create a good environment for auscultation

Give yourself a fighting chance of picking up murmurs or arrhythmias and appreciating the subtleties of pulmonary auscultation by optimising your environment. If things are noisy in the consult room, taking a patient out the back to have a listen in a quiet place can help enormously, and has the happy side effect that you have some peace and quiet away from the owner to process what you’ve found and make a plan of action for the patient.

Purring cats usually stop purring if you put a water tap running nearby.

Atrial Fibrilllation is characterised on physical examination by a chaotic rhythm on auscultation with frequent pulse deficits. Characteristic findings on ECG include an absence of p waves and irregular R-R intervals.

Tip #5 Keep it simple when auscultating the heart

If you do not know what all the differentials for a pansystolic or holosystolic or crescendo-decrescendo murmur are, don’t worry. This stuff is not important in my opinion in the early stages of your career. Those nuances can develop later.

Focus on the big questions:

Can I hear the heart?
- Yes – great.
- No or the heartbeat sounds dulled – is there something in the way like a pleural or pericardial effusion, a mass, or the chest wall of an extremely obese patient?
What is the heart rate?
If there is a murmur:
- Is it systolic, diastolic or continuous?
- Is it loudest on the left or the right?
- Is it loudest at the base or the apex?
- Is it soft, moderate or loud? If possible, grade the murmur on the 1-6 scale, but this is not essential.
Are there any diastolic gallop sounds?
Is the heart beat regular, irregular (chaotic beats or tripping in the rhythm), or regularly irregular (i.e. likely respiratory sinus arrhythmia)?
Is there a femoral pulse for every heartbeat?

With a full cardio-respiratory examination including a thorough auscultation, you can go a long way toward narrowing down your differential list and deciding on what diagnostic steps might be required. Try to do a full cardiac exam in every patient if you can – we need to calibrate what ‘normal’ looks, feels and sounds like in our minds. This way, the abnormalities will become more obvious in contrast and you will learn to trust your ears when something does not sound right.

Tip #6 Look for Sinus Arrhythmia in your physical exam

If the dog has a respiratory sinus arrhythmia (i.e. heart rate increases during inspiration and then decreases during expiration in a cyclical fashion), it highly unlikely to have congestive heart failure. A respiratory sinus arrhythmia can be a normal clinical finding in dogs and signifies normal or high vagal tone.

Alterations in both sympathetic and parasympathetic tone associated with advancing cardiac disease lead to loss of a respiratory sinus arrhythmia, hence the predominant underlying rhythm usually observed in patients with congestive heart failure is sinus rhythm (i.e. regular R-R intervals that do not change with respiration), although arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation or ventricular premature complexes may also be noted in these cases depending on the underlying pathology.

In contrast, a sinus arrhythmia is an abnormal finding in a cat in an in-clinic environment.

Tip #7 Cats are not small dogs

Cats are not small dogs when it comes to cardiology – be aware of the various species differences in both the normal findings and disease processes.

Tip #8 Take good quality radiographs, but be realistic about what can be achieved in each case.

Try to get good inspiratory views if xray is indicated – this will make assessment for oedema and cardiomegaly much easier. Obtain right lateral and dorso-ventral views for chests (but remember to take the DV first to avoid atelectasis).
If judged safe and possible in the case, lightly sedate the patient if you can. The resulting images will be of superior diagnostic quality and this is best practice under ALARA principles.
Put a wedge under the sternum and draw the forelimbs well forward. – it can make a big difference to the quality of your lateral view.
If your patient is dyspnoeic and won’t tolerate being in lateral for xrays, then don’t push it – a perfect right lateral xray is not worth causing patient deterioration for. In these cases, consider an alternative diagnostic modality, for example lung ultrasound to assess for the presence of numerous B lines etc.

Do your best to get images of diagnostic quality, but be pragmatic about what is possible in each particular situation. For cats that are too stressed to be handled for xrays, put them in a metal wire cat carrier, with the plate inside the carrier under the cat. Take your xray in this manner with the cat just sitting on the plate, with the lid of the carrier left open. These views will be far from perfect, but are a good initial step for basic assessment of the chest for pulmonary oedema or pleural effusion without causing your patient to get stressed and further decompensate.

Severly compromised dyspnoic patiens need careful handling during diagnostic investigations to avoid further deterioration. In cats, initial radiography may be achieved by allowing the patient to sit on top of the radiographic plate whilst placed inside a wire cage. The exposure is taken in this way with the lid of the cage remaining open, and the patient minimally stressed.

Tip #9 Don’t be afraid to take a hands-off approach with dyspnoeic cardiac emergency cases.

Perform a basic triage examination, give them oxygen, careful sedation, any medication you feel is essential to improve the situation and then give them space to relax. Watch them and then proceed carefully once they have calmed down a little. This is especially important with cats, as they can easily be pushed over the edge in these situations.

For yourself, panic on your part in these cases is also futile – cardiac emergencies can be stressful to begin with, but you still need to be able to think clearly and proceed calmly. Try to take a breath and remain calm, take things slowly with the patient and remember that providing oxygen is never a wrong first step.

Tip #10 Don’t be afraid to ask for help

You don’t need to have all the answers with cardiac cases as a new grad. All you need to recognise is that ‘something is not right with this heart’. Give yourself time to think logically and formulate an initial diagnostic plan based on your physical exam. This may include asking for help or an opinion from a more experienced vet in your practice or advice from your local cardiologist. Referral for additional work-up may be indicated in many cases in order to make a firm diagnosis and to optimise the treatment plan, as many cardiac diseases require additional modalities including echocardiography or ECG/holter monitoring for a firm diagnosis.

Jane graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2014. Following 2 years in general mixed and small animal practice in both Ireland and the UK, Jane undertook a Small Animal Rotating Internship at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital, University of Liverpool. This was followed by a Cardiology Internship in Willows Veterinary Centre and Referral Service, where she developed a particular interest in congenital cardiac disease and interventional cardiology. Jane was awarded the RCVS Certificate in Advance Veterinary Practice in Veterinary Cardiology in Spring 2019 and became an RCVS Advanced Practitioner in Veterinary Cardiology in Spring 2020. Jane is currently undertaking a Masters in Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine at the National University of Ireland, Galway to further develop her interest in cardiac device development for use in dogs. Jane returned home to practice in north Cork and is now a partner in Millstreet Veterinary Group. She offers a cardiology referral service through the recently launched Flow Veterinary Referrals Ireland, an independent referral service based in Millstreet, Co.Cork. Jane is always happy to discuss any cardiology cases should you need informal advice or support. You can contact her via email – flowreferrals@gmail.com.

To keep up to date with the interesting cases at Flow Referrals you can follow them on Instagram here.

Tackling Small Animal Cardiology Cases