Wellness Plans: Why We Built Them, and Why We Believe in Them

Predictable pricing for the care your pet needs anyway.

Ask any veterinarian what keeps pets healthiest over a lifetime, and you won't hear about a breakthrough drug or a piece of equipment. You'll hear something much less dramatic: pets do best when they're seen regularly, and when preventive care happens on schedule.

That's the whole idea behind our wellness plans. All three have been AMC client favorites for nearly twenty years, and we've just finished updating every one of them. Here's what they are, and why we think they matter.

The Annual Exam Is Where Good Medicine Happens

It's tempting to think of a wellness visit as "the vaccine appointment." The vaccines matter, but they're not the point.

The point is a doctor putting hands and eyes on your pet once a year. That's when we find the heart murmur that wasn't there last spring. The lump that's still small enough to deal with easily. The early dental disease, the subtle weight loss, the joint that's stiffening. Pets are extraordinarily good at hiding illness — it's a survival instinct — and by the time a problem is obvious to you at home, it's often been developing for a while.

A yearly exam is how we catch small problems while they're still small — and small problems are almost always less costly to treat than the ones that have had years to grow.

The Real Cost of Falling Behind

The other half of preventive care is timing. A puppy's DAPP series works because the boosters come every three weeks through 18 to 20 weeks of age — not because the puppy eventually got the vaccines at some point. A lapsed rabies vaccine isn't protection. A leptospirosis booster given a year late leaves a gap.

We see the same pattern again and again: care that gets postponed once tends to get postponed again. Not because anyone stops caring about their pet, but because an unpredictable expense is easy to push to next month, and next month turns into next year.

Wellness plans exist to take that decision off the table. When the vaccines are already paid for, they get done — on time, every time.

Three Plans, One Idea

Puppy Plans & Kitten Plans

Puppies and kittens need a lot of care in a short window — exams every three weeks, a vaccine series, fecal testing, deworming, and eventually spay or neuter surgery. Paid piecemeal, it adds up unpredictably, and it arrives right when you've already spent money on a crate, a carrier, food, and a bed.

Our Puppy Plans and Kitten Plans bundle all of it into one price, set by your pet's age at their first visit — and you can pay it in full or spread it across the visits, so a $925 plan becomes five payments of $185 as you go.

Age at first visit	Visits	Price	Or installments
Puppies 5–7 wks / Kittens 5–6 wks	5	$925	5 × $185
Puppies 8–10 wks / Kittens 7–9 wks	4	$876	4 × $219
Puppies 11–13 wks / Kittens 10–12 wks	3	$795	3 × $265
Puppies 14–18 wks / Kittens 13–26 wks	2	$696	2 × $348

Each plan includes wellness exams at every visit, the full core vaccine series, at least two fecal exams, deworming at each visit, and spay or neuter surgery at about six months — with pain management included, plus an IV catheter and IV fluids for every procedure except cat neuters, because that's our standard of care, not an upgrade. Kittens also get Feline Leukemia and FIV testing at the first visit.

Compared to paying for each piece separately, plans typically save $100 to $300, and often more, depending on what your pet needs. You can pay up front or spread the cost across the visits.

Free Vaccines for Life

Once the puppy or kitten series is behind you, Free Vaccines for Life picks up where it leaves off. Pay a one-time enrollment fee, keep up with your pet's annual wellness exam, and core vaccines are free for the rest of your pet's life.

✔️ Dogs — $235 ($205 for Puppy Plan graduates)

✔️ Cats — $145 ($115 for Kitten Plan graduates)

Over a lifetime, an enrolled dog receives more than $700 in free core vaccines and an enrolled cat more than $300 — plus 50% off non-core vaccines every year. Many pets nearly break even at the enrollment visit itself.

One detail we're proud of: FVFL covers core vaccines as determined by our veterinarians' best medical judgment.When the standard of care advances, coverage advances with it — for every enrolled pet, regardless of when they joined. That's why dogs enrolled years ago now have leptospirosis covered too. We didn't grandfather anyone into an older, thinner version of the plan.

What's Covered, and What Isn't

Our plans are built around the routine wellness care we know your pet needs — the exams, the vaccine series, the testing, the spay or neuter. They're not meant to cover everything, and we'd rather say so plainly than surprise you at checkout.

✔️ Free Vaccines for Life doesn't include the annual wellness exam fee. The exam is what keeps your enrollment active, and it's the part we'd never want bundled out of sight — it's the reason the program works.

✔️ Puppy and Kitten Plans don't include flea, tick, and heartworm preventatives, non-core vaccines, sick visits, bloodwork, microchipping, or e-collars. We'll send you home with free starter doses of preventatives when we have them, and we'll help you choose what to use going forward.

Why This Matters to Us

We've been AAHA-accredited for more than twenty years — the only accredited practice in the Morgantown area. Accreditation isn't a checklist. It's a commitment to evaluating every patient as an individual: the right vaccines for this pet's risks, the right anesthetic protocol for this pet's history, the right timing for this pet's body.

Our wellness plans are built the same way. The plan matches your pet's age. Non-core vaccines are recommended by risk, not by default. If your veterinarian thinks your large-breed puppy should wait until a year for surgery, that's still covered. What's predictable is the cost — not the medicine.

If you've been meaning to get your pet caught up, or you've got a new puppy or kitten at home, let's talk about which plan fits.

📞 Call us at 304-292-0126, ask at your next visit, or schedule online at www.morgantownamc.com 🐾💙