Gentle Care for Aging Pets
Your aging pet may walk a little slower and sleep a little more, but he’s still the fun and happy companion he’s always been. Help him enjoy his golden years with Pet Wellness Group’s senior pet care services.
Caring For Senior Pets
As a loving pet owner, some aspects of senior care will come naturally to you. Your aging animal needs your love, attention, and time – but we don’t need to tell you that.
What we should tell you is that senior animals have specific dietary, exercise, and oral health needs. For this reason, we recommend that animals over a certain age come into our clinic more often. Instead of the usual annual exam, we like to see our elderly patients twice a year.
These extra visits will give us a better chance of catching medical problems early. Each time, our healthcare team will perform these checks:
- Complete physical examination
- Rectal examination
- Oral examination
- Evaluation of ears, eyes, and organs
We will also check your pet’s weight and perform any necessary lab work. And if your animal is more than seven years old, we will try to obtain a complete blood count, thyroid screening, and biochemistry profile at every visit. From there, we will move forward with a treatment plan for any problems we identify.
Bloodwork
At Pet Wellness Group, we place great importance on preventative medicine – especially for our elderly patients. Regular blood screenings allow us to catch and treat diseases early.
Bring your pet in for annual bloodwork. Each time, our team will perform a biochemistry profile and complete blood count. We send these tests to our reference laboratory and typically have answers back next day.
Urinalysis
As your pet ages, his kidneys become more vulnerable to inflammation and infection. Unfortunately, these issues don’t present themselves in a noticeable way until nearly 75% of the organ becomes dysfunctional. The good news is that, with urinalysis, we don’t have to wait that long to diagnose a problem.
We try to perform a urinalysis at every wellness examination. That way, we can stay informed on the function of your pet’s kidneys. This test will also signify whether your animal has diabetes, a urinary tract infection, or kidney stones.
Diagnostic Imaging
Is your pet slowing down, gaining weight, or walking with a limp? Simple aging could be the root of the problem. Or, there could be an undiagnosed illness at work. Although your pet can’t give us the answers directly, diagnostic imaging can.
An x-ray is non-invasive and allows us to look closer at the internal workings of your pet. If we suspect that your animal has arthritis, organ failure, or an underlying injury, diagnostic imaging will give us more information.
