Community Animal HospitalsGuided by AAHA standards · St. Petersburg, FL
Community Animal HospitalsGuided by AAHA standards · St. Petersburg, FL
Soft tissue surgery for dogs and cats in our own surgical suite, with anesthesia monitored by our own team. Before any work begins you receive a written, itemized estimate for all proposed diagnostics and treatment — and you can speak with the veterinarian who will operate.
Tell us what’s going on and we’ll get back to you to arrange a time.
The procedures people most often ask us about.
Skin and fatty masses, mammary tumors, growths on the eyelid or the body wall. We recommend sending every removed mass to a pathology lab, so you find out what it was rather than guessing.
Cherry eye repair, and entropion surgery for eyelids that roll inward against the eye.
Cystotomy to remove bladder stones in dogs and cats, and perineal urethrostomy for male cats that block.
The sock, the toy, the corn cob. Stomach and intestinal surgery to remove what your pet swallowed.
Caesarean section for dogs and cats, and spay surgery for pyometra, the infected uterus that cannot wait.
Removal of the gallbladder when it is diseased or obstructed.
Thoracic procedures including pericardectomy, by thoracoscopy or by open surgery depending on what your pet needs.
Perineal hernia repair, with colopexy when it is needed — an intact male is neutered as part of the repair. Surgery for prostatic abscesses.
Cleaned, repaired and closed.
This is only a partial list — we perform most surgical procedures for pets. If your veterinarian has named one that is not here, call and ask.
A real patient treated at one of our hospitals. Identifying details have been removed.
Removed through a single incision in the bladder — a cystotomy. The stone measured about 3.3 cm across.
A real patient treated at one of our hospitals. Identifying details have been removed. The stone has been sent to a laboratory for analysis, and we will add the result here when it comes back.
Before surgery you can speak with the veterinarian doing the procedure — about what they expect to find, what recovery looks like, and anything that worries you. That is routine here, not a special request, and it can be arranged even when surgery is booked for the next day.
The veterinarians across our two hospitals include two former owners of 24-hour primary care and emergency hospitals, and doctors with more than 25 years in practice ownership.
Because the honest answer depends on what we find. Two foreign-body surgeries can be very different operations, and a mass is not fully understood until it is imaged — sometimes not until it is removed.
You receive a written, itemized estimate for all proposed diagnostics and treatment before any work begins. Nothing starts until you have seen it and said yes.
If we find something unexpected during surgery, we call you before doing anything about it — we would rather have an awkward phone call than an awkward invoice.
Many of our clients find that financing part or all of the procedure through Cherry works best for them.
According to Cherry, the application takes under 35 seconds from start to finish, and “Cherry performs a soft credit check which does not affect your credit score.”
Check your options with Cherry
We also accept CareCredit and Scratch Pay.
Almost nobody is frightened of the procedure. They’re frightened of the anesthesia — and that is a fair worry that deserves a straight answer rather than reassurance.
Pre-anesthetic bloodwork tells us how your pet’s liver and kidneys will handle the anesthetic drugs. It is also how we catch the problem that changes the plan — before we start, not during.
The catheter means immediate access to a vein if we need it, rather than looking for one in an emergency. Fluids maintain blood pressure, which is what protects the kidneys under anesthesia.
A trained technician is assigned to your pet’s anesthesia and does nothing else for the duration — heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen, blood pressure, temperature and breathing, continuously, with hands on your pet.
Anesthetised animals lose heat quickly, and a cold patient recovers badly — slower waking, more shivering, more pain. Active warming runs through the procedure and into recovery. It is unglamorous and it matters.
Almost never, and age by itself is not the reason to decline. In the largest study of US primary-care practice — 822 hospitals — the anesthetic death rate was 0.05% in dogs and 0.11% in cats. What moves that number is health status, not age: in sick patients it rises roughly twenty-five fold. Which is why what we do before the procedure matters more than the number on the birthday.
Bloodwork, a physical examination, and a plan built around what we find. If something turns up that changes the risk, we tell you before the day, not after.
AAHA’s 2023 senior care guidelines: “Advanced age alone is not a contraindication to general anesthesia.”
We do not provide overnight care. For most procedures your pet goes home the same day — home is quieter, and you are the person who notices first when something is not right. You will go home with written aftercare instructions and a number to call if anything worries you.
If your pet does need overnight monitoring, we will say so and refer you to a 24-hour facility that can give it. That is a judgment made on the day, about your pet — not a policy.
Rechecks are scheduled with the surgeon who operated whenever your schedule allows. If the day that suits you is one they are not working, we will fit you in with another of our doctors.
Questions after you get home go to us — six days a week, 7:30am–6:30pm.
5895 54th Ave N, St. Petersburg, FL 33709
Clients travel as far as 15–20 miles for surgery with us, from St. Petersburg · Gulfport · Pinellas Park · Seminole · Bardmoor · Tyrone Square · South Pasadena · Kenneth City · Lealman and beyond · Open 7:30am–6:30pm, six days a week
It depends on the procedure and what we find, which is why we do not quote a number on this page or over the phone. You receive a written, itemized estimate for all proposed diagnostics and treatment before any work begins.
Each depends on what is involved: for a mass, its size and where it is; for bladder stones, how many and what kind; for a foreign body, where the object is and whether the intestine has been damaged. Once we have examined and imaged your pet, you get a written, itemized estimate before any work begins.
No. You can contact us directly. If your veterinarian has x-rays or records, we can request them for you.
Yes. A veterinary orthopedic surgeon operates here — cruciate repair, fracture repair, luxating patella, FHO and more — so the surgery happens at a hospital your pet already knows, and our own team looks after them before and after.