A recently published paper by VitDAL has examined the relationship between total and ionised calcium in both healthy and hospitalised ill dogs. The team were able to define an accurate reference range for ionised and total calcium from the healthy dogs and then explored total and ionised calcium concentrations in a large population of ill dogs. An important finding of this work was that dogs with an ionised hypercalcaemia frequently had a normal total calcium concentration which highlights the importance of measuring both total and ionised calcium when assessing calcium homeostasis in dogs. Our paper can be accessed at this link