Prioritizing your pet’s safety, comfort, and swift recovery before, during, and after surgery.
Hearing your veterinarian recommend surgery for your pet is never easy, even when the procedure is routine. Your mind jumps to worst-case scenarios, and questions pile up faster than you can ask them. Will they be in pain? Will they wake up okay? Who is actually going to be in the room with them when you cannot be?
At Oakland Park Animal Hospital, we know that handing your pet over for a procedure means placing an enormous amount of trust in the people caring for them, and that trust is not something we take lightly. Dr. Spencer Ratnoff has spent more than 40 years building this practice around a simple idea: your pet is our pet. That philosophy shapes every decision our team makes before, during, and after any surgical procedure, from the first pre-surgical exam to the phone call letting you know your pet is awake and resting.
Our surgical suite handles a wide range of procedures, and we bring the same level of care to every one, whether it is routine or complex. Spays and neuters remain among the most common surgeries we perform, and we see them as foundational to a long, healthy life for your pet. We also regularly perform wound repairs, lumpectomies, and foreign body removals for pets who have swallowed something they should not have.
Some procedures fall outside the routine category entirely. Dental extractions and oral surgery call for precision and a steady hand, especially for smaller breeds prone to crowded mouths or advanced gum disease. If your pet’s dental exam has shown a need for extractions, our pet dental care team may be able to coordinate treatment with our surgical staff, so your pet only needs one anesthetic event instead of several visits. We also see our share of emergent cases, foreign body obstructions, lacerations, or trauma that cannot wait, and we work quickly to get your pet stable and comfortable.
Every surgical patient at our hospital starts with a thorough pre-surgical exam and bloodwork, no matter their age or the procedure ahead. This step matters because it shows us how your pet’s body is doing right now, not just how they looked at their last visit. Kidney function, liver function, and blood cell counts all help us build an anesthetic plan made for your pet, not a generic one.
This kind of individual planning matters even more for senior pets or pets with existing health conditions. A young, healthy Labrador and a fourteen-year-old cat with early kidney changes need very different anesthetic plans, and we adjust drug choice, dosing, and monitoring to match. If your pet falls into an older age bracket, our senior pet care team often works directly with our surgical staff so nothing gets missed. Per the 2020 AAHA Anesthesia and Monitoring Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, tailoring anesthesia plans to each patient’s individual needs helps ensure a safe and effective surgical experience, and that continuum of care is the standard we hold ourselves to.
Once your pet is under anesthesia, a trained member of our medical team stays with them and monitors heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, and body temperature using advanced equipment throughout the entire procedure. This is not a box we check for the sake of protocol. It is how we catch small changes before they become real problems.
We know anesthesia is often the part that worries pet parents most, and that concern makes sense. No anesthetic procedure, in veterinary or human medicine, comes without some degree of risk. What we can control is how carefully we manage that risk through preparation, monitoring, and experience. Our team stays current on the latest anesthesia protocols and safety standards so that families in Oakland Park, Wilton Manors, and the surrounding communities can feel good about handing over their pet’s care to us.
The moment your pet starts to wake up, our focus shifts to comfort. Pain management may begin before your pet even leaves the surgical suite and can continue through recovery at home, since a comfortable pet tends to heal faster and feel like themselves again sooner. Our team plans to call you as soon as your pet is awake and stable, and before you leave our building, we go over what to expect over the following days.
At-home care instructions are never an afterthought here. We can share what activity restrictions apply, how to care for an incision, what medications to give and when, and what warning signs mean you should call us. And you can call us. If something feels off during recovery, whether it is 2 in the afternoon or later in the evening, our team wants to hear from you rather than have you sit at home wondering and worrying.
There is a reason clients who started bringing their first dog to us decades ago are now bringing their fifth. Trust like that does not happen by accident. It builds slowly, through steady care, honest talk, and a doctor who has never stopped caring about the outcome for every patient. Dr. Ratnoff has owned and operated this practice since 1987, and that kind of longevity means something in a field where corporate ownership has become the norm rather than the exception. We also know that surgery can bring financial stress alongside the medical kind, especially when a procedure comes up without warning. That is why we work with pet parents through flexible financing options, including Cherry and CareCredit, so a payment plan never becomes the reason your pet has to wait for care they need.
Being independently owned lets us make decisions based on what is right for your pet, not what a corporate scorecard says. We take time to explain your pet’s surgical needs in plain language, answer every question you have, and never rush you through a conversation about something this important. If your pet needs surgery, we invite you to contact our office to talk through your pet’s specific situation, or to learn more about our dedicated care team and the philosophy that has guided this practice for nearly four decades. Your pet is our pet, and that is not a slogan here. It is how we have always practiced medicine.
Schedule a visit with our compassionate team and let’s partner in your pet’s lifelong well-being.
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