Building a dog health care schedule is essential for your pup.

In the frenzy of bringing home a new dog, it’s easy to forget your new friend’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly health care needs.

Before you bring your dog home, take a moment to put pen to paper — and add your dog’s routine health needs to your physical or digital calendar. Add the tasks throughout the week, and it will help you never to miss a vital care item that’s needed for your beloved canine companion.

Create a Dog Health Care Schedule

Daily Care Needs

  • Brushing Teeth — Ideally, it’s best to brush your dog’s teeth every day. Doing so would keep plaque from building up most, but if you can’t stick to a daily tooth brushing schedule, try to aim for at least three brushings weekly. By sticking to a program of brushing your dog’s teeth, you’ll ensure they’ll have a healthy smile for many years into their older years and will save you on costly tooth extraction bills. Giving your dog access to dental chews and toys will also keep their teeth healthy and strong.
  • Exercise — Aim to exercise your dog multiple times daily to keep their mind and body active and robust. An example of exercises for a summer day could be a walk in the morning when it’s cool, obedience and command training inside where it’s cooler in the afternoon, and a walk in the evening once more when it cools down again.
  • Feeding & Water — Feed your dog according to the schedule listed on the dog food packaging. It can be beneficial to break feedings into twice a day instead of feeding all food at once.
  • Bathroom Breaks — Take your pup out to go to the bathroom multiple times a day, so they don’t have any accidents in the house.
  • Hair Brushing — Brushing your dog’s hair every few days will keep their coat shiny, healthy and strong, and will remove dirt, debris and mats from their fur.

Weekly Care Needs

  • Nail Trimming — Every other week, you should work on trimming your dog’s nails. If you let your dog’s nails get too long, the quick will elongate and be more prone to potential cutting injuries and bleeding.

Monthly Care Needs

  • Dog Grooming — Every month to month and a half, schedule time to visit the groomer, where the groomer will trim and tidy your dog’s ears, fur, nails. Many groomers can also express your dog’s anal glands if recommended by a veterinarian due to a dog not being able to do so naturally.
  • Heartworm and Flea/Tick Medication — Keep your dog on a medication schedule to control heartworm, fleas and ticks. Heartgard Plus is often used with a prescription from a veterinarian to administer and prevent heartworm, and Frontline Plus is administered to control fleas and ticks.
  • Bath — You can start giving your dog a bath each month to remove a buildup of dirt in their fur, but you shouldn’t need to bathe your dog much more than once a month. Dogs have natural oil in their hair that keeps their hair healthy, and bathing too much will damage their hair follicles. Make sure to use a dog shampoo when bathing instead of using a product meant for humans.

How often should dogs have health checks?

In addition to daily, weekly, and monthly care needs, make sure to take your dog to the vet at least once a year to stay up-to-date on vaccinations and other routine care. Your veterinarian will also spay or neuter your dog, recommended to prevent future medical problems and unnecessary litters.

Puppies and elderly dogs need to have routine checkups with a veterinarian more than once a year.

As always, do ample research when bringing a new dog into the home, as you will find additional items to add to your dog’s health care schedule from what’s listed above. Bark, bark!