Heartworms

Some things I've learned about heartworms during this process. For starters, I remember years ago when Bay Animal Clinic had a jar on the counter. Inside was a pickled heart of a dog with a large mass of spagetti looking worms throughout it. That graphic representation still holds true today.

1. The preventative you give your pet really kills off anything in their system in the past month. That is why you have to give it with regularity.

2. It only takes one mosquito bite to infect your pet - cat or dog - inside as well as outside of the house.

3. The 'shots' are very painful injections of a drug called Immiticide. It kills the adult worms in the body. The dog has to stay quite because, if you can imagine, if a piece of spagetti breaks loose and moves around, it can cause all kinds of problems in the heart and lungs.

4. The worms can move to other organs such as the liver.

5. The 'slow kill' method is not approved by the American Heartworm Society. It involves changing the way oral Heartworm preventative is adminstered to speed up the natural death of adult worms. This can take years and in the mean time, damage is done to the dog.

More later ...