It’s a concrete fact that a pet needs can vary throughout its lifetime. Providing the utmost care through all the years of their lives helps them lead a healthy and happy life. As keeping your pet healthy is a lifetime commitment, providing the best care at every stage is also a compulsion. It’s paramount that for every life stage of your furry pal, you need to create a plan and follow a set of obligatory steps to maintain the quality of his life. The daily or life stage requirements keep on changing at each ascending, and every critical life stage of your pet. Henceforth, according to the needs of their growing years, you need to suffice them all.
At each passing stage, explore and learn about the basic requirements that are inevitable for their optimal health at every life stage.
Puppy and Kitten Care
A newly adopted puppy or kitty needs an exclusive care for their optimal growth. Not just regular vet visits, but, here are the numerous things that you need to consider.
The first step is to plan a vet visit for your pet’s physical examination as soon as possible.
Second is to screen your furry pal for any presence of fleas, ticks, intestinal parasites or any other health problems. This will ensure that the new member is fit and does not transmit any disease to other animals or humans.
Puppies and kittens are highly prone to parasitic infections. To protect them against preventive diseases, it is crucial to start with flea and tick prevention program. This controls flea and tick infestations as well as protect your puppy or kitty against flea & tick-borne diseases.
Apart from flea and tick preventives, treat your baby furry pal with wormers. At times, worms are transmitted to puppies and kittens from their mothers. Therefore, treating with wormer regularly aids in the elimination of worms and controls multiple worm infections in your furry kid.
Along with other parasitic infections, puppies are also prone to heartworm disease due to their low immunity. Your vet will test for heartworm disease. If the result is negative, you can start with monthly heartworm preventives. These are available in flavored chews that are easy to administer to puppies.
The low immunity not only makes puppies and kitties susceptible to heartworm disease but also to various other preventable diseases. Therefore, vaccination is paramount in protecting your four-legged kid from these diseases. Your vet can prepare a vaccination plan for your pet, so you can be assured not to miss any vaccination.
Basic pet training, social networking, and proper food along with a lot of caresses are the others aspects which have to be considered as your puppy or kitty grows.
However, it becomes crucial to take your furry pal to a veterinarian if you notice the following signs or symptoms in your furry kid.
- Excessive drinking or urination
- Sudden weight loss
- Loss of appetite
- The sudden increase in appetite
- Behavioral changes
- Ear odors, redness, head jerking, scratching or head shaking
- Trouble defecating or urinating
- Skin lumps, bumps or irritation
- Bad breath, plaque or bleeding gums
- Diarrhea or vomiting
- Unable to walk
- Looks lethargic
Adult Pet Care
As your puppy/kitten grows into an adult, particular things change in their pet care regime. First of all, the pet diet has to be changed according to their body weight and conditions. An adult requires more food compared to growing puppies or kittens. Additionally, adult pets should be examined at least twice a year to prevent or detect any unlikely health condition.
As pets age faster, additional care has to be taken at this stage as the health problems can also progress quickly. Some of the common problems that adult furry pals face are ear and eye disease, dental conditions, obesity, endocrine disease, intestinal parasites, tumors or lumps and skin diseases especially due to fleas and ticks. Though your pet may appear normal, some of these diseases are not detectable at the earlier stages. Whereas conditions like intestinal parasitic infestations, skin diseases due to external parasites, and dental diseases are highly preventable if regular treatments are rendered to your pet.
Moreover, adult dogs are also prone to chronic pain due to the onset of arthritis problems. They may experience pain due to joint disease and skin rashes or itching due to flea and tick bites. Regular joint supplements aid in the control of joint pain further preventing the signs of arthritis. Additionally, monthly flea and tick treatment such as Nexgard, advantage or Eliminall spot-on prevents itching, scratching and skin rashes as well as flea allergy dermatitis in pets.
Senior Pet Care
When pets move to the golden period, they look forward for more care and love from your side. The advancement in animal health medicines has scaled higher which has hugely impacted the quality of life senior pets improving their health. However, the increased lifespan has its own drawbacks. The extended lifespan has also paved way to numerous health conditions in senior pets.
During this stage, the health conditions grow much faster and therefore more specific care has to be created to provide the best care to your senior pet. At this stage they are highly susceptible to osteoarthritis, kidney disease, heart disease, liver disease, cancer and diabetes.