Preventive care is an essential part of keeping your dog happy and healthy. It will give you peace of mind and increase the odds of detecting underlying health conditions before they become advanced and expensive.
Physical examinations
We recommend at least once per year exams for your adult dog. At that appointment, your dog will have a full physical which will include an assessment of her weight, oral health, cardiac and respiratory systems, skin and overall physical condition. Your veterinarian and her team can also address any questions you have regarding behavior, nutrition, and exercise.
Vaccinations
Based on American Animal Hospital Association guidelines, we recommend core vaccines (Rabies, Distemper, and Leptospirosis) to protect your dog from serious illness that can be caused by these pathogens. Our veterinary team may recommend other vaccines, including Lyme and Bordatella vaccine, based on your dog’s needs and lifestyle.
Diagnostic testing
We recommend yearly testing to screen your dog for internal parasites, heartworm disease, tick-borne illnesses, and underlying health conditions.
Why do wellness bloodwork?
As your veterinarian, we recommend annual blood work on your dogs and cats, to make sure they are as healthy as possible. By checking blood work throughout their lives, we can notice if different values are changing in ways that could indicate disease or illness. The earlier we can diagnose a disease, the faster we can get started on treating it!
- Yearly blood work can help us diagnose diabetes, thyroid disorders, kidney disease, liver or pancreatic dysfunction, or disorders with a patient’s red or white blood cell counts, or platelets, nutritional deficiencies and much more! If they do end up with abnormal results, it becomes even more important to do yearly (or more frequent) rechecks.
- We all know our beloved pets can eat the weirdest things, and
sometimes those things can cause serious damage to their organs or blood cells themselves. We always advise bloodwork after ingestion of toxins (rat poison, certain plants like lillies, antifreeze, etc.), foreign objects (bones, socks, metal pieces), or the ever exciting holiday leftovers. - Medications can unfortunately come with side effects that require us to monitor their blood work, to make sure our patient’s bodies can handle the medications. We will advise yearly blood work for patients who take thyroid medications, anticonvulsants, certain pain medications, insulin, steroids, etc.
There are different components to bloodwork:
- CBC (complete blood count) – utilized to check red and white blood cell counts, platelet levels. We use this information to look for infection, anemia, immune disorders, and some effects of tick borne diseases.
- Chemistry – looks at various organ functions, such as liver, kidneys and pancreas. We need to see if the organs are functioning as they should.
Electrolytes –indicates level of hydration, and some diseases such as Addison’s can be monitored through electrolytes levels - Heartworm screening – checks for exposure to Heartworm and 3 tick-borne diseases (lyme, anaplasma, and ehrlichia)
We know the costs of annual blood work can sometimes be daunting, but we truly want to help your beloved pets! We love them too, and want to keep them as healthy as possible, for as long as possible!
Parasite prevention
In order to keep your dog healthy, we recommend year round heartworm preventative and flea and tick preventative. Our veterinary team will be happy to help answer any questions or concerns you have regarding which preventative will be the best option for your dog and its life stage.