Wellness Exams Can Help Keep Your Pet Healthier and Happier
Wellness exams and preventive care play an essential role in keeping pets as healthy as possible throughout their lives. We typically recommend wellness exams once a year for healthy adult dogs and cats and more frequently for young pets, senior pets, and those with chronic medical conditions. We also recommend bringing in any newly adopted pet for a wellness exam.
Curious to learn more about why we ask you to bring your pet in for wellness exams? Keep reading to find out why regular veterinary visits are important for your pet’s overall health and well-being.
Puppies and Kittens
When dogs and cats are young, we want to see them frequently to make sure they’re adequately protected by vaccines, including distemper, adenovirus, parvovirus, and parainfluenza for puppies and panleukopenia (feline distemper), rhinotracheitis, and calicivirus for kittens. Depending on your pet’s lifestyle and risk factors, we may also recommend additional vaccines.
Starting when pets are 6 to 8 weeks of age, the initial series of vaccinations is given every 2 to 4 weeks until the kitten or puppy is about 16 to 20 weeks of age; a rabies vaccine will also be administered once your pet is old enough. After that, most vaccines require boosters every year or every 3 years to keep your pet protected.
We also want to see young pets several times over that first crucial year to make sure their heart and other organs are healthy, they’re gaining weight and body mass as expected, and their teeth and bones are developing normally.
This is also when your veterinarian will deworm your pet to get rid of any intestinal parasites, recommend appropriate parasite control, and typically perform a spay or neuter procedure on pets who will not be bred. Spaying/neutering has many benefits, including helping to reduce some undesirable behaviours, protecting your pet against certain cancers, and protecting female dogs and cats against a potentially life-threatening type of uterine infection called pyometra.
Adult Cats and Dogs
As pets move into their adult years, they should visit us at least once a year for a regular wellness exam. During these visits, we’ll:
- Perform a thorough physical exam of your pet
- Give your pet needed vaccine boosters to help provide your pet with continued protection against serious, highly contagious, and potentially deadly diseases
- Recommend additional vaccines to help protect against diseases that your individual pet may be at risk for because of lifestyle, risk of exposure, and other factors
- Check blood work for heartworm disease, tick-borne diseases, and any other hidden diseases or health conditions
- Make sure your pet remains free of ticks and fleas
- Check for intestinal parasites (that’s why we ask you to bring your pet’s stool sample)
- Examine your pet’s mouth and teeth and recommend any dental care that’s needed
- Perform a nutritional assessment to help make sure your pet is getting the right nutrition for his or her breed, life stage, health, and lifestyle
Even indoor-only cats need vaccinations to help keep them protected against potentially deadly diseases that can find their way inside on clothing, shoes, and other inanimate objects.
Senior Pets
Once pets begin moving into their senior years (between 6 and 8 years of age for most pets, but sometimes a bit younger for larger dogs and a little older for healthy cats), we prefer to see them twice a year. Remember that pets age far faster than we do—unfortunately, this is why we have less time with them than we’d like!
More frequent veterinary exams and regular preventive care may even give you more quality time with your pet.
During this life stage, senior wellness exams continue to help us detect any potential diseases or conditions, like osteoarthritis, cancer, dental (periodontal) disease, thyroid issues, and heart, kidney, and liver disease, that may become more common as pets age. Many pets don’t tend to show signs of disease, especially in the early stages.
Regular testing of pets, including blood work, urinalysis, and fecal screening, helps us identify any of these hidden diseases or health conditions. The earlier we can catch any changes, the better. In some cases, early diagnosis can provide us with more options for treatment.
Pets With Chronic Conditions
Dogs and cats who have a chronic disease or are on regular medications also tend to benefit from more frequent veterinary visits. These visits let us check blood work and monitor your pet’s condition or disease, allowing your veterinarian to make medication or other adjustments as needed.
What Do You Gain From Your Pet’s Wellness Exam?
Besides playing a crucial role in helping to keep your pet healthy throughout life, regular wellness exams give you the opportunity to:
- Ask us about any questions or concerns you might have
- Bring up anything you’ve noticed that seems different with your pet, like a behaviour that’s new or a lump or bump you hadn’t noticed before
In addition, screening tests can not only give us an early start on a pet’s treatment, but if they come back negative, they can give you peace of mind.
Let’s Be Proactive Together!
If you notice that your pet is behaving differently or if your dog or cat just seems off, contact us right away. When possible, we want to catch anything that isn’t normal as soon as possible.
Call us to schedule your pet’s wellness exam, or make an appointment today.