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:
Other additional vaccines may be recommended outside of the core vaccine protocol based on request, lifestyle, and risk of exposure.
Core kitten vaccines:
Spaying or neutering pets will prevent them from reproducing in the future, and also provide several other health benefits.
The surgeons at Rye Harrison Veterinary Hospital are highly skilled at performing safe spay/neuter procedures because of their high-level training and years of combined experience. We take proactive steps to ensure that the pet receives appropriate care for any associated pain, follow-up check-ups, and ample supervision during and after the procedure.
We recommend that all pets who are not owned by a responsible breeder be spayed or neutered for their health, and for the benefit of the pet population at large. Every year, many pets from unplanned litters end up in homeless shelters or on the streets living as strays. When you spay or neuter your pet, you are helping to keep pets out of animal shelters, and you are freeing up much-needed space for other homeless pets to receive care and be adopted.
The health benefits of the spay/neuter procedure is also an important reason to strongly consider the procedure for your pet.
The following list describes various ways that the spay/neuter procedure protects your pet from various health issues:
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.
Located off of Exit 19 on I-95 (New England Thruway) between Theodore Fremd Ave and Maple Ave.
Phone: 914-921-2000
If you are experiencing an emergency after hours, please call us at 914-921-2000 and you will be directed to the veterinarian on call.
