We want your dog to be on flea, tick, and heartworm prevention all year round. Now, we do have a few options. We have injectable heartworm medication, which can be given every 12 months, so you don't have to worry about that. With your flea and tick prevention, we have one that's available every three months. Otherwise, we do have the more common monthly prevention for both of those.

So the first thing we do, as with any appointment, is a thorough exam. This is making sure that your dog is healthy enough to be on prevention. Then also, with heartworm prevention, we like to run a heartworm test before we start, just to make sure that we don't have any heartworms present before starting that prevention.

It halts diseases before they start, such as fleas, ticks, and heartworm.

So preventative care is stopping diseases before they start.

They sure could. It depends on what we're looking for and whether the dog is here for a wellness visit versus here for being sick. And often, the question would be, does my pet need to be poked more than once to draw the blood? We can often draw one sample and run many tests off of that, which might alleviate many of the owner's concerns about running multiple tests. We need to run most of our tests with minimal volume compared to their total body volume. So they're not donating blood to us for that type of thing, as it’s not a large amount of it. And then, we can run several different tests if we deem that necessary, but we'll take it step by step and, depending on what the first lab test shows, that may give us an answer, or we may need to run other tests.

If we find something that's abnormal, we will want to follow up with that. These lab tests are one moment in time, and so it might be a very short-term elevation or abnormality. And so we want to know in two weeks, or four weeks, what's going on with that value. Did it go back to normal, and we don't need to worry about it, or is it going up further, and we need to investigate the underlying cause? If we're treating something, we want to follow up—that would be another reason to see if that's working and what we need to do from there.

I would say even more so when they're seniors. We know that pets age much quicker than we do and not that age is a disease, but things tend to happen more commonly as we age. We recommend certain lab work for all patients, no matter the age, but we suggest what seniors are more at risk for when they come to see us.

If we do them in the clinic, those tests would be the same day while you're still at your visit. And then, if there are some that we send out, it may be a day or two—that would be a typical turnaround for most routine lab work.

At the Animal Hospital of Statesville, we are big on fear-free approaches because we know that stress and fear can cause problems. If a pet is struggling, that's not good for them, nor is it good for our staff. Sometimes we use bribery to get things done. We also may use distraction and, if needed, we may use calming medications.