Same as in people, also our pets should go to regular check-ups to a doctor. We might neglect this quite often, but it is still something else in animals. A dog or a cat won’t come up to you to tell you, that they’re not feeling well. That’s why an annual check-up at the veterinarian is the best way how to secure health of your dog or cat.
Regular check-ups are important, because they will help detect a disease of your pet in time. And that gives you the greatest chance to cure it. Since the causes might not be always apparent and animals are very good at hiding pain. That’s why blood or urine tests are necessary to detect any issues.
If you detect a disease in time, you will prevent it from developing. This is true, for example, for diseases of the teeth, joints, kidneys, or for diabetes, for some types of cancer or heart diseases. Moreover, some diseases can be transmitted even to human members of the household. In case of an untreated inflammation in the mouth of an animal, there’s the danger that bacteria will spread into the body and that they will attack organs, especially the kidneys. Cancer of the mammary gland can be treated successfully, if it is detected in time.
Your veterinarian can also warn you about obesity or undernourishment of your dog and by remedy, you can prevent health issues that these can cause.
However, we should not forget about regular vaccination and deworming of pets.
Regular check-ups are not only useful for unnecessary money collection from patients, as I hear around me quite often. You will probably leave the veterinarian thinking, that the check-up hasn’t found anything. But this doesn’t mean, that it was useless.
You may think, that the possibility, that an illness will appear in the animal member of your family is small, but is it worth risking it? By a timely detection of a disease, you can prevent lifelong effects on the health of your pet and this is worth spending those few hundreds a year, don’t you think?
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