As most of you now know Springwell Vets will be moving this year to it's new premises “Dunsley Orchard” which is situated on the other side of Tring next to the cricket club.

Thanks to the fantastic team doing the redevelopment of the building we hope to be moving there around August time. We will keep all our clients updated when we have a more specific time frame.

For those of you that might have missed it, here is the article that Patrick wrote about the move for our Spring Newsletter:

“A lot has changed since we moved into our current location in 1995.
Number 98 was a lovely blend of traditional Georgian town house with space, facilities to match the needs of our patients and adequate on street parking. Sadly the parking has become limited and our requirement for space has increased.

Although Springwell remains primarily a first opinion practice, a part of our workload has become second opinion and referrals. This year alone we have received cases from as far as Leicestershire, Kent, Essex, Surrey, Norfolk and Oxfordshire. The services that we are providing have required significant investment in both training and equipment, which demands space. Space is hard to find in Tring.

Now after years of looking, we have identified and purchased Dunsley Orchard to become our new Veterinary Surgery. It broadly increases our working area by 50%, has on-site parking and will allow us to continue to do exactly what we do now. This move will also allow some more innovation with our veterinary work and reduce our environmental impact. We are hoping to install two charging points for electric vehicles, a biomass heating system and a bank of solar panels, whilst still making the place feel like home. For clients waiting for their pets there is a Café next door at Dunsley Farm and for the men, Tring Brewery (“you couldn’t make it up!”).

The development is being entirely funded by Springwell from saved money and really says a super big “thank you” to all of our clients, so no price rises anticipated. Springwell Veterinary Surgery remains privately owned. It is my intention that it will continue to do so, and in this guise will be able to continue to provide care to all of the small animals of Tring, district, and beyond, without compromise.”

Stanley is a 4 year old Bassett Hound who was brought to the surgery for his routine vaccinations. He was bright and well and his owners had no concerns about him. A full clinical examination is an essential part of the yearly vaccination appointment as it can detect disease that may not otherwise be apparent. The physical examination includes abdominal palpation and during Stanley's check over an abdominal mass was discovered.

An ultrasound scan was performed the same day, which confirmed that he had an enlarged irregularly shaped left kidney with distortion of the normal kidney tissue. Blood tests that were run in our in-house laboratory checked his haematology (red and white blood cells) and biochemistry (checking kidney function, liver enzymes, electyoytes etc.) and were all normal.

Stanley was booked in the next day to biopsy the kidney so a treatment plan could be formed. Under general anaesthetic two small incisions (1 cm and 0.5 cm) were made to introduce ports to allow the kidney biopsy to be performed laprascopically. This meant we were able to inspect the entire abdomen and all the organs, and take a sample of tissue from the abnormal portion of the kidney, in a minimally invasive way. Stanley woke up with no pain associated with open surgery and did not know a procedure had taken place!

The kidney biopsy diagnosed an extremely rare type of cancer- nephroblastoma. This has only ever been diagnosed as a primary tumour in the kidney in 12 dogs. Nephroblastomas are congenital tumours which mean they form when the dog is developing in the uterus and can grow slowly over time. Over half of these tumours will spread elsewhere in the body and they need to be surgically removed to try to prevent that spread.

Stanley underwent a nephrectomy (removal of the kidney) one week after the mass was discovered. We had the benefit of knowing that there was no evidence of tumour spread because of the thorough inspection that was carried out laprasopically. Stanley recovered from surgery very well and was able to go home that evening. The whole kidney has been sent for analysis and the tumour was well defined from the normal kidney tissue and had a capsule around it. The hope is that this cancer was caught early enough, and there is a good chance that the removal of the kidney will have cured Stanley.