Free to attend!

Delve into two common conditions impacting the quality of life in our ageing dogs- canine cognitive dysfunction and degenerative joint disease. Discover how prevalent these conditions are, how to recognise the clinical signs, and some exciting nutritional solutions to help support canine healthy ageing in your patients.

Adolescence is a challenging stage for dogs – and their humans. This session explores the changes happening in the adolescent dog’s brain, how these shifts affect behaviour, and the impact of factors such as the second fear period, desexing, and phantom pregnancies. Practical strategies for client communication, management, and training will also be shared to support better outcomes and stronger pet retention.

Companion parrots, poultry and waterfowl are becoming increasingly common household pets and beloved family members. As more and more people trend towards keeping avian and exotic pets, these species are kept and interacted with similarly to dogs and cats. Luckily for companion birds, gone are the days of keeping a cockatiel in a cage for the entirety of its life. These pets are often given access to the house, trained to follow commands and engage with people, given toys and puzzles for enrichment, harness or free flight trained, and given the same gold standard veterinary care afforded to dogs and cats. And just like with our dogs and cats, accidents can happen at any time. Pet birds have the added risk of being flighted, leaving them prone to experiencing death defying aerial acts that can lead to incidents of trauma unheard of with our ground dwelling species. Due to their delicate bone structure, avian patients frequently present with fractures from trauma – be it a fall from a perch, flying into a window, catching their leg or wing on a toy, or having an altercation with another pet in the household. Add to that their predisposition to stress as a prey species, the risk of an orthopaedic emergency also being a respiratory emergency due to their pneumatic bones, their smaller body size making bandaging, surgical fixation and physiotherapy a more delicate process, and the species specific nutritional requirements essential for bone healing – a successful fracture repair involves patience, teamwork, owner compliance, and a keen understanding of your patient’s needs both in and out of hospital.

This lecture will take you through the process of triage (both over the phone and in person), patient assessment and stabilisation, diagnostic investigation, fracture classification, methods of fracture repair, multimodal analgesia, physiotherapy, owner communications and realistic expectations of the bird’s quality of life post-repair.

Urolithiasis can be a complex and frustrating condition for both pets and their owners. Join us as we empower you to become a key player in your patient’s urinary health, from mastering best practices around urine collection and stone identification to building successful, long-term nutritional management plans. Discover how you can significantly impact urinary health and client compliance.

Veterinary nursing is meaningful work – and it can also be messy, emotional, and fast. This upbeat, non-technical session gives you a practical toolkit to design a career you can love for the long haul. We’ll replace willpower with simple systems: quick resets for energy, warm boundary and civility scripts for tricky client moments, a lightweight planning method to protect brain space, and a 12-week growth sprint that keeps your development visible (and valued). You’ll learn a two-minute end-of-shift debrief, design a 12-Week Growth Sprint and build a personal Recovery Menu that actually gets used on the hard days. Expect demos, micro-practice, and a 7-day implementation challenge – so you leave not just inspired, but set up to act tomorrow.