How to Add Hearing to the Wellness Exam

Vision, dental, and cardiac get checked at every wellness visit. Hearing doesn’t. The gap shows up in the room. A pet that startles, shuts down, or resists on the table is usually responding to sound, and the team often reads it as temperament.

Undetected hearing change reshapes how a pet experiences the clinic, and how the people who love them read their behavior at home. A pilot of 47 records across 27 organizations in 4 countries (VCA Animal Hospitals, Sploot Vets, Colorado State University, the British Veterinary Association, and others) found nearly 1 in 2 animals tested showed some degree of hearing change. Most had never been screened.

Janet Marlow, Certified Sound Behaviorist™, has spent her career studying how animals experience sound in clinical environments and at home. She’ll cover what auditory experience looks like across species, what the pilot data tells us about how often hearing change goes undetected, and how a brief behavioral hearing check can fit into a routine wellness visit.

Every attendee walks away with practical, free tools to check hearing more effectively in day-to-day wellness care.