As a pet owner you have the responsibility to ensure your dog or cat stays healthy. When you first adopt a dog or cat it is best for you to seek a veterinary professional to help you stay on track.  This focus is referred to as pet wellness in the eyes of veterinary hospitals. Here at Animal Hospital Maple Orchard, we have an abundance of knowledge and skills to assist you in your journey as a pet parent.

With with dog it starts basic health.  Has a veterinarian examined your dog and ensured there is nothing unexpected wrong?  A licensed vet can perform a tip of the nose to tip of the tail evaluation to check everything they can with their expertise. 

Once your dog has been declared healthy, the next focus is to ensure your dog has vaccines to prevent infectious disease.  There are a core group of vaccines that your dog should receive depending on your vet's recommendations.  Those vaccines include:

- Rabies
- Distemper (DHPP)
- Bordetalla (kennel cough)
- Leptospirosis 

There are additional vaccines that will be discussed depending on your plans with your dog.  Those include the following along with a basic outline of reasons indicating your dogs need for this additional protection.

- Influenza (Day care or boarding facilities)
- Lyme (Depending on outdoor activity or travel plans where       lyme disease is more prevalent)

To maintain your dogs health there is one more form of wellness that is crucial to maintaining health.  This category of wellness is testing annually (fecal and heartworm) and prevention (flea, tick, and heartworm preventions).

A fecal test is a screen of your dog or cats stool performed by the lab to look for parasites.  This should be done once a year.

A heartworm test is a screen of your dog's heartworm disease screening.  This test is 3 drops of blood that is tested in the hospital.  This test should be done once a year.