Creating a Dog Physical Exam Checklist for Your Practice

As a veterinarian, you already know the vital importance of dogs coming into your clinic to receive routine physical exams. After all, regular wellness visits are key to addressing health concerns early, including detecting signs of disease, noting body weight issues, and ensuring that your client’s furry friend is living a healthy life.

There’s a lot that goes into conducting a physical examination for pet dogs. This article outlines the recommended areas a veterinarian should examine to ensure that the assessment is as thorough as possible while streamlining the process.

Understanding the Importance of a Physical Exam

Despite the relatively broad-sounding nature of a regular physical exam, their importance for a dog’s health cannot be overstated.

These physical exams are crucial for dogs, providing four major benefits:

• Enable early disease detection: When a dog receives regular examinations, it’s more likely that health issues can be observed earlier.
• Promote preventive care: These visits may include vaccinations, dental care, heartworm testing, and pet owner education and advice in areas like ensuring the dog has a balanced diet and the owner is well-versed on parasite prevention.
• Strengthen the pet parent bond: People love their pets and treat them like family. Whether the pet parent is preparing their pet for dog shows or merely living their best life, routine vet visits reinforce the love shared between dog and owner.
• Enhance overall health: A routine exam ensures that the veterinarian can continuously monitor the dog’s current health status and note any subtle changes as they occur.  

Frequency of Wellness Exams for Dogs

Also referred to as a checkup or a physical examination, routine wellness exams are crucial to monitoring a pet’s health.

According to data published by VCA Animal Hospitals, the recommended frequency of a veterinary clinic physical examination varies by the dog’s life stage.

Accordingly, to maintain a dog’s quality of life, wellness exams should be scheduled within the following timeframe:

• Puppies: Dogs should visit the veterinarian frequently during their first year of life. It’s recommended that they see the vet about every 3-4 weeks during their first 4-5 months of life, especially for things like parasite prevention. After that, puppies should be at the clinic every 3-6 months until they reach one year in age.
• Adults: Adult dogs (from 1 to 7 years of age) should plan to visit the veterinarian once per year unless they are experiencing a chronic condition or there are health problems that need to be addressed.
• Seniors: Dogs become senior citizens at approximately 7 years of age, and their risk of experiencing medical conditions becomes higher. Therefore, it’s recommended that they see the veterinarian every six months.

Comprehensive Dog Physical Examination Checklist

A comprehensive physical examination checklist will include a methodical step-by-step procedure for evaluating a dog’s health from nose to tail. The list below outlines what a veterinarian and the staff should include during every exam, regardless of the dog breed.

Initial Observations

First impressions can be critical in assessing a dog’s health, and an observant veterinarian should take note of the dog’s posture, behavior, and general appearance. Specifically, the dog’s gait and body condition should be noted. Signs of limping or stiffness could be indications that the dog is in pain or has another type of illness.

Nose and Skin

After an initial observation, the next step may be to take a look at the pup’s nose and note whether there are any abnormal conditions. While there is no universal ideal for a moist or dry nose, you can look for signs of abnormalities like cracks, bleeding, discharge, lumps, or sores.

The skin can be a more telling indicator of a healthy or unhealthy dog. Look for skin folds, lesions, masses, lumps, rashes, abnormal hair loss, and external parasites.

Eyes

A pet’s eyes can be very telling of overall health. Look for signs of healthy eyes, evaluating their clearness, brightness, and symmetric pupils. You can identify signs of potential issues if you observe redness, discharge, cloudiness, squinting, or excessive tearing.  

Ears

Most dogs love having their ears scratched, but they may not enjoy having them examined. A veterinarian’s exam checklist should include looking for odors, excessive wax or debris in the ear canal, and signs of ear infections in the pet’s ears.

Mouth and Teeth

Periodontal disease is a major concern for dogs, so it’s important to evaluate overall oral hygiene, looking also at tartar and gum health. Also check for broken or missing teeth, oral masses, and foul breath.

Neck, Chest, and Breathing

A veterinarian should listen to a dog’s breathing and assess the dog’s respiratory rate. You can count breaths per minute and listen for abnormal breathing sounds like wheezing, cracking, labored breathing, or signs of respiratory distress in the lungs.

Abdomen

An abdominal check may include palpating the area, looking for lumps, or noticing other signs of discomfort or abnormalities.

Skin Turgor Test

This is a skin elasticity test that helps to measure a dog’s hydration status. This can be done by gently pinching the area between the shoulder blades and checking to see that it returns to its normal position quickly or instantly.

Pulse and Heart Rate

Checking a dog’s vital signs is key to measuring health. This includes pulse rates and body temperature of the dog. A pulse rate of between 60 to 140 beats per minute may be considered normal, but there may be variation depending on the size and breed of the dog.

Temperature

Typically, a digital rectal thermometer is used to measure a dog’s body temperature. The normal range is between 100.5 to 102.5 degrees. Anything outside of this range could indicate health problems.

How Weave Enhances Veterinary Practice Management

Because owners of dogs and cats treat their pets like family, it’s important for veterinary clinics to be equipped with the infrastructure to streamline communication with their clients and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. This is where a robust software solution like Weave comes in.

Weave has a suite of software products designed for veterinary practices that help with phones, appointment reminders, online scheduling, reviews, billing and payments, digital forms, and email marketing.

Streamline Communication

Communication is key, and Weave has an advanced phone system that’s complete with reminder services to improve client communication and appointment adherence. This is a win for patient outcomes, the client relationship, and the vet clinic’s bottom line.

Efficient Practice Management

Weave also allows a vet clinic’s back office to be more efficient with features like online scheduling, billing, and payments. These solutions serve to streamline administrative tasks, allowing your staff to spend more time on higher-value tasks.

Enhancing Client Engagement

Pet parents are vocal about how satisfied they are with an experience. Thankfully, Weave helps you facilitate and control that conversation with digital forms, review management, and email marketing solutions to help your practice grow.

Conclusion

Regular physical exams are important for maintaining the health of a dog and ensuring that you have a positive relationship with your client base. By having a comprehensive and organized checklist, you can be confident that you conduct every exam thoroughly and efficiently.

Having an efficiently running office and bespoke patient communication is also vital for practice success, and Weave can help. To learn more, schedule a demo.