Great questions. There are different classifications of NSAIDs, which stands for non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and while dogs can take aspirin, there are what we would consider better medications and potentially safer medications for inflammation and pain. You can't mix aspirin with some of the right medications that we would recommend that would be better. Aside from aspirin, a lot of the other non-steroidal over-the-counter medications, like ibuprofen and some other things, could actually be very harmful and cause things like stomach ulcers that could even lead to a perforation of the stomach.

Since she's asking the veterinarian, the answer would be yes. Even if I wasn't asking the veterinarian, Google should say, ask your veterinarian.

I think so. That's one of those things you may not realize, but by doing proper prevention, you're helping to prevent a lot of diseases. The preventative medication, making sure your dog's on a leash and in a safe place, the seatbelt or the car restraint. So all those things are prevention. If you practice them well, you can keep your dog safe and avoid a lot of problems.

We tend to focus on puppies. We touched a little bit on that. We think about vaccines and puppy diseases because their immunity is not fully developed or not as robust as it could be. The preventative for the middle stage of life could be to keep them agile and energetic, so they can live a full life. That can be by preventing parasites and feeding them proper nutrition so they're not overweight and their joints don't feel like an old dog's joints when they're only four years old. Later in life, not that old age is a disease, but things tend to hurt a little worse as we get older. We can be more susceptible to diseases as the immune system isn't as robust as we age. So think about all those stages.

Prevention is not just medical prevention. Prevention for puppies may crate training your puppy when you're gone so it doesn't eat things that could cause a blockage. As your pet ages, there are two ends of the spectrum, so take precautions so it doesn't hurt itself. Raise his food bowl, and put the carpet down so they don't slip. So there are lots of different aspects of preventive control. Along those lines that we haven't talked about is behavior. We talk a lot about client education. One reason that pets end up at a shelter is that they're unwanted due to a lot of behavioral issues. So we talk about that in the puppy stages, but if you come to us with a pet that's older, there's still hope, and there are still things that we can do to educate. At that point, it may not be preventative, but it may be something we can work on and do the hard work to prevent problems later.

I answered this yes and no. We need to understand how preventatives work and understand our pet's environment. Sometimes we get calls about when a pet has a lot of fleas, and they're with four other pets at home, and the owner calls and says, I want something for my pet's fleas, and they apply that. Then, two days later, they're still seeing fleas. That would not be because the flea product is not working if it was a good quality product, but it's because of the environment. That product is working as best it can, but you're in a flea-infested environment, so it's going to take time to break that cycle. If you're consistent with a good quality product, yes, but you could still see some fleas and ticks during that time, depending on the situation.

I think a lot of people stop preventive care when it starts getting cold. Fleas don't care if it's cold because your dog's nice and warm. Ticks aren't quite as persistent. It depends on your area. In North Carolina, we have 70-degree days and then 30-degree days. It's just crazy weather even through the winter. Plus, a lot of our pets are inside pets, so they're not living out in the element, and they're living in our climate-controlled homes with us, which fleas and ticks love. In that sense, if they're mainly inside, or only if your dog goes out to go to the bathroom, it can pick up fleas. If your dog stays inside all the time, you can bring them in. So don't get complacent and think that your dog can never get fleas because I've seen it happen many times, and I know you have too. You may have an inside dog that maybe never leaves, but the cat goes in and out. You have to think of all aspects, and you may not see them on a cat as much because they give it all to the dog. It's a cat thing.

How much time do we have? There are a lot of things. One I think about is infectious diseases. That would be preventative care with vaccinations. Certain things that we won't see would be prevented with a rabies vaccine and parvo vaccine for our dogs. Depending on your dog's lifestyle, your pet may need an influenza vaccine if it's around a lot of other dogs. There are other lifestyle vaccines that we would recommend. You can prevent intestinal problems. Proper nutrition would prevent vomiting and diarrhea, which no one wants to see in their pet or clean up. Pancreatitis can be prevented. A lot of times, we want to feed them what we're eating, but their little bodies can't handle it. We're not always eating the healthiest, but their little bodies are definitely not made for those foods either. Then it can lead to pancreatitis or upset stomach that we can prevent by feeding properly. A few other things that I wrote down are skin issues. We can prevent skin problems by preventing parasites like fleas and ticks. Also, we can prevent heart disease by keeping your pet at a healthy weight and doing proper exercise. A lot of those preventative measures are very similar to a lot of human preventive care measures.

That's probably alluding to heartworm prevention. Heartworm prevention can be given in different ways, but monthly is one way to give it. As Kyle mentioned in the earlier video, not only does it prevent heartworm, but also external parasites like flea and ticks, and internal parasites, like intestinal worms. A lot of preventatives have a combination effect. That would be a monthly one. Other things, depending on if your pet has a specific problem, might include the monthly allergy medications they need. There may be some others that are specifically monthly. That's all I can think about right now.

The first thing that we do is talk to you about the history. If you're there and your pet is completely well, those visits are few and far apart because somebody almost always thinks of a question or a concern that they have, but they save it until their visit because they didn't think it was serious enough to come in before, which is fine. We can talk about that. So we are really big on client education. We typically talk about the pet's lifestyle, which we talked about in the previous episode, because we want to know what your pet does daily and how things are going.

So history and conversation are one of the very first things that we do. Then we put our hands on your pet. The physical exam is a really important part. Our pets don't always talk to us and tell us what's going on. They might give us a clue, and we may be observant, or we might have busy lifestyles, and we don't notice that they've had a raging ear infection or problem that we didn't see. So we put our hands on them and do a physical exam, and then we may talk about testing. Depending on what that visit entails, we may do blood work and poop checks. We do a lot of poop checking for parasites. It tells us a lot about the health of a pet's gut. Then we educate on the next step, how to go forward in keeping your pet healthy if they are healthy. I know you've talked about the exam as being from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, so you check their eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, and lymph nodes.

A lot of times, if a pet comes in for limping on the right side of the back, I don't go to that back right leg initially because if it hurts, the first thing I do is hurt your pet. Then everything's going to hurt when I touch it. So I'll start maybe on the front legs or the left, and then the right, and owners will often say, no, it's the right. I did hear you, but there is a reason for examining the whole pet. As you said, you don't just say, okay, well, that leg looks okay or that leg has an issue. Let's look at everything. It would be a very rare occasion if your pet came in for one problem that we didn't do a full physical exam because we feel like that's very necessary to do. We listen to the heart and lungs and feel in their belly to see if there are any enlargement of organs, anything out of place. We palpate the abdomen, and we feel the joints by flexing and extending the joints. We're feeling for any problems. Sometimes we can feel problems internally just by palpating outside, whether it's a mass or tumor, an enlargement of an organ, or maybe it's a stone in the bladder. There are certain things that we can feel from the outside. And then just listen to the heart and the lungs, feel the pet from top to bottom, check their skin, look for external parasites, and lift the tail. We check everything.

Our general recommendation, as far as the veterinary visit and exam go, is twice yearly for our pets. When they get older, we may talk about more testing and things that need to be done. Preventative care may entail more things throughout the month or the year besides just exams.