Will my dog need more than one type of lab test?

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.

Possibly. That was just blood work. That was a CBC and chemistry, maybe a thyroid, but dogs often need fecal checks. They might need a urinalysis to check for diabetes, and it's checking the specific gravity of the urine. They might need cytology of their ears or their skin. So there are lots of types of tests that we do.

It depends on what we see with that individual patient. There are some patients where we might see some more concerning signs that might indicate that maybe we go a little bit more above and beyond than we would in a routine lab test or exam.