16/05/2025
🫀🪱 Heartworm🪱🫀
You hear this word in the vets and in the pet community a lot.
But what is heartworm and why should you know if your dog is covered of not?
Canine Heartworm, Diofilaria immitis is a parasitic worm. A long and slender worm that lives in the pulmonary arteries of the heart.
These long buggers can get up to 30cm long 😮
What risk do they cause for our canine companions?
Well, they can cause substantial damage to the lungs and heart of the dog.
Mature heartworms cause inflammation of the blood vessels in the lungs. Resulting in respiratory issues and pulmonary hypertension (increased blood pressure in the lung vessels).
In some cases, we can see weight loss, weakness and fatigue, congestive heart failure and worse case death.
We now know what Heartworm is and how it effects our pet. But what is the lifecyle of Heartworm and how does a dog contact Heartworm?
Mosquitos are the carriers of Heartworm. An infected Mosquito carries the Heartworm from an infected dog and bites a non-infected dog, injecting larvae through the bite into the puncture wound of the dog.
The larvae grow and enter the blood stream, floating through until they land in the pulmonary arteries. Maturing to adults, this takes around six to seven months from larvae to adulthood.
The adults mate and then release larvae back into the bloodstream and the lifecyle continues.
Prevention is Key 🔑
Prevention of Heartworm is much easier (especially for the doggo) and cheaper for the owner then treating active heartworm.
Monthly Heartworm treatments are available on the market, we recommend checking your preventions to ensure it covers Heartworm.
But we find the yearly prevention injections eliminate the risk of missing monthly doses.
Keeping them safe for 365 days.
Not sure when your dog last had Heartworm Prevention?
We can do a simple blood test in clinic to check if Heartworm is present in the blood.
If the test is Negative we can start you on a prevention to suit your dog and their needs.
If the test is Positive the vet will work with you and organise treatment.
Heartworm is an easily managed parasite with preventions.
If you’d like to know more or would like to check your dogs records, give us a call on 07)55469588 and we can cross check what prevention we have listed and when they last recorded dose was.
www.vetlove.com.au
