Ask Your Expert – Meadowlawn Animal Services II

If better veterinary health cost you less, would you be interested?

I have been a veterinarian for 38 years and in all those years the most common reason for pets to have less than an extraordinary life has been owner compliance. Compliance is doing all the right things at the right time to make sure your pet lives a long, healthy life, ultimately to live better for longer. Since we are human, we tend to let things get in the way of this, one of the biggest things being money.

In human health care, preventive medicine is all the rage to help old guys like me to live longer and better. As Kenny Chesney puts it in one of his songs, “I am too damn young to feel this old.”

Some of the main reasons pets do not get receive the same kind of care as humans do include: our busy lifestyles, budget constraints, living on fixed income, or lack of education. That is the main reason during the financial slide of 2008, we came up with wellness plans for our pets that make great care more affordable and easier to budget.

I have noticed if a dog or cat receives a wellness plan that encourages its owner to attend regular wellness check ups, and also changes its diet to a quality food, we achieve a longer and overall healthier life in almost all cases. The other benefit is we can prevent 10 times more than we can fix, so finding things early has a great reward.

I love pets and I love seeing owners enjoy them for many years. No one is happier to see you than your dog and if we all were that excited to see each other, life would be better. I could hardly get my teenagers to grunt at me when I came home, but my dogs were glad to see me whether I had been gone 5 minutes or 5 days.

My cat may be like your cat. She would look at me and say take a message, and I might get back with you. Dogs have owners and cats have staff! So, whether you call yourself an owner or staff, your pet needs you to make the right decisions for them.

They are counting on you to do the right thing. They will usually suffer in silence. Cats are very adept at hiding their illness and when they finally show you something is wrong, it can feel like] falling off a cliff; it takes a huge effort to get them out of that hole.

So, ask our staff about our wellness plans and see if that is a good fit for you and your 4-legged child or children. Thanks for all your trust, Dr. Gwynn Hardee and staff.