Veterinary care: Whether you choose a professional practicing conventional veterinary medicine or one active in the increasingly popular fields of alternative veterinary care such as holistic care, homeopathy, acupuncture and other natural healing methods, it is indispensable to have a good, reliable relationship with a veterinarian who is thoroughly familiar with large breeds, even better with Swissys.

Vaccinations: In recent years, veterinary schools have begun to develop new vaccination protocols and in 2006, the American Animal Hospital Association issued the "AAHA Canine Vaccination Guidelines for the General Veterinary Practice" based on the "lack of scientific evidence to support the current practice of annual vaccination and increasing documentation showing that overvaccinating has been associated with harmful side effects (..) such as autoimmune hemolitic anemia in dogs."

Obviously, these are general recommendations that do not apply to every and all dogs. Factors such as geographic location, living circumstances and activities have to be considered. Ask your veterinarian about the prevalence in your area of diseases not included in protocols such as the one recommended by AAHA.

At Brush Creek, we follow and recommend to our puppy buyers the AAHA Canine Vaccination Guidelines. We modify this protocol for our adults according to their activities such as involvement in dog events, pregnancies etc.

Internal and external parasite control: In most areas of the country, heartworm prevention is a must. Some of the monthly heartworm medications such as HeartguardPlus, Sentinel , Interceptor etc. also control other internal parasites such as roundworm and others. To date, all these medications require veterinary prescription.

Flea and tick control has become simple with the advent in recent years of once a month topical products such as Advantage, Frontline (available from veterinarians, catalogs and on-line), BioSpot (stores, catalogs, on-line), etc. In general, fleas are more of a problem in suburban settings while ticks prevail in rural areas.

At Brush Creek, we use Frontline, BioSpot and Ivermectin to keep our Swissys free of mosquitoes, ticks, fleas and heartworm. We usually start external parasite prevention in April and stop in October or whenever the first hard frost knocks out all those nasty little critters while heartworm prevention is given all year.