During annual visit there's a couple things you'll want to do, you want to pay attention to your pet and see if there's anything it's doing that's unusual that you can tell your veterinarian about such as drinking excessively, urinating excessively, eating more, eating less coffee, sneezing.
You really want to take that opportunity for that visit to inform your vet as much as possible about what's going on with your pet, before they do a physical exam and start to recommend what to address.
Also want you to tell your veterinarian what diet you're feeding. Specifically if you're adding things or giving treats as well by telling them this they can address any dietary issues and also maybe they can give a recommendation for a diet that may prevent a problem in your particular dog or cat.
There are certain breeds that get things in the future that a certain diet may prevent.
If you think your pet is overweight so that your pet is not at risk of getting some of those diseases associated with obesity.
The other reasons why we do annual check-ups is we can often find issues in a pet far in advance of them showing up at home. So by searching their whole body during a physical exam we can find things like masses or growths that are much better dealt with early when they're smaller than waiting a couple years until they're larger and bothering the dog.
The other thing we can do is blood work and doing annual wellness testing of blood and urine testing we'll find diseases far in advance of them. Actually appearing symptomatically for instance kidney disease in cats.
It's very common and it takes years to progress. We can find it very early with blood work but by the time you actually see a cat drink excessively or pee excessively they're far into that disease process. By addressing it early, you will slow the progression of that disease and have a lot more success with its treatment.
How Often Should I Take My Dog To The Vet?
For routine wellness exams or check-ups. The best person to ask about what is best for your dog is your trusted veterinarian.
A vet will look at your dog's age breed lifestyle and health previously check up reports.
What Happens During A Check-Up?
The general procedure is as follows your vet will ask you questions regarding the following please provide information on your dog's appetite and exercise habits.
Your vet will perform a physical test to check out your dog's walking gait normal movement and dental health he or she will run tests which include urine test and fecal test to check your dog's health.
In addition your veterinarian will be administrating any necessary vaccinations these visits give you an opportunity to ask the vet any questions regarding dietary concerns vaccinations and the vaccinations.
Here Are The General Check-Up Guideline Depending On Age
For puppies from birth to one-year-old you will need to make vet visits every three to four weeks until your dog is sixteen weeks old to get required vaccines such as rabies distemper parvo and measles.
Your pup may start heartworm and flea and tick prevention medications during this time your vet will continue to monitor your pup to make sure he is growing well and shows no signs of an illness spay/neuter may be possible at around six months.
If your dog is healthy enough dogs reach adulthood at one to seven to ten years depending on breed .
During adulthood yearly check-up are recommended first year vaccinations include distemper parvo rabies booster and other vaccines.
Such as kennel cough vaccine updates are required every three years after depending on state law so check with your vet to be sure.
Your Vet Will Conduct Other Tests Based On Anything Unusual Seen During The Exam
These tests provide a baseline or normal against which future tests can be compared. The baseline comes in handy especially if your dog gets sick in the future senior dogs are roughly seven to ten years and older.
Twice yearly check-ups are recommended however more check-ups may be needed depending on your dog's health and age vaccinations will be given if needed.
Another thing we do at annual visits if we do fecal testing so we look for intestinal parasites. When parasites exist in our pets they can cause problems over time.
Sometimes you won't even see symptoms such as diarrhea to alert you to things like intestinal parasites in your pet and keep in mind that some of these things can transfer to people particularly children and elderly people.
So we want to do a fecal test to make sure that there are no parasites in your pet.
This is one test that a lot of people will decline because they don't see parasites in the stool or don't see diarrhea but again keep in mind it doesn't have to cause diarrhea and a lot of them you can't actually see with the naked eye.
Remember that when our pets go to the park and they run through the park and they come home and lick their paws that's a way that they can pick up parasites so the risk of this is a lot higher than we think.
We don't really look for intestinal parasites that often and people because we wash our hands and eat clean food but our pets really intimately interact with the environment and that really increases their risk of getting these sorts of things.
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