Routine check-ups are important if you want your pet to stay physically healthy over time. Your pet will have the best chance of staying healthy in the long run if it gets regular physical checks, is vaccinated, and doesn’t get parasites. When you bring your dog or cat in for a regular check-up, we can prevent health problems or find them early, when they are easiest to treat and control.
Physical Check-up
When you take your pet to a San Diego veterinary clinic for an exam, they will look at your pet’s medical history and ask you about other observations or concerns you may have about your pet’s health or condition.
A vet will check your pet’s weight, posture, and walk as part of a thorough exam. Pet owners can also look for signs of lameness in their dog or cat, such as a limited range of motion and pain.
Each of these tests is meant to find any strange things or health problems your pet might have. Since dogs and cats can’t tell us when they hurt, these tests can help determine how your four-legged pet feels.
Vaccine Updates
Vaccinations keep your pet from getting common, contagious diseases that are often fatal. Your vet will tell you what shots your cat or dog needs based on where you live and how your pet lives.
All dogs and cats should get the basic vaccinations, but lifestyle vaccines are usually only given to pets who spend a lot of time around animals from other houses. Check out their vaccine and parasite prevention plans to learn more about the vaccines they think your pet needs.
Adult pets will need regular booster shots to keep their disease resistance up. Boosters must be used every year or every three years in many situations. Your veterinarian will tell you here when your cat or dog needs a booster shot.
Preventing Parasitic Diseases
Dogs can get sick from parasites, making their lives hard or even killing them. Ticks and mosquitoes can carry bacteria or parasites that can cause serious diseases. Because of this, veterinarians will suggest ways to keep parasites from getting inside your pet’s body. Knowing that some of these parasites can spread to you and your family is also important.
They may sometimes ask you to bring a sample of your pet’s poop to their clinic so that we can do a fecal exam to check for intestinal parasites. With feces tests, they can look at your pet’s poop for signs of parasites that might be hard to find in other ways.
Heartworm tests may be done when you take your pet to the vet every year. With this test, your animal internal medicine vet can look for early signs of heartworm disease in your pet’s blood. If this deadly parasite has infected your pet, finding it as soon as possible gives them the best chance of getting better with treatment.
Your dog or cat can avoid fleas, heartworm, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, tapeworms, hookworms, roundworms, and whipworms by taking care of parasites.
Conclusion
Now you are fully aware on what to expect at your pet’s annual check-up. You can also ask your vet questions about your pet, like what to feed them or how to clean their teeth. Also, don’t be afraid to ask to keep seeing the same vet every year. Not only will you get to know the specialist better, but they will also get to know your pet. Again, this lets them notice small changes from year to year, which could be the first sign of a problem that must be considered and fixed.