Open Day May 2008! On May 18th we held a HUGELY successful Open Day!  A BIG thank you to all who attended!  The event kicked off with Star Radio doing  bandaging, bouncy castle and 'catch the fleas' challenges to the amusement of onlookers!  There were a variety of animals to get up close to and handle (for the brave!) including snakes, lizards, skunks and ferrets, culminating in lamb feeding!   Throughout the afternoon visitors were encouraged to throw wet sponges in the 'Wet the Vet' event!  This very quickly became 'Flan Fling' with plates of whipped cream available to the highest bidder to throw at a member of staff of their choice!  Greg, Mike, Dev, Pip and Jo all got 'flanned'! There were plenty of oportunities to get 'behind the scenes' and learn how an ECG works, look down an endoscope, use an ultrasound scanner and check pulses with the pulsoximeter in the operating theatre!   The teddy bear clinic, bouncy castle and face painting attracted a large number of young visitors and the BBQ and cake stalls were rushed off their feet!   We held a number of competitions and the winners were: Guess the Weight of the Pony            Becky Byrne     Guess the Name of the Pony             Simran Champion Guess the Weight of the Cake           Christine Millard Photo Competition                            Bill Dean Dental Competition                           Julie Rowe Catch the Fleas                                 Jane Cantwell     Doing our Bit for the Community! Last week our practice manager, Pip, dressed as a bunny (yes! same outfit as Open Day!) for the day for a local school!  Lakeside Primary School were holding a sponsored "Bunny Bounce" to raise money for new equipment and Pip kindly volunteered to be the "Easter Bunny" for the day and went into each class to meet and greet the children when it was their turn to bounce on the bouncy castle!  It is anticipated that the event will have raised just under £4,000!   Wacky Woodlands
We held a hugely successful Halloween disco last October raising over ?90014:49 £1,000 for ILPH. See if you can recognise any familiar faces!

A Sharks Tale

Bungee jumping, zorbing, tandem skydiving, micro lighting, rafting down waterfalls - you name it I'll try it, but the one wild adventure that eluded me was diving with great white sharks!   Then I spotted a poster from the charity VETAID asking for people to dive with sharks! YES! Let me put you in the picture. I am a project manager at Woodlands Veterinary Clinic in Cheltenham. Each year we choose a charity to support and when we saw this dive, we nominated VETAID! This was a project I was definitely going to enjoy managing! We put up a poster to see who was interested in taking part in the dive and I was amazed at how many people thought we were completely mad! But once we got 6 fearless (!) volunteers we embarked upon fundraising: ?200 was required per diver. All proceeds from our annual Open Day went to the cause and we organised a 'Wild 80's Party' which was a great success. Dive day dawned bright and sunny: there was no turning back! We all piled into our MPC for the 3 hour drive up to Elsmere Port, Cheshire. Our practice manager, my mum, my best friend and her daughter followed: our loyal supporters and official photographers! At the Blue Planet Aquarium after the obligatory team photo, the divers were taken into the bowels of the aquarium where we embarked upon 2 hours of gruelling scuba training. We watched a safety video then had a fantastic guide to the sharks and other fish we were likely to encounter. Time to enter the training pool - once we had been squeezed into our wetsuits! From the training pool we could see the extent of the tank: it was huge and so fantastically structured that the sea life had endless cracks, crevices and caves to explore. Whilst the keeping of such magnificent creatures in captivity is a terrible shame, it is the only way a great number of people will ever get up close to them and this environment was as close to a natural habitat as possible. Scuba gear on and weighing a ton, it was now time to practice breathing under water and carry out a few safety exercises. One of the team found breathing under water to be difficult and we wondered if she was going to make it. My husband and I were the first pair to enter the pool. Despite my previous blase approach to the dive I was filled with trepidation. The strict rules were: don't wave or a shark will think your hand is food; have an experienced diver behind and in front at all times; know the quick exit routes and have a diver above with flippers to be able to quickly retrieve us if necessary. We weren't wearing flippers as we were to spend the entire dive walking or kneeling on the tank bottom. Walking down a rocky slipway into the depths of the tank all fear vanished at the awesome sight of so many beautiful fish swimming past us. We went to an area just by the viewing tunnel (our spectators could see us - it took all my will power not to wave!) and knelt down. Time stood still while we revelled in the amazing sight of row upon row of glistening white shark's teeth just an arm's length away. What struck me most was how slowly and gracefully the sharks swam by. Although the sharks were obviously the highlight of the dive - and we saw a variety of different species - the other fish were equally fascinating. The half hour in the pool flew by and the next divers went in. With bated breath we watched the final divers enter the water. The one who had previously struggled with the scuba equipment and her fear, entered the water but had trouble adjusting her mask - then she was in! We were all so elated for her - it was a brilliant way to end the day. Afterwards we agreed that it was the experience of a lifetime. I still yearn to 'do the real thing' in South Africa but this was awesome. With such a beautiful environment and excellent coaches I would highly recommend it to anyone. The fact that we raised over ?1500 for VETAID in the process was the icing on the cake! By Pip Millard, Woodlands Veterinary Clinic, Cheltenham, GL51 4UP.

70's Disco
On Saturday 22nd Oct we held a hugely successfull 70's disco to raise money for GDBA. We held a raffle, a tombola and an auction and, with ticket sales we raised ?977! The pictures include some staff members - Jo, head Nurse, Ali Equine Nurse, Pip + Alys Practice managers and Tamsin Vet! Also pictured are a number of clients - a BIG thank you to everyone involved!

Brecon Challenge
6 members of staff undertook this gruelling team challenge on September 24th. Throughout the day we had to cycle 17km up and down very steep mountain trails, hike to 742 meters above sea level and back down and canoe across the taly Bont reservoir and back! Our team took just under 6 hrs putting us in 6th place out of 11 teams! Team members wer: tamsin, Pip, dev, Alys, Ali & Sam!

Sponsored Walk We've recently completed a sponsored dog walk we did on sunday for GDBA - 24 people walked approx 5 miles in about 2.5 hours around cleeve hill golf course in cheltenham. The weather was fab and a great time was had by all. The group included to guide dog owners as well! We are collecting the money in still and hope to have raised over ?200!

Local Vet?s Swap Wet Noses for Red Noses! Patients at Woodlands Veterinary Clinic in Warden Hill were greeted by staff sporting "Big Hair" and red noses for comic relief!  Most pets seemed unperturbed having been subjected to such oddities on "Wrong Trousers Day", Open days and Christmas festive events! Practice manager Naomi Daly said "Clients have responded really well to our wacky hair-do's and have given generously to Comic Relief."  Staff were encouraged to wear red as well as have big hair ? taken to the extreme by veterinary surgeon Tamsin Hannah who turned up to work as teletubby "Po"! We raised just under ?40 with our efforts and had great fun in the process!