Senior Pet Care

Caring For Your Senior Pet

As your pet enters the golden years, veterinary visits are more important than ever in supporting longevity, maintaining health, and preserving his or her quality of life. Our veterinary team at TotalBond Veterinary Hospital at Bethel is trained to help keep your senior pet healthy, happy, and comfortable throughout the rest of his or her life. We recommend semi-annual wellness visits along with blood work, digital radiography and ultrasound, urinalysis testing, and glaucoma screenings. These comprehensive check-ups will help us stay vigilant in keeping your pet healthy and staying ahead of age-related, and preventable diseases.

Unfortunately, it is easy for age-related conditions to go undetected at home until diseases progress. To help our veterinary team identify concerning health conditions early on, we recommend urinalysis testing, digital radiography, glaucoma screening, and blood work for senior pets under our care at TotalBond at Bethel. These diagnostic tests are important to assess vital bodily systems, evaluate organ function, and test for age-related common health issues.

Bloodwork: Helps identify age-related conditions such as kidney disease, diabetes, liver disease, and also helps to identify general conditions such as anemia and infection.

Digital Radiography: Images of your pet’s internal systems and can highlight health conditions such as cancer and arthritis.

Ultrasound: Allows for more detailed images of the body's internal organs and can detect things such as masses and inflammation.

Glaucoma Screening: Measuring pressure in each eye, the screening is a quick and painless procedure to identify if your senior pet has any early signs of a very disease.

There’s no question about it, our senior pets hold a special place in our hearts. If your senior pet’s behavior or health changes, we invite you to schedule a visit right away upon noticing these sudden changes. You know your pet better than anyone, and providing timely veterinary care will be  essential for their wellbeing so that they may live out their golden years happy and healthy.

If you have a senior pet, here are some tips in managing risks associated with owning a senior pet: 

• Bring your pet in for veterinary check-ups twice a year so that your veterinarian can uncover any problems that will be easy to treat early on.
• Follow your veterinarian’s recommendations on diet, exercise, and medication to avoid excess weight gain. 
• Keep the living and sleeping areas of your home clean, dry, and warm and see that they receive ample opportunities to eat and drink.
• Groom your pet regularly and inspect for fleas, ticks, sores, rashes, etc.
• Check the eyes to identify any redness or unusual cloudiness, check the mouth for any swelling, loose teeth, or reddened gums.