A Healthy Pet

By: Dr. John Ashbaugh DVM

Preventative Medicine at Snug Pet Resort and Animal Hospital

In Part One of an ongoing series, we present some important topics in preventative medicine and patient care:

At Snug Pet Resort, we strive to provide your pet with the safest, cleanest, most interactive boarding and daycare experience available. Your pet’s health and well-being is of the utmost importance to us, whether they are here for a few hours of daycare or a more extended boarding or training visit.

Intestinal Parasitism

In accordance with the guidelines for parasite control set forth by the Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we strongly recommend monthly intestinal parasite control and heartworm prevention for all our furry hospital patients, daycare, boarding and training guests.

For puppies and kittens, routine deworming should begin at two weeks of age and continue every two weeks until the animal is placed on a monthly control product. We also recommend at least two fecal examinations to ensure efficacy of the deworming product.

To help protect the health of your pet, all dogs that participate in daycare and boarding at Snug must be screened for potentially harmful and contagious intestinal parasites by having a fecal analysis performed every six months. Testing can be done through your regular veterinary hospital or at Snug Animal Hospital.

Public Health Considerations

Intestinal worms commonly found in dogs and cats, such as roundworm (Toxocara spp.), can cause disease in humans. It is common to find worm eggs in soil samples collected from playgrounds or parks, and the eggs survive and remain infective for years. When the eggs are ingested, the larvae they contain can migrate internally and cause disease. Children are particularly susceptible.

Prevention of disease requires preventing the ingestion of eggs from the environment. Young children should be closely monitored to discourage ingestion of potentially contaminated soil and other items, particularly in public areas known to be frequented by dogs and cats, or other animals such as raccoons that are known to harbor intestinal parasites. Early and regular deworming of pets is essential in preventing contamination of the environment.

At Snug Pet Resort, it’s our goal to keep your family, including and especially your furry loved ones, as happy and healthy as possible. Our first concern is providing a safe home away from home for your pet. We do this through maintaining health regulations for all of our feline and canine guests and providing information and advice via a knowledgeable staff. That is all a part of our commitment to our four-legged friends!