Human food has a tendency to make your dog overweight. They're already getting their normal diet. We probably aren't taking into account the calories that the extra human food adds, let alone that our food is sometimes really fatty and can cause things like pancreatitis.

I'm going to answer that and say, "Only if your dog needs a prescription diet." Most of these prescription foods, and I underline the word most, not all, are formulated for dogs that have medical issues that require dietary changes to help treat medical issues such as kidney disease, liver disease, heart disease, and diabetes. So for those cases, yes, prescription diets are superior. But if you have a young, healthy dog that has no underlying medical issues, the only thing that I would say is that a prescription diet might benefit the teeth.

This is my favorite point. So grain-free diets right now have been going around as the big fad—that's really important in people's opinions. And maybe at one point, it was for certain things, but I think it's getting overused. Unless your dog has been diagnosed with a food allergy by a dermatologist or they're having skin issues or they’ve seen an internist for GI upsets, we should not be giving dogs these grain-free diets. It's actually correlated to a horrible heart condition called DCM, and that's oftentimes fatal. So let's prevent that by not starting a grain-free diet unless it's been prescribed.

Prescription diets may be better for your dog if your dog has certain conditions that require that prescription. So as a whole, happy, healthy dogs don't necessarily need prescription diets, but it’s not going to hurt your dog. But unless certain things come up, whether they have osteoarthritis and we want to make sure that they get lubrication of their joints, you probably want to avoid a prescription diet due to cost.

I'm definitely going to say “no” to that question, and the simple reason why is dogs are carnivores. I'm not even talking about domestic though. Let's talk about dogs, canines. They are carnivorous animals. So to completely remove all animal protein from their diet is not how God created them. Can they live for a period of time? Heck yeah, they can. Would I recommend that you put a dog on a vegan diet long-term? My answer would be, "No."

There are some vegetarian options, for example, hydrolyzed protein. Because a lot of times, it's the protein source that animals can be allergic to if they have food allergies. The bottom line is protein sources need to be there somehow. So in dealing with a strictly vegan diet, even vegans necessarily need their protein. We just have to be sure it's there.

During your average preventative care appointment, it's going to be a lot of the routines, so we're going to test the dog for heartworms. We're going to do a stool sample to look for intestinal worms. We do a great head-to-toe physical exam. We're going to administer vaccinations to prevent all the diseases. Also, it gives us an opportunity to do what we call wellness blood work. That is typically where we run a CBC and maybe a chemistry panel. On some of our older patients, we might also include a thyroid panel. But it's before there's a problem, so we're looking to see if we can see the beginnings of perhaps inadequate kidney function, or the beginnings of something that's affecting the liver, or electrolytes or blood sugar...those kinds of things. That's why we call it wellness blood work. There's no problem there at that time, but it's allowing us to look behind the curtain and see if there's anything more brewing under the surface.

A full physical exam is our basis there. Even just seeing them walk into the clinic is a really good way to assess how they're ambulating, how their motility is at home, but otherwise, we’ll do some simple blood work like a heartworm test, et cetera, to get them on these products here.

Bare minimum once a year but, more realistically, I think twice a year is probably a better schedule to fall into because it allows the dog ... they grow so rapidly and change so rapidly, much more so than us. Seeing an animal on a twice-yearly basis will definitely give you a better chance to pick up on conditions as they emerge, and not once they've been there for six or nine months or even a year.

I highly recommend having your dog spayed or neutered.