WelcomeThe best way to treat disease is to prevent it from occurring. However, we understand that every treatment has the potential for side effects. Keeping this in mind our staff will work with you to customize a wellness plan that minimizes risk of side effects, while protecting your furry friend from illness.
Wellness PackagesWellness packages are an easy way for you to keep your furry family members happy and healthy - - these are an easy package that includes all the wellness recommendations to check that your pet is happy and healthy. They are a great tool for monitoring wellness and catching/monitoring diseases before they become detrimental to your pet's health and includes free exams for a year!
Preventative Bloodwork
Preventative Blood screening allows our doctors a chance to check to see how well your pet's body systems are functioning. Because pets cannot tell us that they have a pain in their side or that their belly hurts we rely a lot more on blood work than our human counterparts. Our Wellness Panels are great overviews of the body as a whole checking many systems to be sure that all is well. If an abnormality is found, then the doctors and staff will work with you to identify the cause and develop a plan to keep your furry companion happy and healthy and the effects to a minimum or to resolve the process if that is possible. Routine blood screening when your pet is healthy also helps our doctors develop a database of normal values for your pet when they are well. This allows them to better assess your pet if it should become ill as we know what is normal for your pet rather than just what is "normal" for the average pet.
Routine screening of adult pets checks:
- Urine Screen - evaluates kidney health, checks for early signs of diabetes, crystals that could indicate stone formation in the bladder, checking for urinary tract infections
- Blood Screen - Complete Blood Count, liver and kidney health, electrolyte values, blood protein value
- 4DX Heartworm and Tick Born Disease Test (for Dogs) - Checks for heartworm disease as well as 3 tick born diseases that can cause subtle illness in dogs and are very hard to diagnose (Lyme Disease, Ehrlichiosis (CK SP), and Aniplasmosis (CK SP))
- FeLV/FIV test in cats - checks for two debilitating viruses of cats that can be at low levels for long periods of time before causing problems for your furry friend. (Feline Leukemia and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus - kitty version of HIV).
- Fecal Parasite Check
- To be sure your furry friend hasn't picked up any intestinal friends that we don't want in our homes or our pets.
Heartworm/Internal Parasite Preventative
Internal Parasites live inside your pet, usually in the GI tract, and feed off the nutrients that your pet ingests. These parasites can cause disease in the GI tract of your pet as well as generalized disease. The most common signs are diarrhea and vomiting, however, many pets will have no symptoms at all until they are severely debilitated, or they can make another illness seem much worse. Some of these parasites are contracted in the womb of the mother (roundworms) where they encyst in the muscles and then appear throughout your pet's life even without exposure to parasites. Other parasites can be picked up from contaminated water or ground and ingested when your pet cleans their paws or plays with their toys.
We recommend monthly Heartworm/Intestinal parasite preventative in our canine friends. Heartworm disease is becoming more of a problem here in the Willamette Valley. Over the last 5-10 years we have seen a large increase in cases and some of them are pets that have no travel history, which didn't use to be the case. This disease is easily prevented with a monthly preventative, however, once contracted, the treatment for heartworm disease is expensive and can have severe side effects. Heartworms are foot long worms that live in the large vessels leading from the heart to the lungs. They cause inflammation of the vessels, thickening of the walls and constant irritation. Over time they cause heart failure in your pet and can lead to death. The heartworm can live for two years or more in your dog and when it dies it breaks apart and showers the lungs with worm fragments that clog the small blood vessels preventing blood from circulating through the lung fields and back to the heart.
Monthly and Routine Parasite control will take care of some of the routine infections that we commonly see, however there are many parasites that these treatments do not cure, therefor annual or semi-annual (depending on risk) fecal screening is performed to identify parasites that our routine treatments do not treating.
All dogs need Heartgard or Interceptor for Monthly preventative year round and Annual Blood Testing
Flea Control
Fleas are insects that live on the blood that they remove from our pet's bodies. They drain your pet's reserves of blood causing anemia and are also very irritating to your pet. For every adult flea that you see on your pet there are 99 eggs, larvae and pupae developing in the area. For this reason it is very important to prevent fleas from living on your pet! Once you are seeing them you have a very large problem that will be difficult to get under control. Monthly flea control, year round, is recommended in our mild Willamette Valley climate.
Fleas are also an intermediate host for tapeworms and can spread this parasite to your pet and children.
We Recommend:
- Frontline or Advantage for Dogs
- Frontline or Advantage Multi for cats (advantage multi is also a topical monthly dewormer)
Vaccinations
Vaccinations are a key way to keep our furry family members protected from some deadly diseases. There are many very safe, very effective vaccinations available for pets. There are also many ineffective vaccines available. We have researched what works and what doesn't as well as the risks and will work with you to create a vaccination protocol for your pet based on their exposure to diseases.
No vaccine is 100% effective, so there is still a chance that your pet may contract disease, even if they are vaccinated. However, the vaccine will make the disease less severe and you may not even know they are sick!
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