The most common thing we see with dogs is that the owners notice bad breath. That is one of the common symptoms. Other things to look for are if they're dropping their food, if they're eating slower than they typically used to, if they're not eating as much, if they're shy from you being around their head—any changes like that could be an indication that your dog needs dental care. Now, the hard part about dogs, and cats for that matter, when it comes to their mouths is they don't typically show you any signs of pain. It’s essential to come in for regular wellness visits so that we can evaluate the mouth and determine if there's anything off because most of the time when we find something, the owners are unaware.

We generally recommend having kittens spayed and neutered by six months. We don't want them going into heat or starting to develop roaming behaviors. Six months is a great time to spay and neuter kittens if they haven't already had that done at the shelter.

Your kitten will need to have a deworming protocol, a parasitic preventative plan going forward so that you guys don't have fleas or ticks in your houses or on your cat. In addition, kittens need vaccinations, optimal nutrition, and guidelines for good behavior.

We’re generally going to do the core vaccines for all cats, which is the FVRCP, the upper respiratory viruses, panleukopenia, and distemper. And we're also going to do the leukemia vaccine and rabies. But they're not all done at the same time. We spread them out over a series, but they're all very critical vaccines.

Your kitten should come to the veterinarian about every three weeks until they're about four months of age. We have a series of things we're going to want to talk about and a series of vaccines. Most importantly, we're going to follow the progress of your kitty behavior-wise and health-wise and make sure that they're headed in the right direction.

If you have any specific questions, save them till the end, because they may answer them before you even get there. We like to spend at least a good 30 minutes with clients that have a new kitten and make sure that all their questions are answered, and that they have access to information that they're going to need from home also.

We're going to probably ask some questions of you about the kitten’s vaccine history. Then we're going to do a thorough physical from their nose to their tail, and have a good look at the kitten to make sure that everything looks right there. We’ll discuss behavioral issues, preventative care, parasites, and we’ll do a fecal on your kitty and get the vaccines started.

Yes, we recommend core vaccines for your kitten because... I'll just tell you a personal story. My cats are indoor cats. My son left his door open, and a bat flew in, and my cat killed the bat. I think about 15% of bats in California carry rabies—maybe even higher than that. If my cat had not been vaccinated for rabies, we would have a potentially challenging situation on our hands. And cats get out all the time. We want them protected with the FVRCP and leukemia.

At your first visit, what we're going to be looking for is their temperament, demeanor, and their general energy level to determine whether or not we think there may be something that the puppy's come with. And then we're going to be looking in their eyes and their ears and their nose and their mouth and listening to their chest and feeling their intestines and looking at how they walk. These are all things that are part of the physical exam. We also collect information from you about how things are going at home to determine a good physical assessment of your dog.

We recommend having most puppies spayed or neutered right around six months. For some of the larger breeds of dogs, we recommend that we wait until later on because of their bone development, so with the large breed dogs, we'll discuss whether to wait. There are even a few breeds that we find that there may be a reduction in cancers say if we wait a little bit longer, such as with golden retrievers. That being said, some large breed dogs do have some behavioral issues that come up, and we want to stay on top of that. We don't want to see any signs of aggression in an eight-month-old dog. We may want to consider neutering them earlier in those cases. It’s essential that you stay in close contact, and that six-month visit is so crucial for this reason.