Vet Consultation:
- Dogs should have a veterinary examination minimum of once a year. It is essential to evaluate the state of health of pets and detect in time any alteration, no matter how small, and thus be able to treat it correctly, preventing suffering and improving the dog’s quality of life.
- In addition, this is much cheaper than ending up in a regular or emergency clinic with a fully developed medical pathology due to the lack of early detection. In turn, it allows us to keep up to date with the preventive plans for infectious and contagious diseases, parasitic so crucial for our dogs.
- Some dogs need frequent if they present a health condition (Heart conditions, allergic disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, etc.) that is convenient to follow.
Dog Evaluation:
- Health history (vaccinations, diseases, accidents, others).
- Routine life (status in a home with the owner and other pets, exercises, visiting dogs park or another place frequently.
- Conduct or Behavior (fears, aggression with other pets, repetitive behaviors, others).
- Nutrition: types of food, dry, wet, home food, frequency of administration.
- Physical examination (inspection, palpation percussion, auscultation), including:
- Dental exam (to discard: Dental disease, Broken or chipped teeth, Abscesses or infections, Cysts, Tumors, Bite misalignment, Dental pain).
- Pain assessment (dogs cannot describe their pain nor its location; we have to discover it through their behavior, physical examination, and with the help of infrared images).
- Body and muscle condition (It is directly related to the state of health of our dog, its breed, and lifestyle and can express on a scale of 1/9, with 5/9 being the ideal weight).
- Infectious and zoonotic diseases (all of them present symptoms related to their virulence and the organic systems they affect, many of which can be lethal to our pets.
- Parasite prevention and control (external and internal parasites)
- Genetic, breed, and age considerations (necessary to discover predisposition to different noninfectious diseases)
Diagnostic plan:
- Heartworm and internal and external parasite testing less than once a year (heartworm test, fecal flotation, fecal cytology, skin scraping, others)
- Other diagnostic tests (CBC, Blood chemistry, urinalysis, body, and dental x-rays).
- Disease screening tests (if will be justified with the history and physical exam).
- Genetic screening test (to detect any disease predisposition).
Therapeutic and Preventive plan:
- Behavioral recommendations.
- Nutritional recommendations (prescription or regular diet according to the health necessity).
- Dental requests (dental cleaning procedures, teeth extractions, special diets.
- Heartworms, intestinal parasites prevention (prescription drugs in tablets or injectable with different frequencies of administration)
- fleas and Tick control (oral prescription drugs with administration frequencies that vary from once a month up to 3 months.
- Recommendations to treat specific diseases (Management of life, nutritional, homeopathic remedies, chemistry drugs, surgical, others).
- Immunization with core vaccines includes canine distemper virus, canine adenovirus type 2 (hepatitis and Parainfluenza), canine parvovirus type 2, and rabies.
- Microchipping (to identify our pets if they lose).
- Spaying or neutering procedures unless specifically intended for breeding purposes.
- Exceptional Immunization with non-core vaccines are those recommended for some dogs based on lifestyle, geographic location, and risk of exposure: Canine leptospirosis vaccine, canine Bordetella vaccine, canine Lyme vaccine, canine influenza vaccine, and the Western diamondback rattlesnake toxoid.
- Exceptional preventive recommendations for specific epidemiologic situations (quarantine, specific medications, others).
Recheck plan:
- Plans for follow-up based on assessment and care recommendations.
- Expectations for next visits (answer to the treatment, evolution of the disease, quality of life, other).