Am I Doing Enough as a Pet Owner?

Everyone raises their pets differently. Including a lacked responsibility into your pet’s care could drastically benefit their livelihood, as well as your relationship together.

As pet owners, we have a moral obligation to make sure our pets are not only being cared for in an emotional and physical sense, but from a health perspective as well. A lack of including preventive care into our pet’s lifestyle routine could allow medical issues to develop and for those issues to go undiagnosed, resulting in future challenges for you and your pet. The goal of scheduling annual veterinary visits is to ensure your pet’s quality of life and help prevent an unfortunate diagnosis from happening. If we as pet owners know this is important, why do a decent majority of us still not follow through with taking Fido to the doctor?

I decided to research the reasons why some pet owners don’t, and how we can encourage them to start.

Why focus on this issue?

The interest to look further into this issue began with Boise State University’s ID:EA certificate program, where our class was given the assignment to chose an issue to research and develop solutions. I chose animal care and lack of pet’s receiving preventive care. This all due to my own experience as a pet owner who yes, was guilty of assuming my pets were fine and healthy from casual visual observation and interaction. These “assumptions” leading to my cat being diagnosed with a preventative, now life long disease.

During research of my poor cat’s diagnosis, I became curious how often a situation like this can occur. How big is the population of animal owners that don’t take their pets to the vet based off of “everything looks fine” assumptions?

An article by the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) created a study on Vital Statistics in 2011 [you can find that article here]. They found that of over half of U.S. homes that housed pets in 2011:

• 44.9% of cats did not visit the veterinary the entire year.
• 18.9% of dogs did not visit the veterinary the entire year.

These statistics re-affirming the lack of annual animal check ups.

Gathering data

I created a survey directed towards pet owners, and non-pet owners, to see essentially how they will evaluate and rank their methods of pet care (or how they would rank themselves if they owned a pet). 88 people responded to the survey. The survey’s goal was to gain a general idea of how many people annually take their animals to the vet and from the responses of “no”, what reasons interfere in taking their pets to the vet [survey accessible here]. The survey results for animals being taken to the vet for annual exams were:

Out of 88 participants, results were basically half and half for “yes” and “no” responses.

The answers for “yes” and “no” to taking/not taking animals annually to the vet are extremely close. Both “yes” and “no” being essentially half and half. While this outcome is intriguing, the results of reasons why pet owners do not take their animals to the vet were of main importance.

“pet seems physically fine or unnecessary” as leading cause by over half percent.

I originally hypothesized “financial insecurity” to be the main cause due to money being a concern for many in regards to medical issues. However, “pet seems fine or unnecessary” was the leading cause, by little over half percent. The AVMA article even found in their research the leading cause for animals not being annually taken to the vet in 2011 were for “not sick or injured” reasons, this factor leading by 48.6% for dog owners and 53.9% for cat owners.

90% said “yes” to providing adequate animal care.

Surveyors were asked do they believe they provide enough care for their pets. While of course there is bias in these answers (who would want to answer “no” to not being a good pet parent?), the correlation between a majority of people saying they don’t take their animals to the vet because “pet seems physically fine or unnecessary” and a vast majority of surveyors saying they believe they do provide adequate care, can re-instate why not taking your pets to the vet based on a “they seem fine” mentality is an issue.

“Small steps towards larger stepping stones of understanding.”

So what leads us to the conclusion that if our pets seem fine, then it is not necessary to take them to the vet? A major factor that helps push people to make informed decisions is marketing, or should I say a lack thereof.

Marketing the importance to regularly take your pets to the vet is not as much a thing. U.S. health care for humans is advertised through endless means of billboards, TV ads and shows, magazines, medical office promotional material, etc. The importance of watching our health and to consult a physician when we have medical issues or questions has been a stressed importance in American society. Why is this different for animals? Richard Owens, a journalist for Veterinary Practice News helps answer this question [article accessible here]:

“For most veterinary practices, client retention is a far more cost-effective marketing strategy for achieving sustainable profitability and growth. In fact, studies have shown it costs five times as much to attract a new client than to keep an existing one. Not only that, the average business loses around 20 percent of its clients each year by failing to focus on existing client relationships.”

The veterinary industry is vastly less wealthy compared to the trillions of dollars poured into America’s health care system. Cutting costs to focus on stocking of materials, function of facilities, paying staff would be listed higher as essentials than paying for marketing to encourage more annual clients.

If preventive care for animals was marketed similarly as it is for humans, statistics for animals who are annually taken to the vet would most likely be different.

Educating pet owners about how to look for warning signs and understanding the importance of preventive animal care may be the answer. “Many veterinary websites lack useful written content that educates and engages their clients.” says Owens, he continues with,

“Social media posts, a monthly newsletter, and regular blog posts are three of the most effective marketing methods you can use to reach your client base. Educational content allows you to demonstrate your expert status, build trust, and increase the likelihood your clients will continue to do business with you…One of the benefits of educational content is that it’s relatively simple and inexpensive to produce.”

Education is a majorly important factor in what helps people decide when they should start taking their pets to the vet. Further stressing the importance of education related to this issue can be followed up by Kristine Schellhaas, an Idaho Humane Society community coordinator who I interviewed in gaining research on the topic. She responded on the discussion of teaching healthy animal relationship building at a young age, “We believe that humane education is of utmost importance, and this educations starts with teaching at a very young age…By offering a safe environment to ask questions and have construction dialogue, it allows for understanding and empathy to blossom.” Kristine ended our discussion on the topic of animal education and healthy relationship building by saying (and concluding quite beautifully I might add), “Small steps towards larger stepping stones of understanding.”

What does this mean and what do we about it?

I believe by encouraging our local veterinary services and businesses to use free or relatively low cost platforms such as frequently posted social media accounts or ad submissions in local newspapers, could help bring awareness to the importance of regularly taking your pets to the vet. Simple educational facts about pet insurance, encouraging information, and showing the benefits annual medical exams can have on pets can help maintain clientele and importantly, bring in new and long-lasting clientele. I will be sharing my research with the Idaho Humane Society in hopes that it helps create ideas for them to gain more business, as well as encourage pet owners to start bringing their pets in more frequently.

I’d like to conclude by stressing the message that by no means am I automatically associating pet owners who do not take preventive care steps for their pets as awful, neglectful people. It can be easy to assume if your pet seems fine and nothing is an emergency than why need to go? I was the same way. However, it’s about taking responsibility to educate ourselves and not underestimate the value behind medical care for our pets that is important. Ensuring we include this responsibility into our animal’s care means a more enjoyable life for them, and allows us to be informed and happy pet owners to our four-legged friends.