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Vet Matters – April issue

 

Congress time is almost upon us and we’re looking forward to meeting many of you in Birmingham. We invite you to our Hill’s Together Zone at BSAVA, share our new social media pages for vet professionals and more. Read Vet Matters April issue

 

Let’s get together at BSAVA

 

 

Stimulation for the grey matter, the chance to catch up with old friends and feeling part of the veterinary community: if you are new to the profession there’s nothing like BSAVA congress to make you feel that you have arrived. And if you are an old hand, it’s comforting to know there’s sure to be a few gems in every lecture that you can take home to help you sparkle in the consulting room. 

 

Congress is a bit of a bus man’s holiday that leaves you refreshed and exhausted in equal measure. This year we’ve extended our usual Hill’s presence out beyond the commercial exhibition and onto the concourse, with a laid back coffee lounge called the Hill’s “Together Zone”. If you are not sure where the entrance to the concourse is check out the floor map. Whether you need to pull yourself together, or get together with peers, the Hill’s Together Zone is the place to go. And just to inject a bit of fun into the proceedings, our selfie booth gives you the chance to make your mark. We will do the hard work and ensure your pic is tweeted round the veterinary world and appears on a big screen with loads of your peers. If you want to be cool in 2015, being good at video games, knowing your eighties music (everything comes round again; spinning round, round like a record) and taking a selfie, are right up there on the to-do list. 

 

If that’s not your (congress) bag, the Hill’s Together Zone will still let you enjoy an expertly prepared skinny latte with an extra shot (or something very similar), re-charge your mobile phone and rest your weary feet. You can even get on line to check your emails using our free Wi-Fi. There will be lots of serious discussions taking place on stand 215 and technical experts available to answer all your nutritional niggles, not to mention our prize draw to win one of two Red Letter Day Experiences worth £300 each: fancy a Champagne hot air balloon ride? Track day experience? Chill out with a spa pamper day? You choose. So something for everybody, we can’t wait!

 

NEW! Professional social media platforms

 

 

Sometimes it’s good to have conversations with people in your community. That’s why Hill’s has set up a Facebook page and Twitter account especially for people who work in practice. Come along and join in!

A recent white paper about how veterinary businesses use the Internet has highlighted that 87 % feel that the Internet has positively affected their relationships with their clients; 88 % are using Facebook and 65 % Twitter. Only 2 % of respondents don’t use social media at all. 

But as well as being useful in building relationships with clients, social media offers great opportunities to keep up to date with what’s happening in the veterinary world and to share the experiences of peers and colleagues. There’s no need to ever feel alone when thousands of vets, nurses and vet students are just a click away – and ready, willing and able to provide support whenever you need it.

So, while we will be posting veterinary stories and updates from Hill’s and the wider veterinary community, we are also asking you to get involved. Share, contribute, follow, like and retweet and we will do the same. You might want to link to us as a practice or as an individual, or as both! Many vets and nurses find Twitter especially useful for professional interactions.

You can follow us on Twitter Hill’s Vet UK & IE @hillsukdn and on Facebook. We will also be keeping you up to date with Hill’s content and resources that you can use on your practice websites – starting with some great multimedia content which the white paper confirms is used by an impressive 87 % of veterinary businesses. 

 

Pets on film for Hill’s

 

 

 

Body condition scoring is a simple technique that any pet owner could use to assess if their pet is overweight. If only more people knew how to do it. Now Hill’s Vet Su O’Neill has joined forces with two furry friends – a white cat called Dotty and a chocolate Labrador called Ruby – to get the message across in a new video. 

You can share the video with your clients on social media direct from You Tube – here is the dog version and here is the cat version

We caught up with the new video stars to find out how the shoot went on the day.

Were you especially aware of the pressures to appear at ‘ideal body weight’ on the day of filming?

Su: Yes! No burgers for me the night before. 

Dotty: I’m pretty fussy anyway. The vet said recently I was perfect, so I felt confident. 

Ruby: I cannot tell a lie. I ate half a blueberry cheesecake that fell on the floor the previous week. Got away with it though. 

Is filming really as tiring as film stars make out? 

Su: Repeating the same lines over and over gets a little wearing. And the perfect line is never delivered at the same time as the perfect pose. Challenging! 

Dotty: I didn’t like that camera thingy and scarpered whenever it got too near. Most of the time I settled for annoyed tail swishing to get my point across. That wasn’t too taxing as it comes fairly naturally. 

Ruby: Stand up, sit down, hold that pose… They tried to bribe me with treats. It worked. 

So sounds as if it all went well on the day. No tricky moments? 

Su: Despite the distractions of the lights, cameras and lots of people, both co-stars behaved beautifully. 

Dotty: Worse moment was my ‘friend’ Florence attempting to grab the limelight – and the patio door handle. 

Ruby: Same here, the pug puppy did a twirl to camera. How’s a dog of my more mature years supposed to compete? 

See the puggy evidence here . 

And see Flo caught in the act here.

It’s easy to embed You Tube videos in your website. Just click on the share button. This opens a box that gives you a code to share the video but the box also contains a tab called Embed. Click on the embed tab to produce a code that can be inserted in your website. To share to social media just click on the share button then on the icon for the social media channel you want to share to – adding your own comments. 

Happy watching!

 

Learn the EPET way

 

One month of free call coaching, a practice training kit and the sparking of a zillion ideas to get new clients through the door and improve their practice experience. Those are just some of the benefits of attending an Every Pet Every Time workshop. Set up to show just how to deliver world class care and implement nutritional evaluation within practices, the EPET workshops have been running round the country since 2013. 

Regularly selling out at all scheduled venues, EPET aims to make your customer experience better and is based on the insight that of 1600 calls to practices asking about helping pets lose weight, 75% did not receive an appointment. 

Introducing a weigh, score, recommend protocol that becomes ingrained within regular routines, the EPET method is easy to follow and learning about it is fun. 

‘I didn’t know CPD could be as much fun as this…’ 

‘Very interactive and good fun..’ 

‘Talking about weight issues can sometimes be tricky. Not anymore!’ 

To register, call your Veterinary Territory Manager to access £750 worth of training per delegate, completely free of charge, with the bonus of a lovely lunch.