Comprehensive Pet Wellness & Prevention Exams
You go see your own doctor for routine check-ups —your pet deserves the same comprehensive attention to care with bi-annual exams. Newport Animal Hospital wellness exams are conducted to assess your dog or cat’s overall health and establish baseline assessments for future use when they become ill.
Pet wellness visits are a critical component to ensuring your dog or cat leads a happy, healthy life. Wellness visits are recommended twice a year. Even if your pet is not showing signs of a problem, wellness exams allow us to detect illness early and develop a timely, effective treatment plan. With many ailments, an early diagnosis can vastly improve outcomes. More often than not, your cat or dog may not present any signs of illness. And remember, the cost of preventative care is always less expensive than the cost of treating illness or disease. Because of this, we encourage you to take advantage of our preventative pet wellness packages.
As a full-service, small animal veterinary hospital, we are equipped to diagnose and treat your pet through every stage of their life. You can feel confident they are receiving excellent medical care in a compassionate environment. We also work closely with board-certified specialists and surgeons to ensure continuity of care in even the most complicated cases. We are your pet’s family doctor for life!
These are the components of a typical dog and cat wellness exam:
- Vaccines – Administered based on a pet’s risk factors.
- Heart – Listen to your pet’s heart for murmurs, arrhythmias, and any signs of heart disease.
- Lungs – Listen to your pet’s lungs to detect infections, diseases, and assess overall pulmonary health.
- Mouth – Dental disease is the most common disease in cats and dogs. An exam of their teeth and mouth allows us to determine the level of infection or impaction, if any. Puppies and kittens also need to be checked to ensure their teeth are developing properly.
- Eyes – Ocular conditions can be prevented by regular care and screenings. We look for dry eyes, cataracts, corneal ulcers, and glaucoma.
- Ears – We check for ear mites, redness, odor, discharge, or other indications of ear infections.
- Derma – We feel for lumps, bumps, swellings, skin discolorations, lesions or patterns of hair loss or thinning. These may be signs of allergies, systemic problems, or metabolic diseases.
- Joints and Muscles – We exam your pet’s legs to identify swollen joints, reduced muscle tone and changes in muscle size. In young pets, we will look for developmental issues, and in our older friends, we detect signs of arthritis.
- Bloodwork – A complete annual physical exam should include a minimum of heartworm, blood, and urine tests. These simple tests give us a baseline archive of your dog or cat’s overall health and may point to underlying diseases.
- Parasite Prevention & Control – Discuss heartworm, flea, tick and parasite control. A fecal examination allows us to check for existing parasites or worms
- Consulting – Talk with you about your pet’s behavior, appetite, exercise habits, and regular activities at home.