A visit from the vet

Today we were lucky enough to have some of the wonderful team at Clockhouse veterinary hospital come and visit us, along with two of their dogs. Before the visit, we talked about what we could do to make sure that noone was upset or hurt and how we could keep the dogs calm. The children helped to write a risk assessment and came to the conclusion that there was more learning to be done, than there were risks.

The class were shown a poster (a copy of which has been sent home) that showed different dogs. Some of them were happy and some were not, and might hurt someone. We talked about how when a dog shows its teeth, it is not smiling, but trying to warn us that it is upset or frightened- a dog smile is a wagging tail!

The children were introduced to two dogs and had the chance to take part in a variety of activities. They listened to one of the dogs' heart beat and used a special machine to find his microchip information. They dressed up in surgical hats, gloves and masks, bandaged toy dogs and worked in the 'lab' to test 'dog urine' for infections (transfering water from one cup to another using a syringe!)

As you can imagine, the children's imaginations were fuelled and throughout the remainder of the day, we have had our own vets' surgery, watched dogs perform tricks, written thank you letters and used an app on the ipad to create talking dogs who tell people how to keep safe around dogs!