Preventative Care

At Clarks Grove Veterinary Clinic, we strive to keep your pet happy and healthy. To do this, we must retain a veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR), and your pet must be seen by our veterinarians at least once every year. This is required by law to allow our veterinary hospital to continue to provide your pet with veterinary healthcare services. We strive to establish a mutually respectful relationship with you, your beloved pet, and our excellent team. We all have the same goal — a lifetime of good health for your pet!

Our Clarks Grove Veterinary Clinic veterinarians recommend an annual exam for adult pets and a bi-annual for seniors or those with health issues needing more attention. For both cats and dogs, a comprehensive physical examination, a SNAP 4dx (in dogs to check for tick-borne illness and heartworm), a fecal test, and blood work screening are advised every year. This helps our team establish a baseline and determine if there have been any notable changes in your pet's health. If your pet is on medications or has a chronic disease, blood testing or examinations may need to be done more frequently. A yearly blood test allows us to determine your pet's normal range, track trends over time, and identify slight changes earlier. During annual exams, our veterinarians can monitor weight, check skin masses, detect dental changes and orthopedic disorders, and even spot emerging problems.

Parasites can infect dogs and cats both internally and externally. It is critical to ensure that your pets are parasite-free, not only for their health and well-being but for your family's health as well. This is because some parasites can be transmitted from pets to humans, particularly children. Heartworm/tick testing (SNAP 4Dx for dogs) and fecal tests are recommended yearly for dogs and cats. Ticks and fleas are the most common external parasites in our area, and we reside in a Lyme disease hotspot.

Yearly testing and continuous preventative treatments can help reduce the risks of your pet becoming ill from diseases commonly transmitted through parasites. Clarks Grove Veterinary Clinic offers oral and topical heartworm, flea, tick, and internal parasite prevention for cats and dogs.

Vaccines are at the heart of disease prevention and control for pets. One of the keys to a long and healthy life for your pet is to get them on the appropriate vaccination schedule as soon as possible. Vaccines are proteins that stimulate the immune system to prepare it to combat specific pathogens. They function in two ways: to lessen the severity of such diseases if they do occur and to avoid infection entirely. Various harmful conditions can affect cats and dogs, but if adequately vaccinated, most pets can be protected from the most serious ones. For dogs, the most common vaccinations are for parvovirus, distemper, leptospirosis, infectious hepatitis, Lyme disease, Bordetella, and influenza in dogs. In cats, the most common vaccinations include panleukopenia, feline herpesvirus, feline calicivirus in cats, and feline leukemia virus in outdoor cats. Rabies is legally required for both cats and dogs and is fatal in humans.

Clarks Grove Veterinary Clinic adheres to the AAHA (American Animal Hospital Association) and AAFP (American Association of Feline Practitioners) immunization recommendations. We offer adjuvant-free immunizations to our feline patients to lessen the danger of vaccine-induced sarcomas.