We basically examine everything from head to toe. We're looking for anything that's orthopedic related, are the joints, long bones are they growing nicely, do they have any pain? Make sure the belly feels great. Are the baby teeth coming in nicely. Ears, eyes, heart, most importantly make sure the puppy does not have heart murmur. So we do check everything.

It really depends on the breed and size of your puppies, especially large breed puppies. We're starting to recommend maybe waiting to spay and neuter your dog later because there's a medical benefit from it, but again, it really depends on the size and the breed of your puppy. So of course, please ask us a question about when would be the best time to neuter or spay your puppy.

Generally, we try to neuter males... depends on the size of the dog now and what your goals are. A lot of times, if you got a giant breed dog or pure bred dog, sometimes they want to develop their male characteristics. So like for example, a St. Bernard male, they might want to fix them at two years old, but generally, if we want to avoid some behavioral complications, other things, six months is probably the earliest we'd do it. In females, we try to fix them between 6 to 12 months old, just before that first heat. So on average, about eight months, but definitely want to consult your veterinarian by about four to six months to discuss that.

That really depends on, I think I said how many vaccines they've received before. Common distemper shots, commonly we like to see your puppy get the vaccines three to four times, depending on when the first vaccine was started. So depending on that, we'll formulate the schedule specific for your puppy. Let's see. But usually I would say about two to three times, depending on how many times the vaccine was given to the puppy.

That would depend on what age you bring your puppy in for the first visit. Generally, we recommend bringing your puppy in right away, and then we'll let you know how often you need to come. If you, for example, bring a four to six-week-old puppy in, we'll probably be seeing you every three weeks until they're current on their vaccinations. If you bring maybe a six-month-old puppy in, we might be seeing you two to three times after that to get them caught up and discuss lifestyles.

So you should expect a lot of information. So when we first see puppies, we try to go over a lot. So we try to reinforce that at future visits because I know when you're in the office, it can feel almost overwhelming having that first puppy. You should expect the veterinarian to do a thorough examination from head to toe as they look for any ecto or internal parasites, such as fleas and ticks. Internal parasites could be worms. They might be stuck underneath the tail.