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My dog has just been diagnosed with heartworms. I had her on ivermectin her whole life till last summer. She is 8 and I am curious to know who out there has actually done the natural cures and what the results were. The vet told me that they didn't see many signs of the baby worms, but the test showed positive for the adults. I have read some posts where people have just put their dogs on the preventative and allowed it to kill off the worms that way, but I'm scared of how risky that might be for my girl. Does anyone know the length of time that it takes to be full-blown. I hope she's just in the beginning stages. The vet has a pill-option, where I won't have to chain her up, but it's not been approved by the FDA yet and the others that have chosen this option haven't been back in yet for their "after" check, so I don't know what the news is on that.
Thanks for any and all information that you can give me on past experiences and how things turned out for your canines.
I've had to treat one dog for heartworm. She was a seven year old terrier mutt that we were adopting from a shelter n TN. She was such a cool dog from the start that we had to treat her. The treatment was $350. It was the basic standard treatment of giving her the medicine, then keeping her quiet for 10 days afterwards. We didn't get any before or afterward x-rays or ultrasounds. She tested clean afterwards and seemed to be in good health (good energy levels, no coughing) for the rest of her life.
Up in New England, the usual heartworm treatment can cost up to $1500. But that's mostly because of the costs of all the x-rays and ultrasounds. I chose to do it the "southern way" because of our budget, her being an older dog and having just gotten her.
We did the same thing for our dog Molly. She took the medicine and we had to keep her caged up for a while. She is doing fine, and this was after she had surgery on her liver. She is still going strong.
My vet wants $550 for the injection treatment and it's supposed to be a 3 stage thing and she's not allowed to run. The pill treatment is $74 and she can go free, but I just don't know what the results are from the others that they have tested this on yet. My husband is afraid she'll work herself up so much over being pinned up, that it may stress her out. She's used to hunting and running all day long.
You have no idea how I wish I had not let her off the prevention!! I think it was closer to the fall when I stopped it. I've always taken my dogs off prevention during the cold months, since the mosquitos aren't around then, but I noticed that my ivermectin was outdated last year, so it was either weak because of that, or I've waited too late this year. Of course, it would have to be with the one that is the most special to me. This makes me feel so terrible. The vet was out on an emergency call today when I took them for their annual, so I was just dealing with his tech. Tomorrow, I have to go down to the clinic and decide what I need to do. I don't want to wait very long on whatever I start her on.
I know there are so many others that have dealt with this before and I just needed some insight with the results from the different treatments.
Interesting blog post about heartworm prevention. It advises to get tested 1x or 2x per year in heavily mosquito invested areas. it also says you can give heartworm prevention pills every 6-8 weeks, not every 30 days. Interesting!
My Jenny went thru the treatment last July. She had a more advanced stage and had a rough time going thru the treatments. She was coughing up blood and was really lethargic. I had her to emergency a couple of times. I felt so bad for her. To top it off she also had a bad case of tapeworms. I found her on the street at the time so her illnesses were to be expected. I think she was dumped maybe because of it.
Her treatment total cost me about 1000.00 with meds and some tests and setbacks. She came out of it ok but has heart damage from the worms and has to be kept to minimum exercise.
I would recommend treating your dog right away, it can advance very quickly. Good luck, hope your doggie will be ok.
As far as Heartworm in the NorthEast (where I am from) my family and I had dogs our whole life and never had any of them on Heartwom meds and all dogs lived a long healthy life heartworm free.
I now live in Florida and it is common down here. You need to be more caucious with your dog/dogs in the South.
Was this an in-house snap test? If so, I would have more tests run, as false positives are not uncommon....ask the vet to draw blood and have it sent for further testing. There are even some dogs who test positive all the time who don't have heartworm (I had a corgi who always tested positive with the in-house snap tests, but further tests run by labs were negative each year...he lived to be almost 15, and was healthy his entire life).
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