Dr. Tim Anderson DVM, Dr. Melissa Smith DVM and Dr. Denise Kilby DVM practice's philosophy is that all pets should be evaluated medically as individuals. This means that we try to tailor your pet's health care needs depending on their age, breed, and overall health status. Thus, we perform such procedures such as wellness exams, vaccinations, diagnostic tests, and surgeries depending on your pet's needs and risk factors. We believe that recent studies have shown that many vaccines last much longer than the typical 1 year interval when they are normally given. This is not to imply that vaccines are unimportant, it's just that they need to be given at more appropriate intervals, which is 3 years in many cases. There are many other health related issues that are more important to your pet's health, and those are the areas that we try to focus on. We believe that semi-annual or annual exams, along with appropriate diagnostic blood testing is the best way for us to keep your pet healthy by detecting problems early in the course of a disease, when most problems are treated more easily and successfully. This is the main reason that we have invested in such technologies like blood testing equipment, x-rays, and ultrasound. Another area of focus for us is pain management for your pet. This involves giving pain medication when needed for certain disease conditions such as arthritis, for injuries, and for surgical patients. Most of our pain medication is delivered in the form of either an injection or an oral medication. We also have the ability to greatly decrease surgical pain and discomfort through the use of our surgical laser. Laser usage allows patients to have less pain, swelling, and bleeding from a surgery, thus increasing the rate at which healing takes place.