Laboratory and diagnostics

A test earns its place when the result changes what we do. That is the entire standard.

On this coast one test does more work than the rest combined: the blood smear. Tick fever is common here, its early presentation is indistinguishable from a dog struggling with the heat, and the smear separates the two. It is quick, it is often same-visit, and it frequently changes treatment that day.

Skin scrapes come second, because mange is widespread in Kenya and looks like several other things. Guessing at a skin condition and treating blind wastes weeks while the animal is uncomfortable, and it is a particularly bad idea here where humidity keeps every skin problem smouldering.

Stool samples matter when worming keeps failing despite correct weight-based dosing. On sandy coastal ground that usually means reinfection rather than treatment failure, and the sample tells us which.

Before any test we will tell you what it costs and what we would do differently depending on the result. If the answer is that we would do the same thing either way, we will say the test is not worth your money.

Bringing a sample in this climate

Half the value of a stool or skin sample is destroyed by how it travels, and coastal heat is unforgiving about it.

Stool samples should be fresh, ideally under two hours old, sealed in a clean container, and kept cool on the way in. A sample that has sat in a hot car for the morning has had its parasite eggs degraded and its bacterial population overtaken by whatever grew fastest. We can still look at it, but the result is less reliable and we will tell you so.

A cool box or even a cold bottle beside the container genuinely improves what we can tell you. This matters more here than anywhere else in Kenya.

Do not freeze samples unless we have asked you to. Freezing ruptures cells and destroys the structures we are looking for.

Why we do not send everything to Nairobi

Some tests have to go to a reference laboratory, and that means a courier, a day or more in transit, and a sample degrading in coastal heat the whole way. Where an in-house test answers the question adequately, we would rather run it here and give you an answer today than send away for a marginally better number you will get on Thursday.

Where a send-away genuinely is necessary, we will tell you what it costs, how long it takes, and what we plan to do in the meantime. Waiting is a decision too, and it should be a deliberate one.

The test we most often decline to run

Owners sometimes ask for a broad screening panel on a healthy animal. For a young, well dog with no symptoms, it usually tells you nothing actionable and occasionally throws up a borderline number that leads to more tests chasing nothing. For an older animal, or before an anaesthetic, it is a different and much better proposition. We will tell you which situation you are in.