Where to go after my dog tests heart worm positive?
May 16, 2011 10:38 AM   Subscribe

My dog was diagnosed with heart worms this weekend even though he has been on preventative! Can anyone offer any words of wisdom on successfully dealing with the treatment course, and where to go after?!

We adopted our dog back in September from a nice animal shelter in Memphis. He came to the shelter that July and at that point was fully evaluated, and tested negative for heart worms, and has been on HeartGard Preventative since. This past month we've been busy moving into our new place, and were a couple weeks late on getting his most recent dose, which I did some reading, and everything said that being late on a dose shouldn't be a problem. However my vet is very thorough, which I appreciate, and wanted to do a heartworm check just to be sure, and my dog tested positive! They said that he did not have Filaria yet, which my vet said just means that it hasn't progressed very far probably because he has been on the preventative. So there were a few questions that I have just do get some advice from people who may have personal experience with this. Has anyone had any success filing a case with Heartgard to get assistance on treatment? As I understand it takes approximately 6 months after the bite for the dog to test positive, and he has been on the preventative regularly since (at least) last July. Also, just any general advice that will make the treatment easier on him? (I know that we'll have to keep him crated a lot and take him out to potty on the leash) And lastly, does anyone have suggestions on what preventative to switch to once the treatment is completed? I know I don't want to go back to Heartgard not just because of our situation, but even the vets office said they have been seeing more cases of dogs testing positive while on treatment and I want to make sure this doesn't happen again. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!
posted by Quincy to Pets & Animals (3 answers total)
 
We use Sentinel for all three dogs, one of whom was adopted with heartworms and has been treated.

I've been through a couple of heartworm treatments with fosters and our dog, and the conclusion I finally came to was this: the mailman is going to continue to come, motorcycles are still going to exist, you can't wrap a dog in bubble wrap (I mean, you can TRY, but...). We have never crated during treatment, we still let them go out in the yard off-lead, we continued to get mail every day. We didn't take her for walks or give her any other exercise, and we didn't let her go out for ball-throwing funtimes with the other dogs, and any wrestling etc was nipped in the bud.

I finally decided that if the dog was so fragile that the neighbors having a pool party was going to kill her, so be it. I wasn't going to stress her out by keeping her shut up and completely immobile (there's a blood clot risk if you do that anyway) all the time. Our vet was fine with that, and the off the record conversation was basically "look, don't take her jogging or to the dog park, keep her calm-ish in the canine sense of calm; dogs who die from treatment tend to be either in very advanced stages, too old, or have other health issues." This was the vet who had us switch from Heartgard (prescribed by previous vet) to Sentinel (though the dog with heartworms was put on HG for I think 3 months until her follow-up tests were clear, and then she switched to Sentinel as well).

I am fairly certain that when you pop open the Heartgard packaging, you have accepted whatever fine print stops you from suing. This is why vets re-test yearly or twice yearly, because sometimes it happens anyway.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:28 AM on May 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thank you so much! That's all very helpful. I've been stressing out so much about how he's going to handle things, because I know being locked away is just going to stress him out more. And I know it sounds silly but I didn't want him to think he was being punished somehow. Thanks again for the advice!
posted by Quincy at 12:02 PM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


My understanding of the Heartgard guarantee is that if the dog has annual HW checks & is on Heartgard and it fails, that Heartgard will pay for the treatment, as stated on this website. Did you call your veterinarian or Merial and ask them?
posted by bolognius maximus at 1:15 PM on May 16, 2011


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