Next Steps in Abdominal Ultrasound

We have striven to make it as attractive as possible for people to bring dogs for scanning by offering a very generous £100 per dog ‘cashback’. This money is given as a bank transfer not as a discount to your practice off the course, or in vouchers (unless requested).

We have approached practices local to our venues and have mail dropped local residential areas seeking pets belonging to the general public and many of our staff allow their dogs to be scanned multiple times a week and month.

Ideally, we would like delegates to bring dogs with them – you are welcome to bring a friend or colleague’s dog so not owning one does not preclude earning the £100. We are happy to look after these dogs for you during the lectured component of the course and all of our venues are dog-friendly when overnight accommodation is required.

Some of the dogs (including our own staff dogs) are used very frequently due to our issues with supply. Some dogs just have an off day for no obvious reason. It benefits us hugely if these dogs have a positive experience during these courses so would politely remind all delegates that they deserve kind and patient handling at all times.

These dogs are not being scanned for any diagnostic purpose and consequently, it would be unethical to sedate them.

We are only able to provide dogs that are ‘normal’ for scanning courses since the scanning does not take place in a veterinary clinic with appropriate facilities. We believe that being able to accurately identify normal ultrasonographic appearance is the most important part of learning how to scan dogs with abnormalities.

We are very grateful to the owners of dogs who allow their dogs to be used. They are made aware of the benefit of clipping these dogs for scanning, but we cannot clip them without permission and sometimes have to choose between not accepting a dog for scanning where permission to clip has been denied and not having enough dogs for the scanning session. Many of the dogs who are return visitors have clipping declined on subsequent visits due to clipper rash after a previous visit. We find using plentiful amounts of water enabling the ultrasound gel to soak in by applying in advance allows non-clipped dogs to be used.

We consider it inappropriate to provide cats for ultrasound scanning due to the stress of transportation and restraint without sedation. We will not be providing live cats for any of our scanning courses/modules.