Preventative Care
Preventative care is what helps to keep your pet healthy. It is achieved through the combined efforts of your family and our veterinary team. It is best to prevent disease rather than to treat it because some diseases are difficult to treat, especially if not detected early. This is why we recommend routine check-ups, once to twice yearly.
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Preventative veterinary care includes a thorough physical examination, weight measurement and body condition score, screening tests of blood and stool, vaccinations, parasite control, sterilization and microchip placement.
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The most common screening tests performed during your pet's wellness visit are a:
- stool test - fecal floatation/microscope test to screen for intestinal parasites
- PLEASE BRING A FRESH FECAL SAMPLE IN A BAGGIE/CONTAINER.
- DOGS: heartworm blood test
- +/- tick-borne disease screen (Lyme/Erlichia/Anaplasma - Idexx 4 Dx test)
- CATS: leukemia virus, immunodeficiency virus (FELV/FIV- Idexx Combo test)
- Bloodwork is a helpful tool to assessing your pet's overall internal health. It is needed prior to anesthesia or to help diagnose a sick pet, but is also very useful in establishing a baseline of normal values for a healthy individual.
- A complete blood count (CBC) measures red and white blood cells, and platelets. A chemistry panel measures liver, kidney, glucose, and protein levels, among other values, depending on the panel selected.
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Vaccinations build immunity to help fight off a disease-causing agent if the animal is exposed to it. They are mainly administered by injection, but we also offer kennel cough vaccine in the oral form. Vaccinations are administered on a schedule at specific intervals to optimize their effectiveness. Subsequent vaccinations, after the first one, are called "boosters" because they boost immunity further. Your vet will make recommendations for your pet's vaccination schedule. See "Vaccinations" drop-down menu for more detailed information.
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PLEASE BRING DOCUMENTS OF ANY PRIOR VACCINATIONS
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Parasite prevention of intestinal worms, heartworms, fleas, and ticks is a very important part of your pet's healthcare. We carry topical and oral preventatives, recommended to be administered once monthly year round.
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It is best to spay or neuter your pet. In non-breeding animals, preventative care includes sterilization by surgical removal of the reproductive tract, called an ovariohysterectomy (spay) in a female and an orchidectomy (neuter/castration) in a male. It is usually performed around 5-6 months of age, but can be performed at any age. By sterilizing your pet, you are helping to reduce medical problems associated with the reproductive tract, such as infection, certain cancers, and hormonally-influenced negative behaviors, such as marking urine, aggression, and roaming. Life-threatening uterine infection (pyometra), difficult birth (dystocia), and breast cancer risk can be reduced by spaying your female pet, especially before her first heat cycle, which usually occurs at 7-9 months of age. Sterilizing your pet reduces animal overpopulation, which correlates to saving lives at the shelters.
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We offer microchip placement, which can help to reunite your lost pet with you. It is a small metal chip, the size of a rice grain, that is implanted with a needle under your pet's skin between the shoulder blades. It can be done in the awake or anesthetized animal. It contains a bar code that can be scanned and detected in lost animals that are brought into shelters and veterinary clinics. If a microchip is detected, its bar code can then be checked with a database of registered pet owners to try to find a match. We place the chip but pet owners need to register their contact information in the database in order for the microchip to be effective in reuniting the lost pet. There are many brands of microchips available. We carry the DataMars chip which can be detected with universal scanners for frequencies used both in the United States and abroad. With this brand of chip, no annual membership fee is required to register your pet in the database.