How To Help Your Dog With Heartworms?
*Is there a way to prevent heartworms?
The doctors at A-Animal Clinic recommend that all dogs receive year-round monthly heartworm preventative. There are excellent heartworm preventatives available for dogs, making prevention of heartworm disease safe and easy. The ProHeart6 Injection is an injectable heartworm preventative that provides 6 months of continuous protection from heartworm disease, as well as provides treatment for hookworm infestations. It eliminates the hassle of remembering to apply monthly topicals or give monthly pills/chews. Trifexis is a monthly chewable tablet for dogs that kills fleas, prevents heartworm disease and treats and controls adult hookworm, roundworm and whipworm infections. Revolution is a monthly topical preventative that prevents heartworm disease as well as fleas and ticks. Heartgard is a monthly chewable tablet that prevents against heartworms and controls roundworms and hookworms. Lastly, Iverhart Max is a monthly chewable tablet with the same active ingredient as Heartgard, however, it has an extra ingredient that also prevents and treats tapeworms. All the above mentioned preventatives come in six-month supplies. We have also recently added the ProHeart6 Injection to our selection which is a bi-annual injectable heartworm prevention, which is slow-releasing and lasts for 6 months.
*I understand heartworm disease is serious, but why bother with yearly heartworm testing if my dog is on a monthly heartworm preventative? The term “heartworm preventative” is a little bit misleading. The medication you give your dog once a month does not prevent them from getting bitten by a mosquito and getting infected with microfilaria (baby heartworms). The medication, if given appropriately, actually kills these microfilaria every month so they cannot grow up to become adult heartworms. Are you sure that your dog is taking every pill you give him? If your dog takes the “treat” away and buries it, or vomits shortly after eating his pill, he will not be protected against heartworms. The medication needs to be in the body to work! Even missing just one month makes your dog more susceptible to becoming infected with heartworms. Not all medications are 100% effective. If a dog is infected with a large number of microfilaria from multiple mosquito bites, the preventative medication may not be able to kill all the microfilaria, which could result in infection.
*What causes heartworm disease? Heartworm disease or dirofilariasis is a serious and potentially fatal disease in dogs. It is caused by a blood-borne parasite called Dirofilaria immitis. Heartworms are found in the heart and adjacent large blood vessels of infected dogs. The female worm is 6 to 14 inches long (15 to 36 cm) and 1/8 inch wide (5 mm). The male is about half the size of the female. One dog may have as many as 300 worms.
*How do heartworms get into the heart? Adult heartworms live in the heart and pulmonary arteries of infected dogs. They have been found in other areas of the body, but this is unusual. They live up to five years and, during this time, the female produces millions of offspring called microfilaria. These microfilariae live mainly in the small vessels of the bloodstream. The immature heartworms cannot complete their life cycle in the dog. The mosquito is required for some stages of the heartworm life cycle. The microfilaria are not infective (cannot grow to adulthood) in the dog although they do cause problems. As many as 30 species of mosquitoes can transmit heartworms. The female mosquito bites the infected dog and ingests the microfilariae during a blood meal. The microfilariae develop further for 10 to 30 days in the mosquito and then enter the mouthparts of the mosquito. The microfilariae are now called infective larvae because at this stage of development, they will grow to adulthood when they enter a dog. The mosquito usually bites the dog where the hair coat is thinnest. However, having long hair does not prevent a dog from getting heartworms.
When fully developed, the infective larvae enter the bloodstream and move to the heart and adjacent vessels where they grow to maturity in two to three months and start reproducing, thereby completing the full life cycle.
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