Pet Care Wellness
At Northfield Veterinary Hospital, we take a proactive approach to your pet’s healthcare. Please keep scrolling to learn more about our pet wellness.
Northfield Veterinary Hospital
By focusing on keeping your pet healthy rather than just treating problems when they appear, we ensure your pet enjoys a high quality of life through their golden years — and it gives you more good years with them, too.
At Northfield Veterinary Hospital, we understand that your pet is more than just a pet–they’re a member of your family. At our animal hospital, we strongly believe in preventive care. After all, it is much easier and less costly to prevent a health problem from developing than to treat an existing one. That is why we recommend pet wellness visits for all of our patients, regardless of age or species.
Our veterinarians will thoroughly check your pet from head to tail during the exam, looking for any signs of illness or injury. The physical exam helps us identify any potential health problems your pet may have. We will also update their vaccination record and administer any vaccines that may be needed. Our goal is to catch any problems early so that we can provide the best possible care for your pet.
We recommend annual wellness bloodwork for all of our healthy pets. This helps our veterinarians in the early detection of diagnosing and treating a variety of health conditions, including diabetes, liver disease, kidney dysfunction, and thyroid disease, to name a few. Routine bloodwork and physical exam give our veterinarians the most information about your pet’s health to make the best treatment and prevention recommendations. Most wellness bloodwork panels can be paired with your pet’s annual stool sample and/or heartworm and tick testing to offer a discount.
Heartworm prevention is strongly recommended for all of our dogs and cats. Due to the unpredictable seasonal temperature changes, the American Heartworm Society recommends year-round prevention for animals in every state. A single bite from an infected mosquito can put your pet at risk of developing heartworm disease. While animals that spend lots of time outside (when mosquitoes are feeding) may have a higher risk, even dogs and cats that rarely go outside are at risk for heartworm disease.
While there are treatments available for dogs with heartworm disease, they aren’t without potential medical complications, high costs, and logistical problems (like strict crate rest for several months). Even after treatment for heartworm disease, your dog can be left with irreversible damage to the heart and lungs. There is currently no treatment for heartworm disease in cats. Prevention is key to keeping your dog or cat from developing heartworm disease.
We believe that pet wellness is essential for a happy and healthy pet. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.