DogFest is a celebration of the unique bond of unconditional love that we have with our dogs and a fun social family day out. DogFest demonstrates our belief at Fitzpatrick Referrals that the provision of pain-free functional quality of life requires an holistic approach involving world-class medicine and surgery plus retraining and rehabilitation. Our practice tours will give you a close-up and personal inside-view on what we do in the Fitz-Family. As we launch our new Fitzpatrick
Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre, DogFest encapsulates the very essence of our integrated approach to keeping dogs of all ages active, from the older pet dog with arthritis, right through to the working dog and the elite canine athlete. We are hugely excited to show you what’s possible in rehabilitation and retraining and what’s new in nutrition and exercise to keep your dog fit and healthy. Remember, even young dogs get arthritis, and this is a one-stop-shop for everything you ever wanted to know about joints and bones and muscles and spines! An opportunity not to be missed.
We shall celebrate how modern surgical and rehabilitation techniques can not only relieve pain and suffering, but can actually restore full “running in a field” function. Some of the stories of such dogs will warm your heart and give you pause for thought at how far we have come in the last few years, with everything from joint replacements to cartilage transplants to spinal disc replacements to saving legs that have sustained severe trauma or cancer using endo and exo-prosthetics.
On Sunday Chris Evans will be presenting awards for dogs that have had such life-changing surgery, the “Fitz Bionic Heroes Awards”. On Sunday too we will have a huge informal dog show with prizes for all kinds of “special doggie talents”, from the scraggiest hair to the longest ears! Anyone can enter with any dog!
On Saturday, we will have various classes of agility dog competitions, for both the seasoned canine athlete and for anyone with any dog to just “have a go”. Michael Ball will be presenting The Fitzpatrick Agility Awards on the day. Both Chris and Michael love their own dogs and they are totally up for having a fantastic time with us at DogFest.
However, this weekend isn’t only about the advanced surgery or the MRI scans, or the rehabilitation techniques, though that’s part of the platform we shall be exploring in our feature lectures taking place on
Saturday in our comfortable lecture theatre; it’s about rejoicing in our love of all things canine. We shallhave a police dog display by Sussex Police on Saturday that I’m especially excited about.
As a clinician and surgeon I love helping working dogs and restoring their happy function so they can go back todoing what they love to do and in the case of police dogs, serving an invaluable role in society for all of us. On both days I will be presenting a talk in a large marquee on site about the future for bionic surgery in dogs. I think this will be eye-opening and give you a real insight into my personal journey in orthopaedic and neuro-surgery over the past decade, and where I think we’re going in the pursuit of providing pain free function for our canine friends.
DogFest is a day for all dog lovers, vets, nurses, physiotherapists and rehabilitation practitioners, trainers of canine athletes, doggie guardians and people who just love dogs and everything they represent to come together in a field, have a laugh and smile with the dogs. It’s about dogs coming together and meeting each other and having a marvellous time. It’s about all of the unconditional love that dogs bring to our lives. It’s about how dogs make the world a better place and how they bring out the very best in us.
We invite you to share in this love!
On behalf of all of us at Fitzpatrick Referrals, I’m very proud and excited to welcome you to our first DogFest.
Add our DogFest 2013 page on Facebook to keep up to date with the latest developments or follow us on Twitter @DogfestUK .
