Just Moved to St. Pete With a Pet? Start Here
Skyway Animal Hospital
Veterinary Team
St. Petersburg gains new residents constantly, and a large share of them arrive with a dog or a cat who has never lived in a subtropical climate. The pet was healthy in Ohio. The pet will probably be healthy here. But the risk list is genuinely different, and most people don't find that out until something happens.
This is the orientation nobody hands you at closing.
Move the Records Before You Need Them
Do this in the first month, while it's still on your list.
Call your previous veterinarian and ask them to send the complete file — not a vaccine summary, the actual record. You want dates and manufacturers for every vaccine, any bloodwork with values, surgical history, chronic diagnoses, current medications with doses, and any known drug reactions. Email is fine. Most clinics will send it directly to your new vet if you ask.
Why it matters more than it sounds: a baseline matters enormously in veterinary medicine. When a nine-year-old cat's kidney values come back slightly elevated, the question that determines what happens next is whether they were the same three years ago. Without the old record, we're guessing.
While you're at it, update the microchip registration. This is the single most-skipped step of any move and it's the one that matters most in the first few weeks, when a pet in an unfamiliar neighborhood is at their highest risk of getting genuinely lost. The chip is useless if it points at your old address and a disconnected number. It takes five minutes and it's free.
What's Actually Different Here
Parasite prevention is year-round, not seasonal. This is the biggest adjustment for anyone from a state with real winters. Up north, many people stop heartworm and flea prevention in November. In Pinellas there is no month cold enough to break the mosquito or flea cycle. Florida has among the highest heartworm rates in the country, and heartworm is far cheaper to prevent than to treat — the treatment is hard on the dog and takes months. Year-round, no gaps. We cover it in protecting your pet against heartworm disease.
Fleas never stop. Same reasoning. A flea problem in a Florida house is a year-round management issue rather than a summer event.
Heat is a different order of magnitude. Asphalt in a St. Pete August will burn paw pads in under a minute. A car interior becomes lethal in minutes even in shade. Dogs acclimated to northern summers are at real risk their first season — and flat-faced breeds especially, which we cover in flat-faced breeds and the Florida heat. Walk at dawn or after dark for the first year, and put the back of your hand on the pavement before you commit.
Local hazards you've never had to think about. Cane toads, which are lethal to dogs that mouth them. Red tide on the Gulf beaches. Leptospirosis in standing water. Occasional coyote and snake encounters. None of these should frighten you out of enjoying the place — they're just things to know the first time rather than the hard way.
Hurricane season is June through November and it changes what a pet emergency plan needs to look like.
The Vaccine Conversation Will Be Different
Your old vet's protocol was built for your old ZIP code. Ours is built for this one, and there are usually a couple of additions.
Leptospirosis is a core recommendation for most dogs here — standing water is a constant, and lepto is both serious and transmissible to people. Bordetella matters if your dog will board, go to daycare, or use a groomer. Some dogs benefit from the rattlesnake vaccine depending on where you walk, though it's a genuine discussion rather than an automatic yes.
Bring the old records to that first visit and we'll build the protocol around what your pet has already had, rather than starting from zero.
Your First-Month Checklist
- Request the full record from your previous vet, not just a vaccine summary.
- Update the microchip registration with your new address and current phone number.
- Book a new-client wellness exam while nothing is wrong. It establishes the baseline and gets you in a chart before you need us urgently.
- Restart or continue year-round heartworm and flea/tick prevention with no seasonal gap.
- Ask about the lepto vaccine if your pet has any yard or park access.
- Find your after-hours option now. We're a day practice; VEG St. Petersburg is 24/7 at (727) 342-4334. Put it in your phone today.
- Walk your new yard for cane toads, gaps in fencing, and toxic landscaping before your dog explores it alone.
- Set a hurricane plan including where your pet goes if you evacuate.
- Update your county pet license if applicable.
Frequently Asked Questions
How soon should I find a vet if my pet is healthy?
Within the first month or two, and specifically while they're healthy. Establishing care during a calm wellness visit means that when something does go wrong, you're a known patient with a chart rather than a stranger calling for a same-day appointment. That difference is significant, and it costs you one routine exam to have it.
Do I really need year-round prevention, even for an indoor cat?
For heartworm in cats, it's a real conversation — indoor cats do get heartworm from mosquitoes that come inside, and there is no treatment for feline heartworm, only prevention. For fleas, indoor-only genuinely lowers risk, though it doesn't eliminate it in a Florida house. It's worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.
Can I keep using my old vet's prescriptions?
Usually for a short bridge, yes. Florida requires a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship for ongoing prescriptions, which means we need to have examined your pet. Bring the bottles to the first visit and we'll sort out continuity so nothing lapses.
Most of this is a single afternoon of admin that pays off for years. The families who do it in month one are the ones who never have a frantic first emergency here.
If you've just landed in St. Pete, call us at (727) 327-5141 and we'll get the records requested and a new-client exam on the books. We've been on 5th Avenue South since 1961, and a good share of our clients arrived exactly the way you did. Also worth reading: how to choose a vet for life.
Written by the Skyway Animal Hospital team. Skyway has served Pinellas County pet families since 1961.
