Heart worms - need to give pills but...
So you can see my urgency. Has anyone heard of anything about puppies not responding well to heart worm medicine? Or being harmed by it? |
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| OES in particular are sensitive to heartworm medications. If you do a search, you may find some info about it in more detail. Heartworm medications, though they are called preventative, are not. What they do is constantly kill the heartworms in the dogs bloodstream at a certain larval stage. If there is a high risk in your area I would give the med, but be careful which one you choose. There are some that oes are more sensitive to than others. There are a few other breeds sensitive to it as well, all I can remember at the moment is collies. I don't give heartworm meds to mine at all. I may be taking a risk, but in my area the risk is relatively low and I feel the benefits of not giving the medication outweigh the risk. I am cautious about their exposure to mosquitos, and their coat gives them slightly more protection as well. Last year I didn't see a single one, and this year I think there will be few as well because we still have snow on the ground. I have them tested in the summer just to make sure. |
| Jasper started taking Interceptor at 12 weeks for worms. Also, he's on K-9 Advantix for ticks, fleas, and mosquitos! We have mosquitos really bad here in Mississippi also. |
| I haven't decided what to do yet re heartworm. I might not treat because of the area we live in, my vet doesn't treat his own dogs and has never had a problem. We don't plan on traveling out of our area, we're homebodies! Another option is I could treat from June through January if I want. Anyone have any thoughts on this? If I decide not to treat at all should I still have Max tested? This issue has me confused, and I guess I should research more also about OES being sensitive to the medication. |
| The land I live at is either marshlands or swamps - standing water gallore. There are almost always three mosquitos on my walls and I sometimes looks like I have zits all over my face... mosquitos!
We're going to bring her for her first check up on monday and see what they say. |
| OES and other herding breeds are overly sensitive to Ivermectin, which is the ingrdient in traditional heartworm medication. Like Jasper, Bailey's vet put him on Interceptor which has a different active ingredient (mibemycin oxime) and is considered safe for all breeds. If you live in an area where heartworm is a concern I would definitely ask your vet about Interceptor. |
| I believe Becky's recommendation is a general one; I suspect that if you asked her she would defer to your vet's recommendation. (Send her an email... she'll respond). I have used Heartgard (with ivermectin) on Barney since he was 3 months old but give it every 1½ months. |
| Integra:
After posting my previous reply I read the post "Eewww!! by Willowsprite. I am going to run the various replies about ivermectin by my vet and see what his respone is regarding Heartguard. Will let you know. Looks like Interceptor would be a better choice. George |
| George, if your dog is doing well on Heartguard, it is probably safe to continue. A dog who is going to have a reaction will do so quickly, and unfortunately by then it is often too late. If the dog is fine, it should continue to do fine with Heartguard. |
| Thanks Willow. I'll let y'll know what the vet says anyway. I'd like to see how he responds. |
| I feel so happy I actually know something! I asked my vet a few months ago why it doesn't seem so important up here and this is what she said: I'm so glad we don't have to deal with that up here...we don't have warmth through the night for the heartworm larva to survive in the mosquito. Last year Alberta only had 4 cases of heartworm and all were in dogs that were brought to Alberta from somewhere else.
so I just search the web for the temperature needed and here is what I found. If you live in an area that gets to 57(+) degrees F for 14 consecutive days then you have to watch for heartworm. Quote: The ambient temperature necessary for L1 to begin development to L3 is 57 degrees F. This whole process normally takes a couple of weeks inside the mosquito but actually how long it takes is very temperature dependent.
A "heartworm development unit" is every degree that the average daily temp. exceeds 57 degrees. It takes 234 heartworm development units to actually get L3's in the environment. Heartworm preventive should be started the following month. So the warmer it is the faster the life cycle of the heartworm. I hope that helps explain why in some areas it's so important to check for heartworm and why some areas we don't even worry about it. |
| By the way, the L1,L2,L3 etc in that quote refers to the larval stages of the heartworm, of which there are six. ONLY L3 stage is transmittable. |
| Heartguard v. Advantrix.
I ran a number of these posts on the Heartguard and Ivermectin by the vet. His response was that the amount of Ivermectin in Heartguard is not a significant amount to cause adverse reactions in dogs. Certainly if they consumed a large dose or the type of dosage designed for livestock, it would be dangerous. |
| It doesn't sound like your vet is familiar with the breeds who are sensitive to it..... |
| He has a collie and I had 2 collies before Barney. All were on Heartguard. I guess there or differences in opinion on the topic. However its good to be aware of the possibilities or problems. Next time around I may try Advantrix. |
| The breeds in general that are known to be sensitive to it only means there is a higher risk than normal, not that all dogs of that breed will have a roblem. If the stats were very high I doubt they would be allowed to use the product at all, or at least on those breeds. It's just something to be aware of when considering your options. |
Thanks for all of the replies!  And sorry I didn't respond sooner. I took her to the vet and voiced what Becky had told me about her being too young. Then I told her what you guys said that her breed might be sensitive to certain heart worm meds. She said "Oh yes! I remember something about that. We can give her this medication instead."
So we gave it to her - and as always - during shots or if a different type of med is given - we usually wait around for probably 1/2 hour and talk with their receptionist. They always like to make sure everything is ok before sending us home. She did well - still doing ok in fact. Thank goodness we gave it to her though, heart worms are really bad down here. Oh yes! And we just had our nice warm weather interupted by a cold blast of air! ^_^ We are hoping that it will kill most of the mosquitos this year. They are such a pain in the rear... |
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