Animal Hospital Bardwell Valley

Your dog has started favouring a back leg, or a lump has come up that you can feel under the coat. That is the moment a consult room and a fully equipped animal hospital part ways: one can examine the leg and refer you onward, the other can scan it, find the cause and treat it without sending you across the city. For a Bardwell Valley pet, that second kind of care sits a short drive up Forest Rd at Rockdale Veterinary Hospital in Bexley, one of the areas we care for across Sydney’s St George, where the same team takes your animal from the first scan to the day it heads home.

The path from a worrying sign to a clear plan

A workup usually starts the same way as everyday general vet care in Bardwell Valley: a 30-minute consult to take a proper history and examine your pet, then the imaging that turns a guess into an answer. We run digital X-ray and ultrasound on site, with our own in-clinic pathology for bloods, so the scan, the test result and the next decision happen in the same visit rather than across separate appointments. From there the vet talks you through what the findings mean and builds a treatment plan around them, whether that is medication, vet dentistry, or surgery from a routine desexing through to orthopaedic work like a TPLO cruciate repair. The handling stays gentle the whole way through, scan and anaesthetic included, because every vet here is Fear Free qualified. When a case genuinely needs a specialist, we arrange that referral too.

Mix of animals at our clinic in North Ryde

Who reads the scans at Rockdale Veterinary Hospital

The vet behind the imaging and the operating table is Dr Robert Kay, owner and head vet, who performs the orthopaedic surgery himself. Rockdale Veterinary Hospital is family-owned, here since 2022, and holds a 4.9-star rating across 230 reviews. Around half of our patients come to us on a referral from another vet, which tells you how the harder workups tend to land here. It is one team reading the scans and doing the surgery, so nothing about your pet gets lost in a handover.

Open 7 days, finding us, and after hours

We are open seven days at 335 Forest Rd, Bexley: Monday to Friday 8:00am to 7:00pm, Saturday 9:00am to 5:00pm, and Sunday 10:00am to 3:00pm, closed on public holidays. From Bardwell Valley it is a short, ordinary run up Forest Rd, with the clinic sitting between Bexley and Earlwood and a little north of Bardwell Park. We are not a 24-hour hospital, so if something goes wrong overnight, call Veterinary Specialists of Sydney at 106 Parraweena Road, Miranda, on 02 8376 8767, who are open around the clock. During our hours, an urgent case can reach us on 02 9123 6888.

Health Checks & Consultations

We practice ‘fear free’ consultations and have dedicated dog and cat consult rooms to help your fur child relax into the visit. Each consult or vaccination includes a head-to-tail examination and we can focus in on any area of concern.

Our standard consult times are extended to between 20-40 minutes depending on what you pet’s health issue may be. This gives us plenty of time to understand your concerns, your pet’s health issue, as well as explain any testing or treatment options available to you.

Desexing Procedures

Whilst desexing is a routinely performed surgery, we ensure that our focus is on quality and comfort for your pet. The procedure is known as a ‘castrate’ in male pets and as a ‘spey’ in females.

We practice the highest standards of care throughout the surgery, with all patients receiving a pre-anaesthetic blood test, then a closely monitored anaesthetic including ECG, blood pressure and oxygen levels.

Included in the cost of the procedure, all patients receive IV fluids, plenty of pain relief to keep them comfortable at home and an elizabethan collar to stop them from chewing at their incision.

Dentistry

We now know that 75% of pets over 3 years of age suffer from dental disease – so let’s do something about that together!

We offer FREE dental health checks with one of our vets, so they can assess your pets oral hygiene, explain how we can help and give you an estimate for dental work to get you pet smiling again!

Our dental treatments are performed under general anaesthetic and include digital dental x-rays. Our vetsare experienced in performing minimally invasive techniques to treat broken, infected teeth and painful gum disease.

In Clinic Diagnostics

We strive for the highest quality of care for your pets and that means having a complete range of diagnostic tests available at our fingertips.

This large range of tests can be performed at the time of consultation with immediate results, including an array of blood tests, urine tests, microscopic tests, blood pressure readings, ECG and blood oxygen saturation monitors, digital x-rays and ultrasound.

We then have the backup support of a pet specific laboratory, Idexx laboratory, where we can send off any more complex tests and we typically can expect results back within 48 hours. The pathology specialists at Idexx and then also available to help guide any other necessary tests.

X-rays & Ultrasound

We are proud to have the latest and highest quality in digital x-ray technology and ultrasound at our fingertips.

Our digital xray machine give us immediate x-ray images when we take x-rays. This means less stress for your pet when we’re getting images of their affected body part and means we can institute treatment quicker and more reliably.

Our ultrasound allows us to get live images either in consult or in hospital to help work towards a diagnosis for your pet.

We also have specialist radiographers at our fingertips to help us support your pet in the more complex cases.

General & Orthopaedic Surgery

Our expert team is dedicated to providing your pet with the best possible surgical outcomes.

Our vets perform routine desexing procedures daily. These include cat, dog and rabbit castrates and speys. All of the patients undergoing our routine procedures are monitored with the use of the latest anaesthetic equipment and receive IV fluids, in hospital and take home pain relief an E collar.

Our team can also perform or arrange advanced soft tissue and orthopaedic procedures. This allows us to offer more advanced surgeries like dog and cat fracture repairs, patella surgery and cruciate repair surgery including the lateral suture technique and TTAs (Tibial Tuberosity Advancement).

Book your Bardwell Valley pet’s workup

If a sign has you worried and you want it properly looked into, book online any time or call us on 02 9123 6888. We will get your pet in, examined and on a clear plan.

Questions Bardwell Valley pet owners ask us

What does a workup cost, and how does billing work?

There is no fixed figure, because it depends on what your pet needs, but you get a clear estimate before anything goes ahead. If your pet is insured, we bill most insurers directly and you pay only the gap, so an operation or hospital stay does not mean fronting the whole amount.

Can the scan and the surgery happen in the same place?

Yes. The X-ray, the ultrasound, the pathology and the operating theatre are all here at 335 Forest Rd, so your pet does not get diagnosed in one building and treated in another. The same team carries the case the whole way.

How quickly can a Bardwell Valley pet be seen?

Quickly, because we are close and open long hours. Bardwell Valley sits just up the road from us, so a worrying sign rarely means a long drive or a long wait, and we hold each patient’s full history so the vet has the whole picture at every visit.