How to Prevent Heartworm in Dogs

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Greg McDonald, and we're talking about dog health care. We're a veterinary hospital in Southern California, and again, we're talking about heartworm today. This is Zach, and Zach is fully protected against heartworm. In order to protect your dog against heartworm first you need to test and be sure they don't have it, and then put them on one of the preventatives so that they don't get the disease. Oftentimes, people have never really heard of heartworm, and heartworm is transmitted by a mosquito. If a mosquito that has the heartworm in it bites your dog then these little microphilia will start growing around into your dog's blood and these large worms will grow into the heart. These worms are very, very difficult to treat if your dog gets them, and it basically puts your dog into congestive heart failure. This is a picture of the life cycle of some of the parasites but this is the heartworm over here. You can see it right here. These are both heartworms that have actually colonized this dog's heart. So, one of the things that we need to do is to actually test the dog first to be sure that they are negative, and this is what we have. It's a heartworm test that we actually call a snap test, and you can actually see the little, and you take a tiny little bit of blood and you put it into this little device. And it's called a snap test, and it actually is snapped, and then you wait about one minute and then it reads out as to whether the dog is positive or not for heartworm. So, once you determine that the dog does not have heartworm then you can start him on a preventative. One of the preventatives that we like is called Revolution. This is a nice one because you can put this on top of your dog. Then, what happens is the fleas will be affected, but also, it will repel all of the mosquitoes so your dog can't get the heartworm. This is a really nice product. We also have a product called Sentinel, and I'm really excited about Sentinel because Sentinel does a lot of things besides just control heartworm. It takes care of most of the intestinal parasites, and it does prevent your dog from having a flea infestation in your house. So, just a quick review. If you're living in an area that has heartworm and it would be very, very important to check with your veterinarian. It's my philosophy that there are little pockets of this disease all over the country and we're such a mobile society that every dog should be on heartworm prevention, but check with your veterinarian and see if it's indicated for your area. He'll do a blood test to be sure your dog doesn't already have it and get you on one of these once a month pills that you give to your dog that will keep him from getting the disease."