By Dr. Daniel Eubanks
Every year most pet owners receive the familiar reminder card from their vet. It’s the one with the list of shots that are due for Marmaduke or Garfield.
Typically the motivation for responding to the reminder is fear of the consequences to the pet’s health for not getting the distemper shot. Or worse yet, fear of being fined by the township for not providing validation of current rabies vaccination.
Now, this is not to minimize the importance of timely vaccine boosters. They are most certainly necessary. However, equally important though frequently overlooked and not always even listed on the card, is the annual physical exam. This is the time for your veterinarian to examine your pet for abnormalities, thus determining his/her current health status.
Remember that Duke cannot tell you that his gums are sore from gingivitis, or that he feels an occasional flutter in his chest from a cardiac disorder, or that he senses a vague pressure in his abdomen from a growing mass on his spleen.
The annual physical exam provides your veterinarian the opportunity and the obligation to check for these and many other potential problems. This procedure includes recording the animal’s weight, examining eyes, ears, teeth and oro-pharynx, listening to the heart, palpating the abdomen and lymph nodes, etc.
Certain routine lab tests might be performed. Annual fecal analysis and periodic blood test for heartworm are recommended for most patients to detect parasitism.
Mature and older pets pose more potential for age related problems and might warrant more comprehensive testing. Because of their age, these patients are more likely to be developing problems with regard to kidney, liver and thyroid function, diabetes, etc. These malfunctions are frequently subtle and sub-clinical and cannot be perceived by the owner nor detected by the veterinarian from a physical exam.
Blood work is required to assess these functions and this is commonplace now in veterinary practice. A “wellness profile” is a comprehensive series of blood values that evaluate literally all body systems. A simple blood sample taken at the time of the office visit is all that’s necessary. Your veterinarian reviews these values and then discusses the pet’s wellness profile with you.
This entire process of physical exam, with blood work when appropriate, is designed to provide early detection of commonly encountered illnesses.
It’s much more effective to treat an early case of hyperthyroidism in a cat than to initiate treatment for that same cat two years later after he’s lost 20 percent of his body weight and has secondary liver complications. A dog with a splenic tumor is much more likely to survive an elective splenectomy than to survive an emergency exploratory because the tumor has ruptured and is hemorrhaging within the abdominal cavity.
With any luck, no problems are found on physical exam or the blood work and the pet gets a clean bill of health. Fortunately, this is the case most of the time.
But early detection of problems via the annual physical exam and any appropriate testing frequently provides the means to treat these illnesses prior to the onset of complications and/or consequences.

