Have you never taken your dog to the vet? Or may I ask, have you never taken your child to a doctor? Because to me, they both sound equally important.
Vet visits should be a regular part of your dog’s life, not too frequent but necessary. Especially in the early stages, as vaccinations are necessary. Vet visits help prevent future severe medical conditions by catching them early and making treatments easier.
Is it illegal to skip vet visits? What should you do if you’ve never taken your dog to the vet? Let’s find out.
Do dogs really need to go to the vet?
I have two questions for you. Is your dog’s vaccination status up to date?
Next, the age and the general health of your dog? These two questions decide whether you should take your dog to the vet or not.
Usually, puppies and senior dogs need vet visits more often than healthy adult dogs. Let me explain to you some benefits of taking your dog to the vet.
1 . Track your dog’s growth, development, and identify diseases.
You’d do a full check-up on your car once a year, don’t you? Of course, you do. Then why are you hesitate to keep checking on someone more precious than that?
So let me discuss what the benefits of annual check-ups are. These check-ups allow you to track your dog’s growth and development.
This will help you identify some critical diseases at an early age, and you’ll thank god that it will ease the treatment well enough.
And also, these check-ups will evaluate the health and fitness of your dog, and the vet can plan a good diet schedule and good exercises that go with the current health conditions.
An annual check-up is usually handled with head to tail check-ups, dental exams, and vaccination updates. So in an annual exam, your vet might ask about the behavior, training, and also about wellness.
You can also tell about the recent difficulties of your dog and also about your concerns so the vet can arrange some tests and treatments.
2. Up to date vaccinations
Vaccination is a must. And also up to date vaccination is necessary. If you are not aware, here is the vaccination schedule that must be followed up.
Below is the normal vaccination schedule for your dog from birth to the 1st year.
| Age | Description |
|---|---|
| After 2 months | DA2PP first dose. |
| 2.5–3 months | Leptospirosis injection and DA2PP second dose. |
| 3.5–4 months | Lepto, DA2PP third dose. Rabies for 4 months or older. |
This vaccine is a combined vaccine for diseases like parainfluenza, parvo, hepatitis distemper, and corona.
This can be varied according to the location and health of your puppy, so it’s better if you talk with your dog’s vet and schedule one.
3. Prevent unnecessary expenditure.
For most of the conditions, the earlier the treatment is started, the easier it will be for the treatments, give them less pain, let them suffer for less time, and reduce the expenses.
For some diseases, when the symptoms are appeared it almost become serious.
4. Knowledge update
The world keeps changing day-by-day, and old diseases might disappear, new diseases might appear, and old knowledge can expire, and new knowledge might be available, but you’d know nothing if there is no source.
And what is a more reliable and accurate source than your doggo’s vet? Every day you visit the vet, he’ll update you with new knowledge, new maintenance tips, and necessary treatments for your dog.
This will be very useful for maintaining good health.
Suggested Reading: Can you take an unregistered dog to the vet?
What happens if you never take your dog to the vet?
Tell me what would you do if you were sick?
Probably go to your doctor and tell him you are sick. But can you doggo do the same as you do? Like
" Hey Dr. Caron I think I have heartworm"
No. They can’t do that. So the only way you can find out the disease is by observing the behavior and the appearances, but it can be too late to do the treatment when the symptoms appear.
For some regions, vaccinations for some diseases are mandatory by the law. So you can get in trouble if you never take your dog to the vet.
And also, deadly diseases like rabies can cost you not only your pet but also you or your close ones. If your dog frequently gets flea problems, not taking him to the vet will pay you back with great consequences.
Fleas are something you should take seriously as they can even take the life of your dog.
When your doggo is old, he needs extra attention and affection as he becomes more prone to illness and age-related injuries.
Not only that, but he also needs regular diagnosis as it would take much time for the condition to be serious.
If your dog has never been to the vet, consider consulting a vet as it helps to track the dog’s growth, development, identify diseases, keep up-to-date vaccinations, prevent additional expenditure. Failure to do so may increase the risks of contracting rabies, fleas, & ticks, or even deadly issues.
Mr. Sudharaka (Undergraduate in Veterinary Medicine)
Suggested Reading: Will Shaving Get Rid Of Fleas and Ticks On your Dog?
Is it illegal not to take your dog to the vet?
In the region, you live, this will depend. But don’t worry, it is not illegal not to take a healthy dog to a vet.
Not providing vet treatment when they need it is illegal in some countries. And your vet can’t press charges against you for neglect of the animal.
So if your dog is not a regular visitor to the vet but is now in bad condition, please take your dog to the vet.
You don’t have to be embarrassed or afraid because they’ll only see you as an owner who cares about the troubled dog. Please, lemme tell you a little story about one of my friends.
He has a dog named Lilly. Unfortunately, his parents didn’t quite like maintaining lily. So they never took her to the vet.
Eventually, the dog became sick, and the condition was getting serious day by day, but the parents were too afraid to take her to the vet cause they thought they would be charged for neglect for vet help.
So they kept postponing taking her to the vet. And lastly, she became frail, and it was too late when they visited the veterinarian.
I’ll tell you this again. Frankly, You don’t have to worry about this unless you are,
- Refusing necessary treatment or requesting euthanasia for a problem that does not necessitate it.
- The animal is having its basic needs deprived (food, water, shelter, the like).
And even if you neglect it so badly, the clinic is not gonna complain to you or make you uncomfortable.
The first duty of them is taking care of the dog so they will stick to the job and later maybe advise you to visit the vet when needed.
What to do if your dog has never been to the vet?
First, you have to get off from the mindset that you’ll get into trouble if you visit the vet after a long period.
So if you are taking the dog to the vet for the very first time, you probably have to plan more than one trip. Not the second one right after the first one. But keep that in mind.
The first time your vet sees your dog, it’s gonna be more about examination and assessments.
It would certainly help if you came prepared with medical history details like previous vaccinations, medications, and relative details.
Do not drop any detail. Whenever or how long ago it happened, you have to tell everything to the vet. And be careful not to send your dog to someone who barely knows your dog.
It is gold if your pet is brought by the person involved with their care, feeding, and life.
Because there will be a series of questions for him/her like what kind of food do you feed? How often do you feed? Have any accidents or severe diseases happened?
If your dog weren’t sent with the right person, the purpose of these questions would be useless. That person would also get tired from answering the questions he barely even knows.
For the vets, the history taking is more important as they are gonna rely on that information to assess your dog’s health and decide the future treatments.
So you or the person for taking your dog to the vet has to be accurate with the answers. So as I mentioned earlier, the first visit will have a full body examination by the vet.
They’ll check the eyes, ears, mouth, paws, teeth, and also they’re gonna palmate some places to find out whether those organs are abnormal.
They’re gonna run a full nose-to-tail examination on your dog. So the first visit can cover up most of the examinations and assessments, but sometimes you might have to visit once again.
Because depending on the test results, they would need to do additional tests if they find some considerable medical conditions.
And also the medical conditions that require treatments. And also, for the vaccination and dental healthcare, they might give a schedule, so don’t neglect those schedules.
They are pretty crucial for the health of your dog and also you and your family members.
So if you are having financial issues, you can talk with your vet and find a solution but ditching the veterinary visits is not an option as they take every action about your dog for a reason.
Things to be aware of.
Vaccination of a dog is compulsory by the law for some diseases in some regions.
But in your region, it might not be that big a deal. Although it is better to vaccinate your dog in time, researchers prove that vaccination reduces the probability of infection of many contagious diseases for dogs.
If you have more than one doggo and you are only taking care of one, I would say that is completely useless as when you are taking care of only one, and the other one can get sick and infect the one you care too.
So equal affection and attention must be provided for all your pets even though it is tough to manage.
Conclusion.
I should say again that not taking a healthy and fully vaccinated dog to a vet is not illegal. However, still, it’s your responsibility to keep your dog in a healthy condition. So do the vet visits as you can afford and make it productive by preparing well before the visit and also take your dog to the vet with the right person.
