Wellness and Preventive Care
Wellness Visits With Time to Actually Talk
Preventive care is about more than checking a box once a year. It’s about knowing your pet when they’re well, following their health over time and recognizing changes as early as possible.
At Abbey Animal Hospital, our standard appointments are 30 minutes because good veterinary care takes time. We want time to listen to what you’ve noticed at home, perform a thorough examination, discuss our findings and explain what we recommend — and why.
The more we know about what’s normal for your pet, the better positioned we are to recognize when something changes.
Know your pet’s normal.
Preventive Care Built Around Your Pet
Every pet is different, and their healthcare needs change throughout their life.
We follow current veterinary guidelines and medical evidence while considering your pet’s age, breed, lifestyle, medical history and individual risk when making preventive-care recommendations.
Depending on your pet, that may include:
- Comprehensive physical examinations
- Vaccinations
- Heartworm, flea and tick prevention
- Intestinal parasite screening
- Dental and oral health assessment
- Nutrition and weight management
- Behavioral and lifestyle discussions
- Preventive laboratory screening
- Age-appropriate diagnostic testing
Our role isn’t simply to tell you what we recommend. We want you to understand why it matters for your pet.
What Happens During a Wellness Visit?
A good wellness appointment starts with you. You see your pet every day, and seemingly small changes can sometimes tell us a great deal. Changes in appetite, thirst, weight, activity, mobility, sleep, behavior or bathroom habits are all worth mentioning.
Your veterinarian will talk with you about how your pet has been doing and perform a comprehensive physical examination that may include evaluation of:
- Overall physical condition
- Eyes and ears
- Skin and coat
- Teeth, gums and oral health
- Heart and lungs
- Weight and body condition
- Joints, mobility and comfort
- Nutrition
- Behavior
- Vaccination needs
- Parasite prevention
We’ll then discuss our findings and any preventive screening, treatment or follow-up care we recommend.
Looking Beyond the Physical Exam
A physical examination tells us a great deal about your pet, but it can’t tell us everything.
Bloodwork, urinalysis and other preventive screening can provide important information about what’s happening inside your pet’s body — sometimes before there are obvious outward signs that something has changed.
For adult and senior pets, appropriate screening also gives us something particularly valuable: your pet’s own health history.
Following results over time allows us to look for changes and trends rather than relying only on whether an individual result falls inside a standard reference range.
Finding changes earlier can give us more opportunity to investigate, intervene or manage a developing condition — with the goal of protecting your pet’s health, comfort and quality of life for as long as possible.
Dental Health Is Part of Overall Health
We know our own dental health matters to our overall health — and the same is true for our pets.
That’s why your pet’s teeth and gums are evaluated as part of their regular wellness examination. Dental disease often develops gradually and pets don’t always show obvious signs of oral pain, so recognizing changes early is an important part of preventive care.
When appropriate, we take dental photographs during wellness visits to document what we can see and track visible changes over time. We’ll show you what we’re seeing, explain what it means and talk with you about your pet’s individual dental health.
Our goal is to stay ahead of dental disease whenever we can.
Depending on your pet’s needs, we may recommend professional dental cleanings along with appropriate at-home dental care to help maintain a healthy mouth and slow the progression of periodontal disease.
Addressing dental disease earlier can mean a healthier, more comfortable mouth now — and may help reduce the likelihood of advanced periodontal disease requiring more extensive treatment or extractions later in life.
You’ll Leave Knowing What Comes Next
We don’t want you leaving an appointment wondering what happens now.
Before you go, we’ll make sure you understand what we found, what we recommend and what comes next — whether that’s simply their next wellness visit, preventive screening, monitoring something at home, treatment or additional care.
Is your pet due for a wellness visit?
New patients welcome.