Preventive Services

Wellness

At All Pet Care Hospital in Clearwater, FL, we believe that regular checkups and wellness exams are critical to your pet’s well-being. These wellness exams give us a chance to evaluate the overall health of your pet while also giving us a baseline for their unique bodies and tendencies.

Not only do these exams keep us up-to-date with your pet’s health, but they also allow us to detect potential problems before they become serious. This thorough checkup gives us vital information to help keep your pet healthy!

Regular wellness exams also make your pet more familiar with our veterinary hospital, which makes future visits easier on them and you. Please contact us today at (727) 442-9111 if you have any questions or would like to learn more about how we care for your pet.

Flea Prevention and Control

It is horrible when your pets get fleas. They can be very irritating to your pets. Many pets will scratch and dig constantly. Even after they lose their hair, have raw skin, and develop skin infections, they will continue to scratch. They are just miserable.

Not only do you have to help your pets through fleas, you have to worry about your home. You probably don’t want to know how many fleas have made your house their home. Fleas are happiest in dark and warm spaces. They love to hide in carpet, bedding, under furniture, and anywhere else that pleases them. The worst part is that for every adult flea you see, you may have a ton of immature and adult fleas you don’t see hiding in your home.

Heartworm Prevention

You hear about it in pets all the time, but what is Heartworm disease? Heartworm disease is a serious and potentially fatal disease that is caused by foot-long worms (heartworms) that live in the heart, lungs and associated blood vessels of affected pets, causing severe lung disease, heart failure and damage to other organs in the body. Heartworm disease affects more than just dogs and cats but it also can harm other mammal species, including wolves, coyotes, foxes, sea lions and in rare instances, humans. 

A dog is a natural host for heartworms, which means that heartworms live inside the dog, mature into adults, mate and produce offspring. If untreated, their numbers can increase, and dogs have been known to harbor several hundred worms in their bodies. Heartworm disease causes lasting damage to the heart, lungs and arteries, and can affect the dog’s health and quality of life long after the parasites are gone. 

When finding out your pet has a heartworm, it can be a difficult time for you and may cause you great deals of stress. The good news is that most dogs infected with heartworms can be successfully treated. The best course of action is to prevent heartworms in your pet, but if you do find heartworms in your pet make sure to follow a few simple steps to ensure they are healthy, happy companions!

• Confirm the diagnosis. Once a dog tests positive on an antigen test, the diagnosis should be confirmed with a second, different test.
• Restrict exercise. Your dog’s normal physical activities must be restricted as soon as the diagnosis of a severe heartworm is confirmed, because physical exertion increases the rate at which the heartworms cause damage in the heart and lungs. The more severe the situation is, the less activity your dog should have.
• Administer treatment. Once your veterinarian has determined your dog is stable and ready for heartworm treatment, he or she will recommend a treatment protocol involving several steps. The American Heartworm Society has guidelines for developing this plan of treatment.
• Determine the severity of the disease. Dogs with no signs or mild signs of heartworm disease have a high success rate with treatment. More severe infections can also be successfully treated, but the possibility of complications is much greater.
• Test to prevent further issues. Around 6 months after treatment is completed, your veterinarian should perform a heartworm test to confirm that all heartworms are completely gone. To avoid the possibility of your dog contracting heartworm disease again, you will want to administer heartworm prevention year round for the rest of his or her life.

Making sure you keep your pets healthy and happy is very important to making sure they live a long and happy life with you! So make sure to follow these guidelines and keep them free from pain or discomfort and any long term issues.

Tick Prevention

Ticks are parasites that live on blood. They suck blood out of our pets, the wildlife around us, and even us. Most dogs and cats do not get sick from a tick bite unless they happen to be allergic to them. When this happens, a pet may not be able to move around much until the tick is removed. The bad thing about ticks is their ability to spread disease. Some common diseases that we see include Lyme Disease, Ehrlichia, and more. These diseases can be very harmful to your pets (and your family). Ehrlichiosis (commonly known as “Tick Fever”) is transmitted through ticks, and this disease can cause serious anemia and death if it is not treated.

We offer flea and tick preventatives to protect your pets. These need to be given every month and all year round to get the best results.