Check-out the room for surgery. The machine that looks like a sci-fi pressure cooker is an autoclave which autoclaves, or sterilizes, all the instruments and garments used in surgery. If a vet offers to pay a house call and do surgery on your kitchen table, tell him thanks, but no thanks.
Although you may imagine you are paying through the nose for an operation or a shot, you are not only paying for a few slices and stitches, or 80¢ worth of medication, but for your surgeon’s essential skill and sterile equipment.
In some facilities there are ultrasound dentistry instruments. Cats and dogs don’t get cavities, but they do collect a lot of tartar on their teeth which makes their gums recede, their teeth fall out and en route produces a gargantuan case of halitosis. It’s a glum prospect, cleaning the teeth of an old animal who hasn’t had time to brush after every meal. Animals are given an anesthetic before the tartar is removed, and the vet, a nose plug.