170 North Street, Rye, NY 10580
Puppy & Kitten Wellness Exams & Vaccinations
When bringing home a new puppy or kitten, we strongly encourage you to contemplate how it will affect each member of the household, including existing pets. Does everyone want a new pet? How will each family member contribute to its care? It should be clear who will be responsible for the puppy or kitten’s food, water, hygiene, and veterinary needs. Furthermore, bringing a pet home as a surprise is not recommended, because these important conversations cannot be held in advance.
Veterinary care is one of the most important factors that will provide your pet with a long and healthy life. That’s why the first thing you should do is schedule a visit with your veterinarian.
Our doctor’s recommend completing the following benchmark veterinary care items in your pet’s first year of life:
- Vaccinations – are the optimum defense against serious diseases. Puppies and kittens should each have three or four visits to receive a series of injections a few weeks apart.
Core Puppy Vaccines:
- Rabies: 12 - 16 weeks old
- DA2PP: Every 3 - 4 weeks until at least 16 weeks old
Other additional vaccines may be recommended outside of the core vaccine protocol based on request, lifestyle, and risk of exposure.
Core Kitten Vaccines:
- Rabies: 12 - 16 weeks old
- FVRCP: Every 3 - 4 weeks until at least 16 weeks old
Spay/Neuter Procedure
Spaying and neutering are routine surgical procedures that prevent pets from reproducing while also providing important long-term health and behavioral benefits.
Our experienced veterinary team performs spay and neuter surgeries with a strong focus on safety, comfort, and individualized care. Before, during, and after the procedure, we closely monitor your pet and provide appropriate pain management, recovery support, and follow-up care to help ensure a smooth healing process.
For most pets that are not part of a responsible breeding program, spaying or neutering is strongly recommended. In addition to benefiting your pet, these procedures help reduce the number of unwanted litters and support efforts to decrease pet overpopulation. Every year, many animals enter shelters or become strays due to unplanned breeding. Choosing to spay or neuter your pet helps reduce this burden and creates more opportunities for homeless pets to find loving homes.
Beyond population control, spaying and neutering can significantly reduce the risk of certain medical conditions and contribute to a healthier, longer life.
Health benefits of spaying and neutering:-
Female dogs that remain unspayed have a higher risk of developing pyometra, a severe and potentially life-threatening infection of the uterus that often requires emergency surgery. Older female cats can also develop this condition. Spaying eliminates the risk of pyometra.
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Since the testicles are removed during neutering, neutered male pets cannot develop testicular cancer.
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Spaying a female dog before her first heat cycle greatly lowers her lifetime risk of developing mammary (breast) cancer. While spaying later in life can still provide benefits, the greatest protection occurs when the procedure is performed before the first heat.
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Neutered male dogs and cats are generally less likely to roam in search of a mate. This can help decrease the risk of getting lost, fighting with other animals, or being injured by traffic, while often making training and behavior management easier.
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Microchipping
Every year, millions of dogs and cats are brought to animal shelters. Many of these pets used to have loving homes, but they became separated from their families and had no way of getting back to them.
When a pet has a microchip embedded beneath their skin between their shoulder blades, their owners’ contact information is always with them. This technology greatly increases their chances to being reunited with their family if they are ever lost.
We recommend every single family pet to have a microchip. The implantation procedure is no more taxing for the animal than receiving a routine vaccination. The device is the size of a grain of rice and can be inserted into the skin in seconds. The materials it is made of are biologically compatible, and therefore will last forever underneath their skin without causing any harm.
Once the microchip is implanted, it is important to remember to keep the information associated with it up-to-date. Initially, we will help you by providing the correct paperwork for submittal so your information will be added to the secure HomeAgain database. In the future, if your contact information ever changes, such as during a move or if you change phone numbers, please remember to update your contact information through HomeAgain. The microchip can only work as well as the contact information it is associated with.
In addition to the microchip, we also recommend that your dog or cat always wears a collar with tags that also have your contact information. The microchip will be read if the pet is taken to a veterinarian or animal shelter with a special reader, but the average layperson who comes across your lost pet can use the tags to call you immediately.
The advantage of the microchip in comparison to tags, is that a microchip can never be taken off, disposed of, or detached from their body. This is why both forms of ID are recommended.
Trusted Pet Care & a Friendly Welcome for Every Pet
