Complete blood work should be a standard component of preventive care in young adult pets. Below, we'll discuss the importance of blood work as a diagnostic tool that enables comprehensive care, benefiting clients, patients, and practices.

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What Does Today's Wellness Protocol Cover?

In addition to yearly wellness exams for healthy dogs and cats, modern wellness protocols have elevated three pillars of prevention: vaccination, GI parasite surveillance via fecal testing, and VBD screening. In addition to a physical exam, each of these tests is essential for monitoring patient health. The current baseline of care at a wellness visit is as follows:

• Vaccination: Evidence‑based vaccine schedules during a physical exam protect against canine distemper, parvovirus, rabies, feline panleukopenia, herpesvirus, calicivirus, influenza, and many agents involved in the canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC).
• Fecal testing: Annual testing for antigen, fecal floatation, and microfilaria detects Dirofilaria immitis and Dirofilaria caninum, while fecal flotation or antigen panels identify hookworm, roundworm, whipworm, Giardia, and Cystoisospora.
• VBD screening: Practices also routinely run multiplex assays for Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma spp., and Ehrlichia, as endorsed by AAHA life-stage guidelines, which recommend yearly tick-borne testing in adult dogs.

These strategies help safeguard pets and people alike, but they focus our diagnostic lens mainly on infectious threats. Organ system dysfunction—especially silent metabolic or renal disease—remains unseen without blood work and urinalysis.

What Can Blood and Urine Panels Reveal?

Some veterinarians act under the false assumption that young patients are unilaterally healthy and don't stray from fecal and VBD testing. While knowing about infectious agents is essential for screening our patients, it doesn't tell the whole story.

Organ function, especially dysfunction, cannot be determined without more comprehensive blood and urine testing. Veterinarians sometimes reserve this kind of testing for pets who are elderly or already showing symptoms of disease. Relying solely on screening can lead to missing signs, such as an early rise in symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA) signaling, indicating nephron loss.

You can never be too thorough, even during a wellness visit for a young adult pet. Complete blood work can lead to early detection of illness, benefiting pets, clients, and vets alike by:

• Early intervention: Too often, early organ damage goes unrecognized. Genetic factors, congenital anomalies, subclinical infections, medication side effects, the consequences of early viral diseases, and excessive nutraceutical supplementation can all alter chemistry values even before clinical signs appear.
• Early detection: Pet owners of energetic 2-year-olds frequently overlook subtle signs of illness in otherwise healthy animals, such as increased urination or fluctuating energy levels. Waiting for obvious or consistent outward signs means allowing the disease to progress.
• Baseline establishment: No two pets are the same. Complete blood work helps veterinarians establish individual baseline levels while patients are healthy. This allows veterinarians to detect nuanced, patient-specific changes—sometimes when numbers are still within the generic reference interval.

Age Isn't Always a Reliable Internal Health Metric

There's a common myth in veterinary care: Nothing ever shows up when you order complete blood work for young adult pets. But that's not true. Between 2021 and 2022, IDEXX Laboratories analyzed 167,593 dog and 54,211 cat wellness profiles, which included complete blood count, comprehensive chemistry (including SDMA), and urinalysis, from routine North American visits. The result? Every pet benefits from preventive care diagnostics.

Clinically Relevant Abnormalities in Dogs

When veterinarians performed a complete blood count (CBC) and chemistry on dogs aged 1 up to 4, they found at least one clinically relevant abnormality in one out of every 10 cases. Without a urinalysis, 10% of these patients showed significant hematologic or biochemical changes.

With the addition of a urinalysis, the likelihood of at least one clinically relevant abnormality increased to one in seven young dogs. A urinalysis revealed additional renal-related and systemic issues in young adult dogs. Some of these abnormalities, such as electrolyte shifts, early renal biomarkers, liver enzyme elevations, and mineral imbalances, can impact anesthetic safety, drug selection, and dietary counseling.

Clinically Relevant Abnormalities in Cats

When veterinarians performed a CBC and chemistry on young feline patients aged 1 up to 7, they found at least one clinically significant abnormality in one out of every nine cases. Adding a urinalysis to this screening increased the likelihood of at least one clinically significant abnormality to one in five in young cats.

Per the findings in this study, 20% of seemingly healthy cats harbor silent, yet treatable, metabolic abnormalities. This strengthens the case for annual—or even twice-yearly—checkups. Including SDMA helped detect early drops in glomerular filtration before creatinine levels changed, highlighting urinalysis as a vital tool in interpreting cat kidney health.

Practical Payoffs for Patients, Clients, and Your Practice

More thorough screening for younger patients can have many positive benefits, including improved medical outcomes, enhanced client trust and education, and increased financial sustainability. Here's how:

• Improved outcomes: Testing before a patient exhibits symptoms enables early intervention, enabling the detection of medical issues while they're still treatable.
• Client trust: Presenting objective medical data transforms the ambiguous wellness visit into a tangible report that clients can visualize. This encourages a more transparent client-practice relationship.
• Financial sustainability: Adding CBC and urinalysis may increase the cost of a regular wellness visit, but it can prevent clients from incurring additional expenses for extensive and invasive testing in the future.

Dispelling Common Misconceptions

Veterinarians may feel anxious when updating practice protocols because of potential client objections. Ordering more comprehensive screening isn't about upselling clients; it's about catching abnormalities while we can still make a difference.

Here are some common client concerns and strategies to compassionately address them:

• My pet is too young and looks healthy: While senior pets face their own unique set of challenges, young pets are not immune to health challenges. Clinically significant abnormalities can be found at any age, even when a pet is asymptomatic.
• It's too expensive: Practices can offer options for clients to help alleviate costs, including wellness plan pricing and bundling services. Practices can also encourage compliance by sharing anonymized statistics on abnormality rates from patient databases.
• I don't want to know: Knowledge is power. Most young adult abnormalities are mild and require monitoring, dietary adjustments, or counseling on parasites and lifestyle changes, potentially avoiding the need for aggressive interventions.

Expanded Diagnostics Improve Patient Outcomes

Wellness protocols, which include vaccines, fecal exams, and VBD screens, have extended the lifespans of companion animals. However, they often overlook critical systems.

Large-scale data now shows that young pets aren't inherently healthy. But adding a CBC, chemistry with SDMA, and urinalysis turns an incomplete snapshot into a detailed portrait. By expanding diagnostics early, veterinarians can better serve patients through early intervention based on personalized baselines, educate clients with specific health metrics, and boost practice operations through sustainable, ongoing preventive care. Expanding routine testing to include complete blood work is not simply doing more for the sake of it; it's about doing enough at the right time to make a difference.

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