The cornerstone to preventive care and wellness is a physical examination on a regular basis (annually for most adult pets and more frequent for older pets or those with chronic disease). This allows us to monitor and record any trends in your pet’s health, body weight, and history. This increases our ability to detect a problem before clinical signs become apparent. This can only be achieved by scheduling quality time with us – to allow us to listen, record, and assimilate your history and physical exam findings and outline a series of therapeutic options.
We strongly believe client education is the foundation of our communication skills - critical in achieving our goals of preventative health care and dealing with medical problems. We stress this by providing ample dialogue time and frequently provide clients with hand written notes, pamphlets and references to better understand a specific problem. Comprehensive physical examination time is appropriately given to pursue more complex medical issues especially with geriatric pets that often are presented with multiple problems. We are basically “medical detectives” following the leads of “those who cannot speak”. In turn, we become a provider of options helping you to make the best choice for your pet and family. Accordingly we serve as your pets’ advocate.
We recommend the following services on an annual basis:
1. physical examination that includes a "systems check list" including body temperature, heart & respiratory rate, body weight and thorough history taking.
2. nutritional review & consultation.
3. vaccinations as deemed necessary.
4. laboratory tests including fecal ova/parasite check and canine heartworm screen. Wellness testing can provide a more in-depth review of your pet's well being and also serves as a benchmark for comparison should your pet become ill. This involves special hematological, biochemical and thyroid function blood tests. A urinalysis can identify kidney problems and assess the health of the urinary tract. These same tests are also used to evaluate clinically ill patients and to determine appropriate therapy. For more in depth evaluation of the various body systems, more comprehensive examinations may be undertaken. Examples of these include a neurological examination of the cranial and peripheral spinal nerves using neurological refex testing; a complete cardiovascular evaluation using radiographs, ECG tracings and cardiac ultrasound; and ophthalmological evaluation of the retina and intraoccular pressure assessment. Early diagnosis of a disease process can lead your pet to a longer healthier life. Often a modification of your pet's diet can be most rewarding.
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