Make sure you’re taking preventative measures against heartworm for your dogs.
Animal Care and Adoption Centre (ACAC) in Townsville is asking residents to take preventative measures against the potentially deadly disease. It comes after the centre noticed a distressing increase in the number of heartworm cases.
You definitely don’t want this inside your dog’s body! Credit: Matt W. Miller, DVM, MS, Diplomate ACVIM (Cardiology).
What is Heartworm?
Heartworms are spaghetti-like worms that can grow up to 30cm inside your dog’s heart, pulmonary artery, and adjacent blood vessels. Heartworms commonly live inside the heart and lungs of the infected dogs. They can cause mild persistent coughs, fatigue after mild activities, decreased appetite, and weight loss. However, as the disease progresses, the infected dog may develop heart failures and excess fluid in their abdomen.
Heartworms are spread mainly by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes feed on the blood of infected dogs, taking baby heartworms as well. The baby heartworms are transferred to other dogs when the mosquitoes feed on the other dogs.
However, heartworm is not contagious. This means that it cannot be passed from one host dog to another, only through mosquito bites.
Heartworms are indetectable for the first five months after the dog is bitten by an infected mosquito. By the time they are detected, the damage has already been done.
Heartworm prevention is cheap and easy. Their treatment, however, is not.
While heartworm infections are treatable, they are time-consuming, expensive, and can even result in death.
The treatment for heartworm involves the dog receiving numerous potentially deadly drugs over the course of many months. There are side effects to the treatment, such as soreness and swelling near the injection, and even death in rare cases. The cost of the treatment isn’t cheap either, and can reach thousands of dollar.
It’s Cheap and Easy To Prevent Heartworm in Dogs.
However, the good news for dog owners is that preventing heartworms is cheap, easy, and highly effective if administered correctly. There are a wide range of preventative measures available, including oral, topical, and injectable methods. Make sure to talk with your veterinarian to discuss the best method for your dog as soon as possible.
Staff at the Animal Care and Adoption Centre were regularly coming across impounded dogs with heartworm. These dogs arrived from the community, which means that there is a lack of heartworm prevention in the animals that end up at the centre.
A heartworm infected dog is a risk to all the other dogs at an adoption centre.
However, these affected animals are often euthanized due to the risk of spreading the disease and the cost of treatment. Heartworm can easily spread in an adoption centre and the health of the other dogs must be considered. One infected dog and one active mosquito is all it takes to infect all the other dogs in the kennel.
But these infected dogs that arrive at the centre would not need to be euthanized if the owners took preventative measures for heartworm prevention.
Heartworms are a potentially deadly disease that is easily avoidable. Just make sure you take the preventative measures required. Speak to your vet to discuss what’s right for your dog.
They’re our best friends after all. Click here to find out what other vaccines you should be getting for your pet.
