Home visits

This coastline is strung along one road with a ferry in the middle of it, so travel time is the dominant practical fact of veterinary care here. Coming to you is frequently faster than you getting to us, particularly from Likoni or Mtwapa.

It is also often better medicine. Heat is the reason. A car on this coast heats fast, a parked one becomes lethal within minutes, and a flat-faced or thick-coated dog can arrive at a clinic in worse shape than it left home. For those animals, removing the journey removes the risk.

Cats benefit for a different reason: most of what makes a cat difficult at a vet is the carrier and the car, not the examination. Seeing a cat at home gives a truer picture and a calmer patient.

For vaccination visits we carry vaccine in a cool box with packs. On this coast that is the difference between a vaccination and an injection, and it is worth asking any vet who comes to your gate.

What cannot be done at home is anything needing general anaesthetic, sterile surgical conditions, imaging or in-house laboratory work. We will tell you that when you book rather than after arriving.

What to have ready before we arrive

A home visit works better with ten minutes of preparation, and on this coast that is mostly about heat and containment.

Somewhere cool and shaded to work. A veranda, a garage with the door up, any room with a fan. Examining an animal in full sun at midday is bad for the animal and bad for the examination.

The animal already contained. A cat that sees a stranger arrive will be under the bed or on a wall before we are through the gate, and coastal compounds have a great many walls. Shut cats in one room, with the litter tray, half an hour beforehand.

Dogs on a lead, even friendly ones, and particularly if there is more than one. A dog that is perfectly sociable normally can be different when a stranger handles a housemate.

Vaccination cards and any medication, including anything bought over the counter.

Gate and access details when you book. Many compounds here need a guard notified in advance, and Mtwapa and Likoni in particular can involve a genuinely long approach.

Where a home visit is the wrong choice

We would rather say this in advance than arrive and send you to the clinic anyway.

Anything needing general anaesthetic, sterile surgical conditions, imaging or in-house laboratory work has to happen at the clinic. So does any animal that is genuinely unstable: collapsed, in respiratory distress, bleeding badly, or fitting. Those need equipment and staff we cannot carry, and the right move is to get to us while we prepare.

For a heatstroke case specifically, start cooling at home and come. Waiting for a vet to travel to you is time the animal does not have.