The New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association is committed to providing pet owners with accurate information about medical care for their pets. The Animal Health Center is intended to offer you general information about health, care and behavior issues that are commonly encountered by pet owners.
You are the first line of defense for the health and well-being of your pet. Our pets can’t talk, so they rely on us to notice the changes in behavior – sometimes very small changes – that can signal that they don’t feel well. If you think there may be something wrong with your pet, there is no substitute for a careful examination by your veterinarian. Veterinarians are trained to recognize and interpret the symptoms that signal an illness or injury. Please consult your veterinarian right away if you have an urgent animal care question.
What is a Veterinarian?
In your lifetime, there are 23 different doctors who can or will take you from birth to death: the obstetrician, pediatrician, orthodontist, endodontist, dermatologist, internist, surgeon, radiologist, anesthesiologist, gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychiatrist, urologist, neurologist, psychoanalyst, pulmonologist, oncologist, ophthalmologist, nutritionist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, geriatrist, and pathologist. Veterinarians need to know about all of these areas of animal medicine in order to take care of animals.
Did you ever stop to think about veterinarians and what they need to know in order to take care of your pet?
Veterinarians are involved in four years of veterinary school and know how to prevent, diagnose, and treat illness in your pet. Some veterinarians extend their education even further and specialize in an area, such as cancer treatment or emergency and critical care.
Because of the bond that forms between people and their pets, the demand for greater diagnostic capabilities to diagnose and treat ailments has developed. Veterinary medicine has expanded over the years and many more treatments are available for pets that mirror those for humans. Veterinary hospitals have also grown into state-of-the art facilities, using technology such as ultrasound, lasers, sophisticated monitoring equipment, and increased methods of anesthesia to make surgery safe even for older animals. The result is a much more thorough diagnosis of our pets that can lead to more successful treatments or management of their illnesses. This means that pets have a greater chance of living longer, quality lives with us, their human companions.
Veterinarians not only treat our pets, they maintain the health of our livestock and the animals in the zoo; most important, they play a critical role in human health. Veterinarians work in areas that benefit people every day by identifying and managing diseases so they cannot be transmitted from animals to humans, developing vaccines and pharmaceuticals, and looking at ways to prevent the spread of infection to humans through animal products such as meat or milk.