Health Maintenance Services
Vaccines: Safe & Effective Preventative Medicine
Vaccinations are not only safe and effective; they are an important and fundamental piece of your pet’s preventative healthcare plan. Advances in veterinary immunology have made diseases that once were relatively common and fatal to pets easily preventable. Additionally, with each passing year, veterinary science is improving on existent vaccines as well as increasing our ability to prevent an even wider array of contagious diseases.
Cascade Animal Medical Center’s vaccination protocol is tailored to American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines, the lifestyle of your pet, as well as to protect your pet from the diseases he or she is most likely to encounter.
Our veterinarians truly believe that our carefully balanced approach is the best means to prevent infectious disease and to lessen the possibility of your pet having an adverse reaction to a vaccine.
Our Smaller Friends Need Care Too
Cascade Animal Medical Center is also very proud of the wellness and surgical services we are able to offer our clients that have exotic or pocket pets such as birds, reptiles, ferrets, guinea pigs, mice, chinchillas, rabbits, hamsters, and other small mammals. The healthcare needs for these pets are often quite unique and require a veterinary practice with experience and expertise in this area of veterinary care.
In the wild, many of these animals evolved strategies to conceal illness or injuries as a survival technique to avoid predators. As a result, their medical problems often go unnoticed for too long. By the time the owner recognizes that there is a problem with his or her exotic pet, the condition is often very serious.
This is why we strongly recommend regular physical examinations to check for health problems as well as annual monitoring to check for nutritional and husbandry-related conditions. With regular veterinary medical examinations—two per year is recommended—problems are often diagnosed before they become serious medical conditions. Should we find a medical issue with your exotic or pocket pet, Cascade Animal Medical Center is able to provide a range of medical and surgical services to help return your pet to health.
After acquiring your new exotic or pocket pet, a complete veterinary examination is also strongly recommended. This exam includes a thorough physical examination, nutritional consultation, and disease screening and laboratory testing if necessary.
Reproductive Health & Counseling
Cascade Animal Medical Center is also able to offer our clients a full range of reproductive services and counseling. Whether you are an experienced breeder or breeding your pet for the first time, we can help, from initial planning and consultation all the way through birth. In particular, obstetric care and counseling will provide the best chance for maximizing litter size as well as maintaining the health of the mother and litter.
Our reproductive services include:
- Progesterone testing
- Semen collection and evaluation
- Artificial insemination and surgical implantation
- Pregnancy monitoring
- Ultrasonography
- Planned Caesarian sections (when appropriate)
- Follow-up nursing care
Nutritional & Behavioral Counseling
Nutritional Counseling
One of the key factors contributing to the improved health and longevity of companion animals is our expanded knowledge on the important role that proper nutrition plays in overall health. During your pet’s comprehensive physical examination we evaluate his or her body condition and give recommendations based on what we see. However, some pets with nutritional issues or chronic conditions such as diabetes require a little bit more intervention, which may include specialized foods, feeding strategies and even prescription diets.
Cascade Animal Medical Center has trained staff available to help you with your pet’s nutritional challenges. We also have a diverse inventory of prescription foods and high-quality nutritional products. If your pet requires a prescription diet we do not carry, we can easily order it for you. We can also offer advice and provide information about diets that benefit specific medical conditions such as liver disease, bladder and kidney stones, renal failure, food allergies, diabetes and other conditions.
Behavioral Counseling
Behavior problems are the number one reason that owners give up a pet. Cascade Animal Medical Center offers behavior counseling for a number of issues such as inappropriate urination or defecation, aggression, separation anxiety, inappropriate chewing and barking, introduction of new pets into the household and household pets that are in conflict with one another. Oftentimes a behavior problem, such as inappropriate voiding, can be linked to a medical issue (cystitis, bladder stones, and kidney disease).
Your veterinarian will help you recognize, validate and categorize any behavior issues you may notice. We will then work closely with you to develop a plan to help eliminate your pet’s unwanted behavior. If our veterinarians and technical staff members cannot help with your pet’s behavior problem, we can refer you to a specialist in animal behavior.
Senior & Geriatric Care
Dogs and cats in their senior years may have slowed down a bit, but they are still very loving and satisfying companions to have. They also require a bit more veterinary care in order to keep them happy and healthy as well as to detect the early signs of treatable diseases.
We recommend regular wellness and dental exams, but also recommend a geriatric exam tailored to your pet's age and condition. Our senior wellness exams include the standard vaccines your dog or cat needs, as well as diagnostic tests designed to help catch any problems associated with aging before they become difficult and expensive to treat.
We also provide a number of senior care screenings such as ear and ophthalmic exams, basic neurologic and cardiovascular evaluations, weight assessment, blood chemistry tests, urinalysis, fecal exams for intestinal parasites (certain intestinal parasites can affect the health of you and your family), and more.
Microchipping: Safe & Reliable Pet ID
Does your pet have a microchip? Each year, millions of pets go missing and many don’t make it back home. Microchipping your pet is a safe, simple and effective way to prevent this tragedy. About the size of a grain of rice, identification microchips are encoded with your pet’s vital information and implanted beneath your pet’s skin, usually between the shoulder blades. Veterinary hospitals and animal shelters across North America are equipped with special scanners capable of reading these microchips. The information in the chip is used to reunite you with your pet.
Cascade Animal Medical Center uses the HomeAgain microchip system. HomeAgain provides a number of very useful services to pet owners such as their National Pet Recovery Database, Lost Pet Specialists, Rapid Lost Pet Alerts, Lost Pet Medical Insurance, Travel Assistance for Found Pets and more.
Our Pharmacy
In numerous acute or chronic conditions, medication is required to cure or alleviate symptoms. At Cascade Animal Medical Center we believe that timely and convenient access to these medications is an important aspect of caring for your pet. For this reason, we maintain a comprehensive pharmacy.
Not only does our pharmacy mean you don’t have to wait for important medicines for your pet, but there is a direct line of communication between the examination room and the pharmacy window. Each medication becomes part of your pet’s medical record, which reduces the chance for errors and enhances our ability to monitor its use and the outcome for your pet.
Refills are easy too. Simply give us a call or visit our online pharmacy and we can either mail them to you or have them ready at your next visit.
Our Pet Supply Store
With so many pet care products on the market, it can be difficult to know which ones are best for your pet. We have taken some of the guess work out by researching the ones we think are best and then including them in our health products store here at the Medical Center.
These include over-the-counter flea and tick control products, a range of Hill’s Science Diet pet foods, treats, grooming aids, leads and collars, chew bones, dental care products, and more. If you don’t see something in our store or would like to suggest a product, we are able to special order a wide range of products for our clients.
The Lost Art of the House Call
An important piece of supporting your bond with your pet as well as providing the best service to you is through reviving the lost art of the veterinary house-call. We have a state-of-the-art facility that is both a safe and welcoming place for you and your pet, but we still believe that a number of our services can and in some cases should be provided in our clients’ homes. Quite simply, there are times when it is better to bring medical care to the pet than it is to require our clients to bring a pet to our facility.
For example, some pets simply do better in their own homes where they are more comfortable and less likely to become agitated or anxious. In other cases, there are those people who own more than one pet or who have limited mobility making veterinary visits difficult at best and impossible at worst.
Certainly the most difficult, though important house-call we will make is when a beloved pet has reached his or her last day. Being at home, surrounded by familiar and loving faces with a trained professional helping to ease a sick or aged pet from this world is an important aspect of veterinary care.