Hello!
I'm back! I haven't forgotten about your or our goal of keeping all our pets happy and healthy in 2024!
Today let's talk about heartworm disease! I'm hear to debunk myths and remind you of the importance in keeping your pet on heartworm prevention!!
Heartworms are a very real threat in our area. Sadly, I diagnose 1-3 cases a month. The kicker is this is such an easy disease to PREVENT! Truly, honestly... the cost monthly to prevent heartworm disease is sooo much less than having to treat for heatworm disease once your pet is postive!
The life cycle of heartworm disease is frustratingly annoying. Grab your pen and paper to take notes. First, there has to be mosquitos. Mosquitos are an intermediate host of heartworms. It is an infected mosquito that bites your dog and infects them with a larval stage (microfalariea) of heartworms. That larval stage 3 matures into larval stage 4 in the subcutaneous tissues of the dog over a course of 1-3 days at the site of infection. The larval stage 4 then takes its time over 50-70 days migrating through the tissues maturing into sexually immature adult worms (think teenagers who don't know what they are doing!) and as early at day 70 those sexually immature worms can be in the heart of your dog!. Once they get to the heart (pulmonary artery more specifically) they sexually mature (adults) and start making more microfilariea (the larval stage).
Preventions work by killing those larval stages of heartworm disease before they can become ADULT worms in the heart of your dog, but sadly the preventions do not kill every stage of heartworm disease necessitating it be given MONTHLY to be effective.
So myth one - "We don't have mosquitos we live." FALSE!!!!!!!
YES, we have mosquitos in Valencia County. We have a big ole river that runs through Valencia and many ditches that traverse our county. Where there is water, there are mosquitos! Who has swimming pools for their pets in the back yard? Those blue kiddy pools count! How abo