We don't take anesthesia risk lightly, so we would only recommend that if necessary, and that might be in the procedures that we talked about, whether it was surgery, certain types of radiographs where we might need them sedated stitches, or sutures.

Yes, and we have a way to assess that and a grading system that grades the risk of anesthesia of each pet, whether there is little to no risk or high risk. If they have any underlying conditions or diseases ahead of time, whether that's maybe a heart murmur or heart disease or if they are overweight—those are risk factors. Then other things might be if they have any breathing difficulty or kidney problems. All of those things are increasing their risk for anesthesia.

We want to make sure that those diseases are controlled. Many times these diseases that I just mentioned aren't curable, but they're managed. We want to make sure that they're under control before we anesthetize the pet. The other thing that we haven't mentioned yet is the type of anesthesia that we choose would vary depending on the pet's risk. We might choose quicker-acting anesthesia that they go under quickly and then recover quickly.

Sedation and drowsiness are the big ones. Of course, we expect that but that sometimes can linger longer than we like. Another side effect can be that they're not only just sedated, but they're a little drunk or dysphoric, so they don't know what's going on, and they might act a little different than your normal pet would act. That’s why we take care to monitor them before, during, and after the procedure.

What we call our pre-medication has pain management in it. By doing that ahead of time, you are already calming your pet and giving that pain medicine before the pain stimulus happens. If you've ever heard of windup pain, if you don't control the pain before it happens, then it takes a lot more pain medication to help them after it happens. Then during the procedure, they would have either injectable or inhalant anesthesia that would help control pain. Then afterward, they go home on pain medication as well.

Yes, that depends on the type of procedure we're doing. There might be some rapid anesthesia, it might be minutes, and then there's some that might be hours.