When is anesthesia not necessary?

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.

This is a good question because so many people, if there's like a little skin tag or something, they might not want to put their pet under anesthesia or if we have like a 16 year old dog with a heart condition, I'm not going to want to put them under anesthesia. But we do have some options. If there are small skin tags that are irritating either to the pet or to the owner, we do have cryotherapy here, which is painless. It is cold, but it involves freezing these growths off. In some cases, we can try to do local anesthesia. Because the lidocaine stings, some pets will not tolerate it and any procedure that's going to be done on the face will require sedation and/or anesthesia. There's just not something we're going to get away from because we only get two eyeballs. But if we have a skin tag on the top of the head that keeps scabbing and is gross, and a little cauliflower-like benign growth, that's something we're going to be able to use the cryotherapy and freeze that off without anesthesia.

Anesthesia would not be necessary if we did not need the dog to become unconscious. We determine this based on what we want to do for the pet and how much pain the procedure will inflict. Sometimes we can get away with just giving an older dog with multiple health issues a sedative and numbing the area up. Other times, like when we're doing dental work, we absolutely require them to go under general anesthesia to protect their airway.

We understand that anesthesia is a big worry for pet parents. At Blue Oasis, we allow you to stay with your pet before, during, and after the procedure. If you have any specific questions regarding your dog and anesthesia, we invite you to schedule an appointment with us.