People look for a vet in two states: calmly, for a routine vaccination, and in a panic at night when minutes count. Choose in the first state so that in the second you can simply get in the car and drive.

What to ask on the phone

Opening hours, and whether there is 24-hour cover. You should have a round-the-clock clinic saved even if you use a different one for routine care.

Whether there is an inpatient ward. A clinic without one can see your animal and put up a drip, but has nowhere to keep it under observation overnight — which is often exactly what is needed.

Whether they have their own lab and ultrasound on site. If samples go elsewhere and results take two days, that does not work in an acute case.

Whether they work by appointment or walk-in, and what to do in an emergency.

What to watch during the appointment

The vet should ask more than they tell: what you feed, when the animal was vaccinated, what changed, when it started. A diagnosis from the doorway at a glance is a bad sign.

You should be allowed into the consulting room and told what is being done and why. "Leave the animal, collect it this evening" with no explanation is a reason to be wary.

Prescriptions should be written down: drug, dose, how many times a day, for how many days. Verbal instructions are forgotten by evening and lead to dosing errors.

You should be given test results and a discharge summary. These are your documents, not the clinic's property. If results are withheld, changing clinics means losing the whole history.

On prices

Ask the cost before the procedure, not after. A normal clinic quotes the consultation fee and warns you what additional diagnostics will come to.

What should worry you is neither expensive nor cheap, but something else: a long list of tests "just in case" with no explanation of what each is for, and a drip offered as the answer to every question.

A second opinion

If surgery, expensive long-term treatment, or a serious-sounding diagnosis is proposed, see a second vet. That is normal practice, not an insult to the first. Bring all test results and images: a second opinion based on your retelling is cheap precisely because it is worthless.

In advance

Save the address and number of the on-call clinic in your phone. Check the night-time route — not every 24-hour service operates from the daytime address. Keep the chip number, the date of the last vaccination, and a list of past treatments to hand: in an emergency those are the first questions you will be asked.