At Hillcrest Animal Hospital in Bartlett, we provide comprehensive preventive veterinary health care services, customized for the needs of each pet.
What is preventive health care for pets?
Preventive health care encompasses a range of veterinary treatments and procedures designed to prevent the development of disease and injury in pets.
At Hillcrest Animal Hospital, we consider consistent preventive care to be the key to life-long health for the animals we treat.
Rather than waiting until an animal is sick or injured, we work with pet owners and pets to identify and prevent potential or developing health issues before they become serious.
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At Hillcrest Animal Hospital, we believe that preventive care is a must if you want to give your pet the best chances of staying healthy.
Our preventive health care plans include the following items for cats and dogs:
Annual Checkups & Nutritional Consulting
Annual checkups allow us to identify and treat any developing health issues before they become serious, and monitor your pet's diet.
Vaccines/Immunizations
Vaccinations help prevent diseases such as rabies, distemper, parvovirus, hepatitis, and bordetella, among others.
Wellness Bloodwork
Wellness blood tests are designed to detect early or hidden disease in pets that appear to be healthy.
Heartworm Prevention
Heartworm preventives help prevent heartworms, and some protect pets from intestinal parasites as well.
Microchipping
Microchipping your pet means that they will be more likely to be returned to you should they get lost.
Preventive Health Care FAQs
ASK A DIFFERENT QUESTION
- Why should I have my pet vaccinated?
Vaccinating your pets helps extend their lives by protecting them from various diseases including rabies, distemper, parvovirus, infectious hepatitis, feline leukemia and many others. Vaccinating your pets every year helps prevent the spread of infectious diseases among animals, and vaccinating against zoonotic diseases such as Rabies and Leptospirosis can help protect humans as well.
- Why should I have my pet spayed or neutered?
Spaying and neutering can have many health benefits for pets. These benefits include decreasing the chances of breast tumors, cystic ovaries and uterine infections later in life, decreasing the desire to roam (thus helping to prevent accidents and injuries), decreasing the incidence of prostate cancer later in life, helping prevent spraying and marking, and also decreasing the surplus of unwanted puppies and kittens.
- Should I let my pet have at least one litter?
Allowing a female cat or dog to have a litter does not have any health benefits for the animal. In fact, the opposite is true. Animals who go through heat cycles and pregnancy are at higher risk for uterine and mammary problems, including mammary cancer.
In addition, there are health risks to the mother during the pregnancy and when giving birth. Proper pre-natal care, emergency care for birth complications, and proper newborn care are expensive and time-consuming.
- Should I keep my cat indoors?
Indoor cats simply live longer than those that go outside, so we recommend keeping your cat indoors if at all possible as a preventive health care measure.
Outdoor cats are at a higher risk of injury from other cats, dogs, encountering busy streets and traffic that can cause injury or death, exposure to contagious diseases and parasites, exposure to extreme weather, poisoning, pet theft, animal cruelty, and of being injured or eaten by predators.
- Is microchipping really necessary?
One of the most effective means of protecting your dog or cat from being lost or stolen is microchipping them. Dog and cat collars with a name and phone number tag are helpful, but outdated and comparatively insufficient. They can break or fall off easily, whereas the microchip is permanent and can’t be separated from the pet.