Preventive care for cats involves a lot of different things, but we're basically trying to keep our cats healthy, and we are trying to do things that will prevent problems from happening. That can involve parasites, vaccinations, or even just nutrition and husbandry.

From your veterinarian. That would be one option. Depending on what the medication is, we would be able to prescribe, and most things that we prescribe, we carry in-house. But there are certain ones that we would write you a prescription for or call that into a pharmacy where you and I would go to fill the medication, and you can pick up your pet medication there. You can fill them on the Online Store from here as well if you want to have them sent to you. But usually, you'd probably want to get it started, or at least get the first ones started, and then get your refills if necessary. If we carry it in-house, we would immediately prescribe it. One benefit is that you can get that before you ever walk out the door. If it was a medication that would be more long-term, we'd often recommend our online store just for convenience, or potentially a pharmacy locally that might carry that.

If it's a medication by mouth, some will just take it. Some people tell me that anything they put in front of their dog, they're going to eat. So that's great if you have one of those dogs. If you have one like Kyle that's a little wiser to the tricks, you can put it down the hatch. It's still effective. We may talk about other ways to administer medications, whether it's an injection, a topical, or liquid versus pills. Sometimes we might have it formulated differently. Dogs can be tricky sometimes.

There are different categories of pain medication. One we touched on in the other video is the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, like aspirin. So the dog form of that would be Carprofen or Galiprant. There are a lot of different names for those different types of medications. That's one category. Another category would be Gabapentin, and Tramadol. Those are other types of pain medication that work in a different pathway, and they often work what we call synergistically, which means together. When you give more than one pain medication, if it's necessary to control pain, then you can give less overall pain medication, which is our goal because we don't want a pet to have a side effect or a problem with the medication. And then also there are other methods of helping pain specifically. We also offer the K laser therapy, which is not necessarily a medication, but it is a treatment for pain. And again, you can lower the actual medication you're giving your pet, making it safer overall.

That sounds like a loaded question to me. But yes, there are a lot of human medications that we use for pets. The disclaimer would be that we would want to make sure that we're dosing your pet correctly for the problem that we're trying to treat. One general, common medication that's used at home, and I would still recommend checking with your veterinarian, but Benadryl is often given for itchiness, bee stings, and sometimes even just to calm or take the edge off as it does in people. Sometimes it can cause sleepiness. There are some medications, but without being prescribed for your pet, it's not something that I would necessarily recommend.

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.