The answers we give on the phone

The one people underestimate is a male cat straining in the litter tray. A blocked bladder kills in under a day and looks, for the first few hours, like constipation. If a male cat is going in and out of the tray producing nothing, that is tonight, not tomorrow.

The one people overestimate is a single vomit. One vomit in an otherwise bright animal that is still drinking is usually nothing. Two or more, or any blood, or a flat animal, and we want to hear from you.

You can start carrying a puppy out to meet the world before the course is finished, and you should. The window for socialisation closes at about sixteen weeks, well before the vaccinations are done. Carried, on your arm, on a friend’s clean floor: that is all fine and it is worth more than another week indoors.

On neutering, the honest answer is that the right age depends on the breed and on the individual dog, and anyone who gives you one number for every dog is not being careful. Bring it up at the sixteen-week visit and we will tell you what we would do with yours.

Most of the fight happens because the carrier appears from the garage twice a year and smells of the last bad day. A carrier that lives in the living room and gets fed in is a piece of furniture, not a threat.

On the day, a towel over the carrier in the car does more for a cat than anything else. They settle in the dark. So does coming straight in rather than sitting in the waiting room next to a labrador, which is why we ask on the phone whether you would rather wait in the car and be texted.

The annual visit is not really about the injection. It is the only time most healthy animals are examined at all, and it is where we find the heart murmur, the lump, the bad tooth and the three kilos that crept on. The vaccine takes ninety seconds of it.

If you have lost track of when yours was due, bring whatever record you have, including a photograph of a card. We can almost always work it out, and a restarted course is two visits, not a disaster.

Heatstroke does not require a locked car. A pushed walk at four in the afternoon is enough for a bulldog. The signs are heavy noisy panting that does not settle, a bright red tongue, wobbliness, and vomiting.

If you think it is happening: pour or hose cool, not iced, water over the whole dog, get a fan or the car air conditioning on them, and drive here while somebody calls ahead. Cooling on the way matters more than arriving fast.

The tell is not limping, which comes later. It is the dog that stops meeting you at the door, hesitates before jumping into the car, or has started sleeping somewhere warmer. Owners usually report those as personality changes and they are almost always pain.

We would rather see a stiff nine-year-old with nothing wrong than an eleven-year-old who has been quietly uncomfortable for two years. The visit is $65 and it is frequently the best value thing we do.