Animal Medical Center & Associates P.C.

YOU CAN’T BELIEVE HOW BAD THEY ARE

• The coyote is the natural reservoir and once in that population are endemic.

• 100% of dogs (and a lot of cats) have heartworms in the South if not on an every 30 day preventative.

• Heartworms are not actually “heart worms.” Instead, they live in the pulmonary artery and only after they die, are they found in the heart and other places downstream. In the pulmonary artery you can’t believe the damage they do.

• They are bi-sexual. Males cannot be detected by the in-clinic blood test. Only mature females can be detected by the Heartworm Test, and only if there are two or more MATURE female worms in your pet’s pulmonary blood stream.

• So…YOU CAN HAVE A NEGATIVE HEARTWORM TEST AND STILL HAVE MALES, OR ONE OR TWO FEMALES, LIVING IN THE HOST DOG OR CAT. (So unfortunately there are many “false negative” tests. That’s why we have to test so much—TO TRY TO DETECT THE INFESTATION BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO DO TOO MUCH DAMAGE.)

• They have many stages: the babies are called microfilaria which can live for 3.5 years. They have to live in the mosquito’s kidney in the larva stages 1, 2, & 3.

• There can be 40,000 larva (microfilaria) in a ml (20-25 drops) of blood!

• The mosquito feeds on the new host and deposits many larva-3’s around the bite wound, and then the larva-3’s migrate into the dog, and molt into larva-4’s which then migrate toward the pet’s chest cavity, boring holes as they go.

• A pet can be bit by mosquitoes 30 to 1188 times an hour (university test results).

• WE CAN ONLY KILL the LARVA WHEN THEY ARE LARVA 3’s and 4’s. In 45-70 days they turn into larva-5’s, which we cannot kill with anything known to man. SO IF YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN MEDICINE BY DAY 45… IT IS JUST TOO LATE…  If you skip 2-3 months it is way too late!

SO: YOU HAVE TO GIVE HEARTWORM MEDICINE EVERY 30 DAYS OR IT WON’T WORK!! Even in the winter!

• Once they molt into larva-5’s… (they are now are an inch long and what we call an immature adult)… you can’t kill them with anything—even the adult worm killer.

• In 6-7 months larva-5’s become adults producing more babies.

• Adults live 5-7 years. Females can be 18 inches long.

• It is hard to discover and kill the adults before they have done damage to the pet’s circulatory and respiratory system. And when we kill them, their dead bodies wash downstream (down the pulmonary artery and aorta) and cause kidney death, intestinal death, lung death, heart attacks, seizures, etc. So the treated dog has to be kept very quiet and non-active, and on medicine, for a long time after treatment for adult heart worms. (Kill the baby heartworms every 30 days…it’s easier on the pet.)

• (Right now we can’t even get adult heart worm killing medicine, there is such a back order…there are so many patients that need treatment.) 

BOTTOM LINE: IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR PET, GIVE THEM ANTI-HEARTWORM MEDICINE EVERY THIRTY-DAYS RELIGIOUSLY-- EVEN IN THE DEAD OF WINTER-- and TEST THEM ONCE OR TWICE A YEAR for adult female heartworms.

(OUTDOOR CATS TOO)