Treat Your Pet for Heartworms!

I am the proud owner of two dogs and I thought I was doing a pretty decent job in taking care of them. I took them to my local vet for their annual physical and check-up and was startled to find out one of my dogs had heartworms.

I had spent more money of these dogs than I ever did in the past. I was terrible at taking care of pets before these two. I never let dogs in the house or let them sleep with me ever in my life let alone take them to the vet. A pet of mine would literally would have to be dying for me to even consider getting them any kind of treatment. But I took a different approach with the two that I have now because my step-children really loved them and I made a promise to take care of them.

Where I went wrong was not getting my dog on heartworm prevention medication. Even though I live in a region of the county that has a big mosquito problem (which is the most common form of transmission through a mosquito bite), Charleston, SC I thought that since I'd spend thousands on my dogs already that skipping this one little thing wouldn't hurt. Boy, was I wrong!

The treatment

First off, your dog gets a fecal exam to test for the heartworms. The annual check-up, test, shots, etc. cost me around 130 dollars but now that I had a dog with heartworms the treatment to get rid of them was going to cost me plenty. First your vet will take a chest x-ray of your dog to find out the severity of your dog's heartworms. The vet catagorizes the dog's severity as Stage 1, 2 or 3 with 3 being the worst. X-rays cost money, to the tune of about 150 dollars. Next once your vet determines the severity of the worms, your dog will receive heartworm treatment injections and has to stay overnight for observation. The cost of the treatment depends on your dog's weight. Since my dog, Seymore weighed 65 pounds, his treatment was around 500 dollars. The costs were really starting to add up.

The recovery

Poor Seymore. After treatment, the injections given by your vet break down the worms and begin circulating throughout his body. I could tell that Seymore's spark was a bit off even after a couple of weeks afterward. You have to keep your pet on strict rest and limit his activity as much as you can for about four weeks after treament. I was lucky that I had an indoor dog. An outdoor dog would either have to come inside or you would have to by a kennel of some sort which prevents vigorous exercise. For me this meant instead of letting him out the back door, I now had to walk Seymore on a leash if he had to go potty. Believe me, its no fun walking a dog during the winter when he decides he has to go to the bathroom at about three in the morning. After the four weeks were up, Seymore had to spend an additional day with the vet, this time receiving oral medication. As of this writing, I still have to restrict his exercise and I had to have have him checked again in May to make sure all of the worms are dead.

My advice

Learn form my mistake, get your pet on heartworm prevention as soon as he/she is old enough. Especially if you live in a region where the mosquito population is high. Save yourself roughly 800 dollars in vet treatments and your dog about 12 weeks of restricted activity. Seymore is doing well right now, but if I had only bought those 35 dollars pills a year ago, I could have saved us both a lot of trouble!