Preventive Care and what it means to you, your pet, and us

​     Have you visited us yet? If yes- great! We hope you liked your visit. If not, we hope to meet you soon.
       Not matter if you have visited us or if you will be visiting us in the near future you will learn very quickly that we focus on PREVENTION. Yes, we can prevent or help lessen certain illnesses that can cause disease in your pets.
      We truly want to be part of your pet’s health care team and with that said we have tons of knowledge for you and your pet. We know not all pets are equal. For example, maybe you have a small dog that uses pee pads and does not ever touch the ground outside. Perhaps you have farm animals and you have a working farm dog that has the job of living outside all year long and its job it to protect livestock.
     Those are two extremes but you get the idea. Not all pets have the same life style. That is why we ask lots of questions at each visit. We want to make sure we are providing your pet and you with the proper preventative care.
     Preventive care is focusing on disease that we can prevent such as rabies. Rabies is a zoonotic disease. This means not only can a dog, cat, raccoon, and other wildlife get it but also YOU.  Yes, humans can get rabies. We can provide you protection to a degree, by providing rabies vaccines to those pets that we consider domesticated animals that live with us.
    Other preventable diseases are part of what we call CORE vaccines for your pet. These are vaccines that we know will either help prevent a disease completely or help to reduce the risk of disease in your pet.
    Heartworm is another preventable disease. Did you know that both dogs and cats can get heartworm? They can! Heartworm is transmitted through a bite from a female mosquito. It only takes one positive mosquito that is carrying heartworm to infect your pet. We think year round protection is truly the best option to prevent heartworm in your pet.  
    We do annual blood work on your pet just like your doctor likes to have done on you. This is part of a screening to make sure all internal organs are functioning optimally. If we are able to get this test done every year then we can also look at previous tests for comparisons and have a baseline to work from that is specific to your pet.
    Sadly most of our pets will get dental disease but here at Companion Veterinary Health Center we focus on using at home prevention. We know that brushing your pet’s teeth is the best option but it does not always go as planned. We carry other options such as a special diet that helps to clean the teeth and also special treats and meal additives. We also always offer you technician time to talk about how to properly care for your pet’s teeth at home.
     In fact did you know that you can request a technician consultation at any time? You can, sometimes they may need to get the doctor involved but if you have a fairly simple question and want to meet with one of our veterinary nurses we would be happy to set that up for you.
    Our goal is to help your pet live a long and healthy life. We can’t prevent all disease. We wish we could but that sadly that is not reality. However, we use all the tools we have available to us to prevent what we can. 
    Please call us at 860-779-6070 with any questions you may have for us.