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Think of that big, round, just out of the oven pizza. Think of the beautiful steam floating up from the top, and the elegance of the colors creating a mural on top of the pizza…and how you know it will burn your mouth when you take that first bite, but it is just so tempting you do it anyway!
Ok, let’s not promote burning your mouth. Let’s shift to how this beautiful pizza pie can be just like your pet’s health. At Ball-Chatham Veterinary Services, our veterinary team can create the same feeling of happiness by making sure your pet is well protected for the happiest, healthiest life possible.
Crust AKA The Physical Examination
A pizza must begin with a crust! Preventive medicine’s crust is a physical examination. Just like using fresh crust for the best pizza, your veterinarian must have a fresh physical examination for the most accurate recommendations for your pet. At minimum an annual physical examination is required by our doctor (and also by law in the State of Illinois). A physical examination is the only way for our veterinarian to listen to each patient's heart, lungs and even their abdomen. It is the opportunity for our veterinarian to run her trained hands over a pet’s entire body to create a roadmap for that specific pet’s body, build, and frame. A physical examination is the basis for every recommendation our veterinarian makes to tailor medicine for every patient over years and likely even decades.
Sauce AKA Vaccinations
The next layer of our pizza is the sauce. No two pizza sauce recipes are the exact same. Just like no two pet’s vaccination protocols are going to be the exact same. Our veterinary team asks very specific questions to get to know you and your pet. We want to know if your pet enjoys the dog park or goes to grooming. We want to know if your pet likes to hike through woods and mountains with you. In order to create the basic tomato sauce, we gather all of that information at the start of your pet’s appointment or even before your pet’s appointment. Once the tomato sauce is made, our veterinarian can make further recommendations.
To state it more clearly, our veterinarian is going to recommend appropriate vaccinations for your pet based on their lifestyle, possible risk for acquiring disease based on your pet’s genetic predispositions and your pet’s age. The vaccinations recommended by our trained veterinarian and her team are going to protect your pet while they enjoy going to the dog park or day care or hiking in the woods. Afterall, variety is the spice of life!
Cheese AKA Screening Tests
The next layer of our pizza is the cheese! What an exciting and amazing ingredient! What if there was something as exciting as cheese for veterinarians when discussing wellness and preventative medicine? Oh! That ingredient would be screening blood tests! Yes, veterinarians (or at least our veterinarian) love cheese as much as screening blood tests.
While screening blood tests aren’t always required for complete wellness of your pet, they are necessary to have more depth and understanding of overall health beyond what is seen and felt during a physical examination. Just like a pizza doesn’t require cheese, but how good is a pizza if it is just crust and sauce? When a veterinarian gets to look at blood work for a patient who is totally normal and doing really well, the veterinarian is putting together a beautiful map of how your pet is doing on the inside. Just like cheese is created through ingredients placed together in a specific environment to tell a specific story for your taste buds, your pet’s blood work provides a specific story for your veterinarian's recommendations. Blood work tells the story of the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, the bone marrow, the adrenal glands, the thyroid and parathyroid glands, the heart, the lungs, the bladder, the intestines, and more! By performing blood work, your veterinarian is able to cast a net over your pet, while they are completely normal, to start to predict if anything may be concerning in the future. How cool is that?!
Toppings AKA Regularly Provided Preventative Medications
The final layer of the pizza is all of the pretty ingredients that you can see separately on top! AKA the toppings!! The toppings provide the final flavors and complete the pizza. What are the toppings for preventative medicine? The monthly, quarterly, or in some cases, the yearly heartworm, flea and tick prevention our veterinarian recommends for your fur baby.
That’s right, not every pet should receive the same “toppings.” Nope! What if your pet has an underlying disease? Your veterinarian needs all of the previous information or “layers” of the pizza to ensure she can make safe recommendations for your pet’s health. But again, what is a pizza if it only has a crust, sauce, and cheese? It is not complete!
The all important toppings in veterinary preventive medicine are the ‘Preventatives’ for heartworm disease, fleas, and ticks. Did you know monthly heartworm prevention actually deworms your pet for a previous month's infection with heartworms? Not only does monthly heartworm prevention deworm for heartworms, but it also can deworm for hookworms, roundworms, whipworms, or even tapeworms. And, that monthly flea and tick combination product can actually kill a tick before it takes a full blood meal that will transmit diseases like Erhlichia, Anaplasmosis, or Lyme disease. Beyond preventing those diseases, the cost associated with preventing disease is so much lower than the cost to diagnose and treat disease.
In summary, our layers of preventative medicine at Ball-Chatha
m Veterinary Services that create a beautiful, healthy, happy, long life for your pet are:
The physical examination
The vaccination protocol
The screening tests or blood work
The regularly administered preventatives for heartworm disease, fleas and ticks
And like Emeril says, “BAM!” you have a beautiful pizza pie!
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