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Wellness Care and Exams

Wellness exams to keep your pet healthy with routine checkups, early detection, and preventive care.

Wellness Exams and Preventive Care

Routine wellness exams are an important part of keeping your pet healthy. We provide wellness exams and preventive care to monitor your pet’s health, catch issues early, and keep vaccines and preventatives up to date.

Even if your pet seems healthy, regular checkups help identify changes before they become more serious problems.

Why Wellness Exams Matter?

Pets age faster than people, and health changes can happen quickly without obvious signs. Regular exams allow us to:

  • Track your pet’s health over time

  • Identify issues like dental disease, arthritis, or weight changes early

  • Stay ahead of parasites and preventable illnesses

  • Provide guidance on nutrition, behavior, and daily care

These visits also help your pet stay comfortable with routine handling and exams.

What’s Included in a Wellness Visit?

Each visit is based on your pet’s age and needs, but typically includes:

  • Full physical exam (eyes, ears, teeth, skin, heart, lungs, and joints)

  • Weight and body condition evaluation

  • Vaccination review and updates

  • Parasite and heartworm screening as needed

  • Dental health assessment

  • Discussion of diet, activity, and behavior

  • Bloodwork or diagnostics when appropriate

How Often Should Pets Be Seen?

  • Puppies and kittens: multiple visits during the first year

  • Adult pets (1–7 years): every 6–12 months

  • Senior pets (7+ years): every 6 months

We’ll recommend a schedule based on your pet’s age, health, and lifestyle.

Regular wellness care helps prevent problems and keeps your pet on track as they age. If you’re due for a checkup or have questions about your pet’s health, we’re here to help.

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FAQs

Answers to Common Questions

Harbor View Veterinary Hospital keeps track of your pet's weight just like your doctor's office keeps track of your height and weight each time you visit. Having an accurate and current measurement of your pet's weight will help us ensure that we prescribe the right dose of preventives, medications, and any needed anesthetics. It can also help us notice any early clues to health concerns. In addition, a regular weigh-in can help you track and manage your pet's weight.

Call us. Just like doctors, veterinarians sometimes need to try more than one treatment/medication to find the correct solution to cure or manage a pet's condition. Please let us know if something we recommended or prescribed isn't helping. We want to work with you to find the right answers for your pet.

Veterinarians can't diagnose over the phone. Besides being unethical and illegal, diagnosing by phone doesn't allow veterinarians to physically examine a pet. A physical exam is necessary so your veterinarian can provide an accurate diagnosis and proper treatment. Treating a pet for the wrong disease or condition will cost more in the end and could be harmful or even deadly to your pet.

Spaying and neutering can have major benefits for your pet, including lowering or preventing the risk of several diseases and types of cancer. Your veterinarian will be happy to discuss these benefits. In addition, spaying and neutering helps control the pet population by reducing the number of unwanted pets. Spaying and neutering are surgical procedures that require your pet to be put under anesthesia. The cost of these procedures takes into account the anesthesia, your veterinary team's time and expertise, monitoring, drapes, suture material, and hospitalization. Spaying or neutering your pet is much less expensive than feeding and caring for litters of unwanted puppies or kittens or dealing with potential pregnancy complications.

Your veterinarian will determine which vaccinations are appropriate for your dog or cat, based on individual factors, such as lifestyle and health status. Veterinarians commonly recommend that dogs be vaccinated against rabies, distemper, Lyme, and Leptospirosis parvovirus and that cats be vaccinated against rabies and panleukopenia (feline distemper). Additional vaccines, such as feline leukemia virus (FeLV), feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), and Bordetella (kennel cough), Lyme, and Leptospirosis are recommended based on your cat or dog's risk. Many of these diseases can be fatal to your pet. Preventing them is far easier and less expensive than treatment. If you would like more information on vaccines, ask your veterinarian.

For the safety and protection of all clients, patients, and veterinary team members, we require all pets to be on a leash or in a carrier when they arrive at our hospital. They must continue to be restrained while they are in the reception area and while traveling to and from the exam rooms. Your veterinarian or veterinary technician will let you know when it's OK to let your pet off leash or out of his or her carrier. There is often a lot going on at our hospital. Combine that with unfamiliar surroundings and new animals, and any pet-even one that is well trained-might become uneasy or overly excited. We want you and your pet to have as pleasant an experience as possible every time you visit our hospital, so we ask all our clients to respect our policy.