Routine wellness care is one of the most important investments you can make in your pet’s long-term health. Because our pets age much faster than we do, significant health changes can develop in a matter of months. Regular examinations allow us to detect disease earlier, monitor changes over time, and provide personalized recommendations.
At Pet Wellness Veterinary Center, we believe wellness visits are about much more than vaccines. Every visit is an opportunity to evaluate your pet’s overall health, discuss lifestyle changes, answer your questions, and create a preventive care plan tailored specifically to your companion.
Annual Wellness Exams
For most healthy adult pets, a comprehensive wellness examination is recommended every year. During your pet’s annual visit, our veterinarians perform a complete nose-to-tail physical examination while evaluating:
- Overall Physical Health: Eyes, ears, nose, skin, coat, abdomen, muscles, and joints.
- Weight & Body Condition: Monitoring healthy weight helps prevent chronic conditions.
- Dental Health: Checking teeth and gums for tartar, infection, broken teeth, and early signs of dental disease.
- Heart & Lung Function: Listening for heart murmurs, irregular rhythms, or changes in breathing.
- Mobility & Comfort: Looking for stiffness, arthritis, pain, or changes in movement.
- Preventive Screening: Discussing bloodwork, urinalysis, fecal testing, heartworm testing, and other screenings.
- Behavior & Lifestyle: Addressing changes in appetite, activity, anxiety, training, or behavior.
- Prevention Plan: Reviewing vaccines, parasite prevention, nutrition, supplements, and medications.
Biannual Wellness Exams
Many pets benefit from wellness examinations every six months rather than once a year. Senior pets, pets with chronic medical conditions, large breed dogs, working dogs, and pets receiving long-term medications often experience health changes much more rapidly than healthy young adults.
Semiannual examinations allow our veterinarian to monitor chronic conditions, evaluate arthritis and mobility, assess weight changes, review medications, and detect developing disease earlier.
Pediatric & Senior Wellness Exams
Building the Foundation: Puppies and kittens require a series of wellness visits to monitor healthy growth, complete vaccine series, perform parasite screening, discuss nutrition, monitor behavior, and answer the many questions that come with welcoming a new family member.
Helping Pets Age Comfortably: Senior wellness examinations focus on identifying conditions such as arthritis, kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, cognitive dysfunction, and cancer as early as possible—often before obvious symptoms develop. Early detection frequently provides more treatment options and improves quality of life.