Preventive Medicine

Part of a holistic approach to health and wellness is to practice preventive medicine.  Simply stated, this involves taking steps while healthy to prevent an illness  from happening.  It is why we humans get screening exams such as mammograms and blood pressure screenings, and why we take vitamins and have our cholesterol levels checked.   

Preventive medicine is an important part of keeping your pet healthy as well.  And yet the majority of pet owners don’t visit the veterinarian’s office until their pet is sick.  A routine blood test for your dog?  Most people don’t even consider it. Yet a simple blood test can detect the beginnings of a health issue long before it manifests.  Nipped in the bud early, it can save the pet owner thousands of dollars in veterinary bills long-term.  It has always been my philosophy that while maintaining good health is not cheap, spending the money on good food and regular veterinary visits  beginning in puppyhood is less expensive than feeding a pet cheap food and skimping on veterinary care, only to have to deal with a major illness later on in the pet’s life that quite possibly could have been avoided with proper care.

Dogs’ bodies age much faster than a human body, as evidenced by their much shorter life span.  In a dog’s later years, a veterinary visit once a year is equivalent to an over-50  human going to the doctor once every five or six years.  Not a smart thing to do.  I’m certainly not advocating that you take your dog to the vet once a month.  However,  for an adult dog, a checkup every six months could easily extend that dog’s life by a significant amount of time.  A baseline blood test at a young age could serve to show patterns of changes over time if the dog is tested on a regular basis.  With my own dogs, I have a complete blood test done each year until they are about 7 or 8 (and depending on their size – small dogs age less quickly than large dogs).  After that, they get tested every six months, along with urine testing that can pick up bladder stones or possible kidney problems before they manifest physically.  Being a canine massage therapist, I am continually running my hands all over my dogs’ bodies, and so can easily pick up new lumps and bumps.  If you are not inclined to do this, a regular checkup by a veterinarian can detect new growths early on, most of which are quite benign, but some of which are not.

I want to say a few words here about vaccinations.  The only time many people visit the vet’s office is for those “annual” vaccinations.  Vaccinations are big money for veterinarians, and they want you to keep coming in for those whether they are truly needed or not. Some, like the Parvo vaccine, are very important, especially in young dogs. But in many cases, they are not. Unless you board your pet at a kennel, vaccines like bortadella are useless.  Otherwise known as “kennel cough”, if contracted, it is easily cured by a round of antibiotics.  Yet veterinarians often don’t tell you that, and just insist that it is part of the package.  Rabies vaccinations are now required only every three years, and a couple years ago, a bill was passed in California, AB258 (or Molly’s Bill) exempting dogs from the rabies vaccine who may have “dangerous or lethal reactions to the vaccine”.  The humane societies won’t tell you about this bill. What veterinarians also don’t usually tell you is that many dogs have severe reactions to rabies vaccinations.  Some have gone into anaphylactic shock and have died or very nearly died.  So many of these cases have occurred that this bill was passed to protect these dogs from having to receive this vaccination again. If you have a drug-sensitive dog or one that has had a bad reaction to the rabies vaccine in the past (vomiting, bloody diarrhea, lethargy, etc), it is proactive pet parenting in addition to preventive medicine to alert your veterinarian to this fact and request an exemption for the next one.  If your vet doesn’t agree, find a vet who does.  Bad reactions to drugs get worse each time the immune system gets exposed to it. Titer testing has proven that the rabies vaccine is active in a pet’s system for much longer than 3 years.  And because the required dose is exactly the same for a Yorkshire terrier as it is for a Great Dane, smaller dogs have that much more in their system for a longer period of time.  Overvaccination has been tied to the epidemic of canine cancer we have experienced in the last couple decades, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Your pet depends on you for everything: food, exercise, medical care, and love.  They can’t tell you when they are hurting or don’t feel well.  If you happen to be a very astute pet parent who is in tune with your pet’s normal behavior patterns, you will most likely be able to pick up on problems early on.  But some dogs are quite stoic and don’t let on until it is too late, and some people are just not very alert.  A little prevention goes a long way in safeguarding their health and wellbeing.  It’s part of being a responsible pet owner.