A baseline is a picture of a dog when nothing is wrong. When your new vet asks for baselines after a move, the request has a specific meaning: send the results that show his normal values, so a future result that drifts from those values stands out at once. Owners often respond by forwarding everything a clinic ever printed, which buries the useful panels under years of one-off tests. Sorting the transfer takes an hour and gives the new practice a file they can actually use.
The Durable Baselines
Four kinds of result earn their place at the front of the transfer. A complete blood count from a healthy period shows his normal red and white cell picture, the reference his new vet will compare any future count against. A chemistry panel does the same for organ values, recording how his kidneys, liver, and related measures sat while he was well. Thyroid results matter because thyroid values guide long-running judgements, and an old healthy reading anchors later comparisons when a senior dog's coat, weight, or energy changes.
A urinalysis taken while he was healthy completes the set, giving a picture of his normal urine concentration and content when no infection or illness was in play. For each panel, send the full report with the laboratory's reference ranges and the date, not a summary you typed yourself, since the ranges are part of what makes the numbers interpretable years later at a different practice using a different laboratory.
What Counts as Stale
Staleness is about what a result was for, not simply its birthday. A one-off result taken during an illness that resolved completely, such as a single abnormal value that normalised once he recovered, describes that episode rather than his normal state, and forwarding it without its context can mislead more than it helps. Values superseded by newer panels are stale in a second sense: if a healthy chemistry panel from last year exists, the one from four years earlier adds history but no longer serves as the comparison point. Results tied to a medicine he no longer takes, or to a life stage he has left behind, such as puppy panels in a now senior dog, sit in the same category.
Send stale material labelled as history if you send it at all, clearly separated from the baselines, with a line saying what each test was for. Never quietly discard the old practice's records either: keep your own complete copy, because a result dismissed today can matter if a related question returns.
The New Vet Decides What to Re-run
Treat your sorted transfer as a handover, not a verdict. The new vet decides which baselines are recent and relevant enough to trust and which panels to re-run for a fresh starting point, and that judgement depends on his age, his health since the move, and what the old reports actually contain. Book the introductory visit, bring the baselines printed or shared in advance, and ask directly which values the practice wants to repeat. Before that visit, check the transfer for completeness yourself: every report should carry his name, the date it was run, and the practice that produced it, and a quick phone call to the old clinic can fill a missing page while your move is still recent and your file is easy for their staff to pull. A transfer checked this way arrives as a working file rather than a pile the new practice must sort before it can help him. When his history moves with Transferrable Profiles on KinsLe, the panels stay attached to his profile as care changes hands, so the new team opens his file with his healthy numbers already in view.