This morning I took my 3rd pup to the vet for his 12 month proheart injection, and he tested high for heartworms. He has been on proheart consistently, without lapsing. My oldest has suffered the same fate, and is now on semperica preventative as he's a 13 year old stray/mutt who is really starting to age. My youngest is also a stray who was positive when I found her at about a year old, and also now taking semperica after a successful(survivable) treatment. If any fellow beebers have experience dealing with this, I would really appreciate your input here! I've gotten a lot of conflicting information over the years in regards to both the infection and it's available treatments. Just doing a little digging this morning I found out that both Proheart and Semperica(both widely regarded as the best option in their class) are made by Zoetis Inc. which just so happens to be owned by Blackrock, Vanguard, and Statestreet. So I'm not too keen on just throwing them money however they ask and expecting the best result. That said, I am assuming heart worms can cause a really painful death, with the high possibility of breaking off to form a clot. So, I'm not just going to negate treatment here, but seriously looking for another option. I don't understand how this can be happening to almost all of my dogs on Proheart. We do have one of the strongest mosquito populations in the country, but also have a ton of old stray dogs living off trash in the slums rocking majestic gray hair who have never seen a doctor. Really hoping someone has a suggestion or some kind of option here outside of the Blackrock empire.. but that window seems to be shrinking rapidly...
I have had acceptable results from Interceptor Plus. Not sure on the corporate background, but I stay away from ivermectin as the active ingredient due to the risk it presents to border collies.
I have had dogs on Heartguard and Frontline for over 20 years. They are not outside dogs, so exposure is limited to playing/training/hunting and bathroom breaks, but with as many mosquitoes we have around here(Minnesota state bird), that's got to say something.
I picked up a stray 2 years ago that was HW positive. I used the slow kill method using Iverheart max with good results.
Our last senior adoption was heartworm positive. Since she had a horrible bladder infection and her kidney function was in question, we opted for the slow kill method using Iverheart. It takes quite a while, but you effectively kill of whatever immature filaria are in their system as the mature worms produce them until the mature worms die of old age. It turned out that she was diagnosed with stage 1 kidney failure within a few months of adopting her, so I was pretty relieved that we had made the right call.
If it’s bad enough you may have to go through full treatment. The preventative drugs won’t enough to get it under control. That was the case with my dog. She was heartwarming positive when we got her. The rescue center had already put her through heartwarm treatment once but she was still testing positive. We had put her through another another round of treatment to get her negative. You have to watch them pretty closely after the treatment too. Once the warms die they move through out the blood stream and cause clots.
We've been on heartguard forever and no issues at all. Did adopt our pyrenees with heartworm and she was already on doxycycline which we continued. It worked but I also think it caused the kidney failure that killed her a couple of years later.
Some great info here.. I appreciate yall! He's got a heavy load of mature worms... and has been coughing a LOT the last few months.. according to my vet and what I've found online there seems to be a consensus that the treatment ending up deadly is rare.. but irl I have heard from so many people that it later killed their pup.. but man.. chicken or the egg?! Tough choice, but seeing him cough so much and hearing the term "high positive" doesn't really give me much hope for riding this one out by preventing new ones. He's not even three yet.. and is super tough so we might as well send it.. Wish my boy luck! He's a good one!!!
I haven't lost a pup since my parents had one as a young child.. it's pretty eerie having to make these kind of calls with the health care of a being that you can never really speak to... but at the end of the day the heartworms seem to be a really high risk for a lot of suffering.. and treatment should be much less risky regardless of a few anecdotes in my personal life.. shame there's not much data out there to dig through, but at the end of the day the dog's not worried and he's super healthy otherwise.. time to send it again, I reckon!
My dog was around 2-4 years old when she went through the her treatments. That was a touch over 10 years ago now and she’s still around.
Only 3 years old I'd go full attack and wouldn't do the slow kill. He will feel like total shit for 12-24 hours but after that they perk up. The toughest part is not letting them run for a month while the body disposes of the dead worms in the blood.
That's what I'm thinking too.. he's super stout and got some time to figure out preventatives.. but man.. my 1 1/2 year old stray that was positive did the full deal. The vet actually kept her for a whole week.. and they told me to keep her kenneled for 3 months with a 6 week check up in there.. She took it in stride though.. other than the pure agony of being denied zoom zooms for like 2 dog years!!!
Just got back from a check up after concern over his increasing cough... unfortunately he likes to tear out through roundup-ready soybean and cornfields on the daily that get sprayed with God knows what! I thought with my luck he may get through this treatment only to end up having some wild lung cancer or something the whole time. Turns out, with such a high load, the cough is from his heart inflammation. Great stuff from yall.. I appreciate the input and obviously the full treatment is the way to go here... will have plenty of time to look into a switch to heartguard or something else in the mean time.. but man their treatment is so intense! Can't believe I forgot.. but he's going to stay on doxycycline for 30 days, with some prednisone to ease up on him whatever it can, with some cough medicine. After a month on doxycycline we check into the vet mon-fri for an intense round of treatment where they can monitor him fully.. then we come home for 30 days of kennel confinement.. followed by another 5 days of heavy treatment at the vet for an additional heavy round, then ANOTHER 30 days in the kennel! Pretty confident in my boy though.. thanks again yall. Hopefully we'll chime back in in a few months with a fully healthy pup, going absolutely ape shit again!
@six6two - Good luck with your pup, hope he makes it through. For everyone else, whatever you do for your dog, stay away from Trifexis. https://www.pilotonline.com/2013/12...s a pill that is,But Trifexis also kills dogs.
