Prevention is always the best treatment. It’s the same as a pilot’s safety check list before flying or our safety check lists before anaesthetics and operations
In most vet clinics, preventative health checks mean vaccinations and parasite treatments. We feel that while both are worthy there are more important benefits from preventative health checks – reviewing your pet’s weight and diet, ensuring the mouth is healthy, discussing changes we should make as our companions grow older, ensuring that both we and they enjoy our lives together.
Your pet visiting us yearly is much the same are our visiting our GPs every five years or so. It provides an opportunity to note something that you may think is insignificant but is in fact the early stage of a change that is still easy to correct.
The most common conditions we see at annual health checks are surreptitious weight gain and gum disease. Both are widespread in cats (especially indoor cats) and dogs. As well as a complete physical examination we review your companion’s behaviour and can give you advice on how to improve the lives of all members of your family.
We will send you an annual reminder for your pet’s annual health check. This may or may not include a booster inoculation and parasite prevention treatment.
Tooth and gum disease is often seen at annual health check visits. If there are mouth problems we give you advice on how to resolve the condition and prevent it from coming back. For example, we may suggest offering your cat chicken wings or chicken necks to eat so that the teeth and gums are self cleaned. We may suggest that you try brushing for dog’s teeth or providing beef bones to chew on. (Beef bones only because they are too hard for most dogs to break and swallow.) In many instances the best treatment is for us to book in dental treatment, for example a scale and polish, removing diseased teeth that can’t be saved.
Six months after we diagnose and treat tooth and gum disease in your cat or dog we suggest a re-visit, to see that the condition has resolved or hasn’t returned. We will contact you by email.
Time flies. They are kittens and pups one day then tentative about jumping on the sofa seemingly the next. Our pets age far too fast. But there is so much that can be done to make life comfortable for older pets, and to catch problems early.
We suggest senior health checks for all cats and dogs. Arbitrarily we suggest at 10 years of age for cats and at between 7 and 10 years old for dogs. (Giant breeds benefit from early Seniors checks.)
At Senior health checks we examine sight, hearing, mouth and mobility issues as well as the heart, lungs and belly. We take a blood sample and review both how the organs are working and how red and white blood cells are performing.
One of the most frequently under diagnosed conditions in older dogs and especially older cats is chronic joint pain. Since 2020 this has been successfully managed with ‘MABS’, monoclonal antibody injections called Librela for dogs and Solensia for cats. If your pet may benefit we will discuss these simple treatments with you.
