I rescued a cocker spaniel female who I’m fostering currently. She was strongly heartworm positive. The rescue didn’t want to pay for a chest x-ray but instead looked at the number of heartworms under the microscope for heartworm load to decide on course of treatment. I wasn’t happy about that because of her strong heartworm status. I don’t like taking shortcuts. But they argued and claimed that it wasn’t cost effective and that they treat all dogs this way. I asked them how would you know if her lungs and heart had a heavy burden? But they ignored that. In the end, the vet opted for the two immiticide treatments with doxycycline 2 weeks prior to the immiticide and for a month afterwards. We just discontinued it. We will retest her in a couple of weeks. She is still being confined except for potty breaks in an air conditioned room but is getting bored with it but I have to confine her. How much longer should be confine her before she is cleared for adoption. Some sources say 4-6 weeks and others state 8-12 weeks. I will do whatever is the best for this dog. She did have a marked appetite decrease but her gums stayed nice and pink, no jaundice noted. No brick red gums either. But she did cough within 3-7 days post injection(s) and the vet gave her some dexamethasone to help with that. She hardly coughed at all after that except occasionally.
They want me to post her on petfinder but I’m not sure she is ready yet.

Comments are not moderated. However, the spam filter on the blog occasionally sorts real comments out as spam. This usually happens if they have links to outside pages.

Anyhow, I was able to sort through the spam filter and post your comments. I hope I found them all.

My blog software proudly proclaims that it has protected my site from over 28,000 spam comments. I wonder how many of those were legitimate.

–Dr. B.

The study that supports the basis for seasonal Heartworm prevention <a href=”http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/ysvms/article/PIIS1096286798800108/abstract”is here. For those of us who are not vets, it’s conclusions are summed up here.

Some parts of the U.S. are endemic and at year-round risk for HW, so seasonal prevention is not something to do without knowing the status of your own region is first.

The ’soft kill’ method with Ivermection alone is only recommended for light infections in low-activity dogs. Personally, it seems to me that Ivermectin+Doxycycline treatments would the best choice.

The study that proved the basis for seasonal Heartworm prevention <a href=”http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/ysvms/article/PIIS1096286798800108/abstract”is here. For those of us who are not vets, it’s conclusions are summed up here.

Some parts of the U.S. are endemic and at year-round risk for HW, so seasonal prevention is not something to do without knowing the status of your own region is first.

Click on the link to the American Heartworm Society in the post for an in-depth answer to your first question. As I said in the post, the gulf coast, east coast, and northern California are experiencing notable increases in prevalence.

Why is heartworm prevalence increasing? There are several theories, ranging from climate change to evolution of heartworm lifecycles. Or, as I said in the post: “It’s also possible that veterinarians are detecting more cases due to increased testing.” No theory has been proved conclusively.

I wish the article had addressed 2 things:
1) In what areas are vets seeing an increase in heartworms –they have always been prevalent in the South?
2) Is there a hypothesis as to why this is occurring — such as it thought to be a function of global warming or rather a function of owners not knowing the importance of preventive treatment?

One day my vet sat me down and showed me the cost of the yearly testing and the cost I would incurr if I just kept the dogs on year round heartworm medicine. It was like $20 difference! DUH!
My dogs are now on heartworm medicine year round.

Not only is it not hard on the budget …it is much easier on the heart than and pocket book than treating a pet for heartworm is!

SLaW to Ya All!

The medicine used to kill adult worms is melarsamine.

Giving ivermectin to a dog with a severe heartworm infestation can, in some cases, lead to shock and sudden death.

Waiting a year or two for adult worms to die naturally can lead to significant pathology. The worms can cause significant damage to the pulmonary blood vessels during this time. Heart failure can result.

The thought that vets recommend heartworm treatment simply for the money is laughable. If we cared about money, we would have gone to law school or business school.

Folks, be sure to check the accuracy of your sources before you implement home treatments for your dogs. There is a lot of misinformation floating around out there.