Treating Puppy Worms

Video Transcript

"Next we want to talk a little bit about worms and puppies. When your puppy was first born it might have actually been born with some worms because the mother passes them in the placenta and in the milk, but it also could pick up some worms afterwards, and so I wanted to go ahead and go over some of these different types of worms. If you get roundworms, these are hookworms, these are whipworms, these are some actually flea eggs that your puppy can get, we're going to talk about that as well. And these are actually heartworms, and heartworms are another problem that we get with dogs. That's transmitted by a mosquito and your puppy would not be born with that, but we're going to talk a little bit about products that we might want to use to keep your dog from getting these worms. And again roundworms are real common, that they can get passed from their mother. In Southern California we don't have a real problem with roundworms after they become adults because they have to pass out of the dog and embryonate for three or four days before they go onto another dog. And it's so dry in Southern California that we don't have a big problem with those. We're seeing more and more problems with heartworm, however, and it's spreading all over the nation. And so it's one of those ones that you really want to prevent and to prevent it we have lots of different types of medications but it's an oral medication you're going to have to give your puppy every month. The one that we like is called Sentinel, and Sentinel is a really great product because it takes care of fleas, intestinal parasites, and also heartworm, and so if you give to your puppy this once a month, it'll prevent your dog from having all of these parasites. Now this particular product doesn't do anything for ticks, and so you may have to do some other thing for ticks if you're finding ticks in your neighborhood, or if you take your puppy out on a hike and you come back with ticks. Ticks are more common in the wintertime in this area because they need a little bit of moisture, and so if you're starting to pick up some ticks with your dog, you can use a topical product that we can recommend, or we have a really good tick collar that might help your dog from having these attached to him."