Your pet’s good health depends on preventive and proactive care through annual wellness screening tests, yet many pet owners skip these visits. Your pet may appear healthy and happy, but changes could be occurring internally that may affect them down the line. Our Bartow Animal Clinic team believes strongly in the power of preventive and wellness care and wants to ensure pet owners understand why these services are so vital for their four-legged friends. Here is a list of essential wellness services and why each is important to your pet’s health.

#1: Vaccines for pets

Vaccines protect not only pets from serious or deadly infectious diseases but also humans from contracting certain diseases from their pets. Similar to human public health strategies, the more community pets who are vaccinated, the healthier that pet population. Some of the deadliest diseases, including rabies virus, leptospirosis, or feline panleukopenia, can be carried and transmitted by wildlife or feral pets, which means that your pet’s risk of contracting these infections cannot be eliminated without vaccines. We recommend all puppies and kittens receive a core vaccination series during their first few months of life, and then their vaccination needs be reassessed annually through to their senior years. Additional lifestyle vaccines are based on each pet’s individual needs.

#2: Parasite screening tests for pets

Parasites can impact pet health ranging from mild annoyances to life-threatening diseases. Regular screening tests performed on blood and stool samples during your pet’s annual wellness visit help us detect the following parasites and prevent them from causing issues:

  • External parasites — Fleas and ticks can cause allergic reactions and may also transmit diseases, including Lyme disease or bartonellosis (i.e., cat scratch fever).
  • Intestinal parasites — Pets with a worm burden living in their intestines that is heavy relative to their size can suffer weight loss, anemia, and diarrhea.
  • Heartworms — As their name suggests, these worms live inside and damage the heart and lungs. Cumulative damage and increasing worm numbers can lead to a pet’s heart failure and death.

#3: Parasite preventives for pets

After screening pets for parasites and providing as-needed treatment, we recommend all pets receive prevention medications that are available in various formulations and can be applied topically to the skin, given orally, or injected at monthly, three-month, or six-month intervals to keep parasites at bay. Most pets require two separate products—one for fleas and ticks and another for heartworms and intestinal worms—although a few all-in-one products have recently joined the market. Ask our team to recommend the best products for your pet.

#4: Wellness examinations for pets

Wellness examinations, which provide a head-to-tail assessment of a pet’s health, should be performed once or twice per year. You may not notice subtle changes or those that occur slowly over time, but our veterinary team can uncover early issues before they become bigger problems. Systems examined during a wellness visit include:

  • Eyes and ears
  • Teeth and oral cavity
  • Skin
  • Weight and nutrition
  • Bones and joints
  • Muscle condition
  • Heart and lungs
  • Abdomen
  • Lymph nodes

#5: Dental care for pets

We all know that waiting until you have a toothache is less effective and more expensive dental care than regular visits for prophylactic cleanings and procedures. The same holds true for pets, many of whom develop dental disease by age 3. Dogs and cats require frequent conscious oral exams to grossly examine teeth, combined with regular anesthetized cleanings, X-rays, and comprehensive exams. Once your pet’s breath is bad or heavy tartar is built up, they are likely experiencing pain. Also, dental disease in the long term can cause bacterial infections in distant organs, such as the kidneys or heart.

#6: Early disease screenings for pets

Pets who look healthy on the outside are not necessarily healthy on the inside. Many diseases “hide” inside the body and cause no obvious outward signs until they have advanced. Yet, these diseases are typically easier to treat in the early stages. We recommend blood and urine tests for all adult and senior pets and may recommend additional screenings for pets with certain risk factors. For example, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one disease in which blood and urine testing can reveal a problem months, or sometimes years, before your pet gets sick, but treatments in this early stage can add years to an affected pet’s life.

Wellness plans for pets

We understand that wellness services for pets can add up quickly and that finances play a role in pet health decision-making. We want to ensure that all pets receive comprehensive wellness care, so we offer tiered wellness plans that include everything pets need at all life stages. The plans include one year of services paid in low monthly installments, plus extra perks, such as free exams and discounts on additional services.

Investing in wellness and preventive care now can translate to a healthier future for your pet by preventing or detecting diseases in their earliest stages when treatments are more successful. Contact the Bartow Animal Clinic team to schedule your four-legged friend’s next routine preventive care visit or to learn more about our comprehensive wellness services.