Why does my pet need a blood test?

During your pet’s routine annual physical exam bloodwork may be recommended to establish a baseline of what is normal for your pet. Also at times it might not be clear that your pet is sick and bloodwork will help to uncover diseases sooner when treatment will be more effective.

When your pet is obviously sick and the veterinarian cannot determine what is wrong by what they can see from the outside, bloodwork will tell them what is going on inside so your pet can get the right treatment as quickly as possible.

Pre-anesthetic blood tests help the veterinarian to get a complete picture of your pet’s health so that if any abnormalities are noted, adjustments can be made to ensure a safe recovery from anesthesia.

Blood tests are also used to monitor medication levels and any side effects from medications your pet may be taking.

Our clinic offers many diagnostic tests in-house with results available within a short period of time, usually just minutes. Some of the most common diagnostic blood tests we routinely run in our clinic are tests for Heartworm, several tick borne diseases including Lyme disease, various organ panels, Feline Leukemia and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus.

If more extensive tests are needed that we do not offer in the clinic, we are able to collect samples and send them to a number of outside state of the art veterinary diagnostic labs. In most cases results are available the next day.