In today’s blog, we want to take some time to look at the importance of health checking in pets. Most people see a trip to the vets as something that is only necessary for poorly pets, and for most pets it’s somewhere they’d rather stay away from! BUT… what if we told you that our team of vets and nurses are the champions your pet needs to keep them healthy?!
That’s right, you don’t just need to come and see us when your pet is poorly. In fact, we love seeing healthy pets and we love helping you to keep them that way even more.
The very best way to ensure your pet stays in tip-top health is to pop in for regular health checks – whilst these may not seem necessary to some people, they’re actually really valuable! Regular health checks allow us – and you – to pick up on any potential problems in the early stages, giving us the best chance of putting successful treatment plans or preventative plans in place. If we get to know your pet, recording their normal stats, we’ll be more able to notice when they aren’t right and, just like in human medicine, catching problems early can make a huge difference to the outcome. It is possible for some health conditions or illnesses to be ‘sub-clinical’. This means that there might not be any outward signs to the owner, but that problems are detected on further investigation.
Coming in to see us regularly also gives you the chance to ask an experienced, qualified team about anything you might be concerned about or need clarification on, and if you’re a member of our heathy pet club, these health checks are included!
What sort of things might we check in a routine health check? There are lots of things we can look at to help us build a picture of your pet’s overall health. We won’t need to check every single thing every time, but here are some of the things we might check:
- Body temperature – checking the temperature can give us a good indication of health, including whether your pet might be brewing an infection.
- Listening to the heart – this is not just simply counting the beats, although we do that too! When we listen to your pet’s chest, we’re listening to the quality of the beat and the blood flow through the heart, checking for anything that might indicate an incoming problem. We’ll also listen to respiratory sounds, helping us to detect if there are any problems within the lungs.
- Weight – this is something our nursing and reception teams will often check. Discussing weight could easily fill a whole blog by itself! It can be an indicator of possible problems, or a symptom of others, so it’s really important we monitor it. Having an up-to-date weight recorded on our system will also mean that we can calculate drug and medicine doses quickly and easily – this is especially handy if you’re unlucky enough to need us in an emergency.
- Eye & ear examination – sometimes this will be very detailed, other times we’ll just take a quick look. Either way, these are very delicate structures so it’s important that we spot any problems quickly.
- Mouth & dental examination – dental disease can lead to problems in other areas of the body, such as the heart, so we like to keep a check on teeth and gums to ensure that we pick up on problems and take action quickly before things become more serious.
- Skin or fur examination – this is where we will check for lumps, bumps, skin and coat quality, and parasites.
- Lymph node checks – checking these can be super valuable. It can help give us an indication of all kinds of things from simple infections through to cancer. Lymph nodes can sometimes be tricky little things to feel so having us check them regularly is important and could help us detect serious problems.
- Joints or movement checks – whether or not your pet has joint issues, it’s good to keep a check on mobility. Arthritis is very common and often the early signs are easy to miss – there’s absolutely loads that can be done to help keep arthritic patients comfy and the earlier we start, the better and longer the pet’s life can be.
- Other checks – sometimes we might need to do things like feeling your pet’s tummy to assess the organs, or we might need to do other things such as blood tests – having a baseline blood screen means we can know what is normal for your pet and therefore we’ll pick up any problems much more quickly – blood tests are included as part of our Premier and Free-visit health plans, so that takes away the worry about paying for these.
In addition to this, we need to make sure that we’re taking care of the things that might impact you and your family too. Some types of dog worms can pose a risk to humans, commonly causing eye and other health problems, so it’s super important for us to regularly worm your pet with the correct dose of an appropriate worming medicine, then we can help keep everyone safe. Other parasites, such as fleas, are easily picked up in the garden, from untreated pets or wildlife such as hedgehogs – flea bites can be itchy to dogs, but they are also itchy and painful to humans too! Whilst there are lots of readily available flea products, it’s important to choose carefully because some products can be toxic to cats, some to rabbits, and even some to some dogs. Sadly, many others are not research-based or correctly tested – this means they may not work and are simply a waste of money. This is all part of our wonderful Pet Care Plans, which take care of health checking, preventative healthcare products and other things too. During our health checks, (which are part of the pet care plans) we can make sure you’re stocked up with correctly dosed, effective products to keep pets parasite-free, and keep your family flea-bite free!
To check out our Pet Care Plans, you can visit https://castlevets.ie/pet-care-plans/
Finally, it’s really important to consider how your pet feels at the vet. Is it a frightening experience for them? Do they find it overwhelming? Bringing them to see us for simple checks where we can give lots of treats and fuss can really help to build confidence, meaning that your pet begins to associate vet visits with positive things. If they do need some treatment in the future, it should be less scary for them because they will already feel comfortable with us. This is really important – we don’t want pets to be frightened of us! Don’t forget, if you’re signed up to our ‘Free-Visit’ plan, you get unlimited free visits, so it’s perfect for not only keeping your pet super healthy, but for keeping them super happy too!
