Now a day there is much information available about how you can regularly check up health of your doggie, by just sitting at home and surfing. More than 70% of pet parents say they research online about their pet’s health before or after veterinary visits.
There are also many online veterinarian websites, where you can take appointments or seek advice whenever you need. But how do you know all the information is vetted and given by certified vet only? Even If you are getting proper guidance, it is not about that particular disease only.
You must be going to annual vaccinations as practiced in our country but that is not enough. A lot can happen in between, because we all know dogs age much faster than humans. Hence, it is very important to have the complete health check up of your puppy once or twice in a year. You can also increase the frequency as they get older.
How Vet Health Checkup Is Different Than Your Health Checkup Of Pooch?
When you are following steps available online to check the health of your furry pal, you are just concentrating on major issues like either checking some habits, change in behavior, eating, drinking, toilet habits or major parts of body like ear, feet, nose, eyes, mouth, weight, etc, While a vet know all in and out of your dogs and catch early symptoms of major disease by just chatting with you. For longer age of your pooch, it is very important to detect and cure the diseases on early stages.
Prevention Is Always, Better Than Cure:-
Vet and nurses are aware of all the early signs of every disease that you might not know. The content available online mainly focus on keeping away heart worms, fleas and ticks, lice and other insects. You might be completely unaware about early signs of liver or kidney failure, cancer and other infections your dog might be having right now. So, don’t avoid vet appointments just because it seems to you that your doggy is healthy. It is always said that prevention is better than cure. Hence, regular health checkups are very important for wellbeing of your pet.
Blood Tests:-
Blood tests always help to discover underlying disease for both humans and pets! Some early symptoms of disease have early signs inside body or in blood than over the body. So during health checkup, if a vet find any such sign in your furry pal’s blood you can cure it before it has any effect on your furry friend’s body.
Microchips:-
As per our country’s dog act, all dogs that have reached 3 months of age must be micro chipped regardless of registration status. Microchip in your dog ensure that if the pet is lost, all the details are available on national database(Note:- From 21st of April, 2017 all data and pet records previously located in the National Pet Register (NPR) database will be managed by Central Animal Records (CAR)). The procedure is very safe and your pet may feel little pain similar to vaccination. Some microchip has body temperature measurement for early detection of any unpleasant change in your dog’s body.
Vaccines:-
Earlier, it was believed in our country if pets are more vaccinated the chance of them to be healthy is more. But it’s not true! Overdose of vaccines can also create major issues with your dog. Also, there are different timings and dosage varies for different breeds of dogs. There is also possibility that your dog can have allergic reaction to some vaccines. So, it is always advisable to consult a vet and ask what is best for your dog before providing so many vaccines to your puppy. Once you are aware of all the allergies of your Fido, you can treat or vaccinate him accordingly.
Behavioral Changes:-
Changes in behavior of your dog may have many reasons like anxiety, fear of change in surroundings, aging effect and several medical problems of your pooch. Regular health checkup with vet helps to find root cause of the problem and complete elimination of it.
Neutering:-
Many vets suggest that it is very important to neuter your dog to control pets over population and to control behavioral issue in dogs. In most of the cases, dog is neutered in shelter homes but if you have an adult dog adopted from a pet owner rather than from a pet store or just got a little puppy, there are chances, it is not neutered. So, visiting veterinarian helps you find whether your dear friend is neutered or not and have appropriate surgery, if required.
So, rather than being overconfident or careless about your dog’s wellbeing, it is always advisable to take appointment of nearest veterinarian once or twice in a year for complete health checkup. Because healthy pets are happy pets and happy pets means happy you!
