Here at Beach Pet Hospital, we pride ourselves on our high level of care and always meeting the “Gold Standard” in veterinary medicine.
As our pets get older, their faces are a little more gray, they walk a little slower but still have their big personality we love so much. We start to wonder... is everything working properly inside? Is there any medicine we can give to make their quality of life better? At Beach Pet, we always encourage owners to get senior bloodwork done on their fur babies to find the answers to their questions. These routine tests can create a baseline for your pet and make a good comparison to future tests if they become sick.
So, what is senior bloodwork? Senior bloodwork is a comprehensive bloodwork panel that checks to make sure your pet’s body and internal organs are functioning properly.
What is considered senior age? For dogs, we consider 8 years old. For felines, 10 years old. We recommend checking senior bloodwork annually.
Components of senior bloodwork:
Chemistry panel: glucose, kidney and liver values, electrolytes, thyroid levels, and protein levels.
Complete blood cell count (CBC): red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelet counts. This checks blood function, hydration, anemia, how well their blood can clots, and their overall immunity status.
Urinalysis: tests the urine to check the urinary and kidney system. Show’s any issues with the kidney, possible urinary tract infections, and check overall status of urine.
Not only are we able to perform these basic, routine tests in the clinic’s laboratory, we are also partnered with IDEXX, a multinational laboratory company who have over a thousand tests for small and large animals. We are able to provide more in depth testing with IDEXX.