April 8, 2025
Heartworm Prevention Myths That Could Cost Your Pet’s Life
Heartworm Truths Every Pet Owner Needs to Hear with Dr. Zoo
💔 Heartworm disease is slow, painful, and entirely preventable. So why are pets still dying from it?
In this essential episode of Muddy Paws and Hairballs, Dr. Zoo shares two real-life cases that hit hard: a young German Shepherd in kidney failure at just two years old after his owners stopped prevention, and a rescue terrier whose heart was invaded by worms—leaving euthanasia as the only humane option.
🐾 Here’s what every pet parent needs to understand: Just one mosquito bite can inject microscopic heartworm larvae into your pet. These larvae quietly develop over six months before they’re even detectable—and by the time that lingering cough appears, the damage is often already done.
Adult heartworms don’t just affect the heart. They send offspring into the bloodstream, damaging lungs, liver, and kidneys. And many early signs—like coughing after drinking water—are easy to overlook.
Dr. Zoo also busts the most common heartworm myths:
- “My pet lives indoors.”
- “We don’t have mosquitoes here.”
- “It’s winter—they’re safe now.”
- “I use natural remedies.”
Spoiler: None of these provide real protection. If a mosquito can get inside your house, it can reach your pet—and no natural product has been proven to prevent heartworm infection.
💸 Prevention is simple and affordable: around $5–$7 a month.
💔 Treatment is complex and expensive: $1,000–$6,000+, multiple medications, painful injections, and strict cage rest for weeks. Even after treatment, many pets live with permanent heart damage.
👉 Whether it’s a monthly chewable, a topical, or an injection, heartworm prevention isn’t optional—it’s critical. Dr. Zoo walks us through what heartworms really do, why prevention matters no matter where you live, and how to protect your pet from suffering or worse.
🎧 Tune in to get the facts, clear the confusion, and make the choice that could save your pet’s l
Starting Sunday, April 27, 2025, we’re switching things up—new episodes will now drop every Sunday instead of Tuesday!
Why the change? Because Sundays just feel better. Quieter mornings, fewer midweek distractions, and a better chance to catch up with your favorite pet podcast (aka us 😎).
Set your alarms (or don’t—we’ll be waiting patiently like a well-trained Golden Retriever 🐾) every Sunday morning starting at 8AM EST / 7AM CST.
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00:00 - Heartbreaking Stories of Preventable Deaths
05:35 - Understanding Heartworm Disease Progression
11:35 - How Heartworms Are Transmitted
17:07 - Detecting and Testing for Heartworms
22:12 - Debunking Common Heartworm Prevention Myths
28:23 - Prevention Costs vs. Treatment Reality
32:58 - The Treatment Process and Final Thoughts
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I've heard all the excuses he never missed a dose, we never see mosquitoes, I thought my dog was safe because he's an indoor dog.
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And then comes the heartbreak A pet who didn't have to die but did.
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In this episode of Muddy Paws and Hairballs, my friend Dr Zhu is back with the truth about heartworm disease.
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If you think heartworm prevention can wait, you need to listen to this episode, because when it comes to heartworm, the biggest mistake you can make is thinking it's not going to happen to your pet.
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Hey there and welcome to Muddy Paws and Hairballs, the podcast that tells the truth about life with pets.
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I'm your host, Amy Castro, and joining me today once again is my good friend, Dr Zhu, the owner and head veterinarian at the Family Animal Hospital of Friendswood and the one who takes care of my pets and all the animals at Starlight Outreach and Rescue.
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We've worked together for years on lots of things trying to save pets, but the most frustrating has been trying to help pets with heartworm disease, and while we have lots of wins, we've also had losses, some that really still hit hard.
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So today we're going to break down what heartworm disease really is, how it spreads and, most importantly, how you can stop it before it's too late.
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Let's get into it.
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So, Dr Zhu, you and I have seen the tragic outcomes and also good outcomes, but what are some of the ones that really stand out to you, where you say, gosh, this was just so preventable, yeah, yeah.
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Well, I can tell you I have a personal pet story or an owned pet story and then a rescue pet story.
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Okay and so, and because you do expect these things with rescue dogs, you know that no one's cared for them, they've been on the street.
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But a client of mine that had brought in the cutest little German Shepherd puppy and we got through all the puppy shots and we went through some teenager things.
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You know that pet had done so good and then they moved and life got busy or whatever happens that they decided after some time or maybe forgot after some time, to continue that pet that we started on heartworm prevention very young they had stopped their heartworm prevention.
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So here we are.
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The pet is only two and a half, still a very young dog.
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But they come back into our clinic lives and they're like oh hi, we haven't seen you a long time.
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Oh yes, we haven't been on prevention for a while.
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We do heartworm testing, uh, which is, in this case it was included on our blood work that we also send out and we found that he had heartworms at a young age, at two years old, and it only takes six months for that to show up, and we'll talk about that later on for sure.
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But along with that blood work it came back that his kidneys were failing as well, and at a two-year-old.
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That's not a common thing we see for kidneys to be failing at two years.
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We see that a lot in senior pets.
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So doing some research into what was going on, we found out the heartworms were connected to this.
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So heartworms when you have both male and female they can create baby worms we call microphallaria, and they're literally just floating around the bloodstream, these little stringy foreign items, and the kidneys are a little net, and so they get stuck in the kidneys.
00:03:08.768 --> 00:03:20.391
And this is why, at such a young age, he ended up with kidney failure and unfortunately we ended up having to let him go at a very young age as well, and so that was one story that really hurt my heart.
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I'm a German Shepherd's lover as far as dogs go.
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I have three of my own, and to see his little young life cut off so early definitely was a sad one.
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And then, more recent, on one of my rescue cases, a little terrier guy named Cole.
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He and his little friend have been running the streets for a while and they were both young dogs, probably each less than three we say probably because we're guessing at their rescue and their age and at the first, at the rescue, he did so well and they fed him and they got him nice and strong and we were getting ready to do heartworm treatment on him.
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But one particular day she, the rescue or the foster lady, knows he was not doing well and brought him in.
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His gums were super pale and we found that the heartworms that usually live in the vessels around the heart had actually gotten sucked right into the heart and he had a stage of the disease called Cable syndrome.
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And Cable syndrome.
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There's only really one very good cure for it, and it's an emergency cardiac surgery where they, just like in people, will put in a catheter all the way down through the veins and into the heart and pull those worms out During that procedure.
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If any one single of those worms breaks, the dog can have an anaphylactic reaction and die right in the middle of that procedure.
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So it's not one that a lot of people want to even take a risk of putting their pet through.
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And then in this case, with the rescue, of course my finances are an issue, and so it was just something we couldn't do, and so we had a euthanized call for that reason as well.
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So cable syndrome, kidney disease there's a lot of sequelae that can happen, that can cause animals to die from heartworms, not always just a heart issue, for example, yeah.
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Yeah, so those are some sad cases.
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You know, of course, with cull they rescued as quick as they could.
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But if the education had been there, maybe for the previous owners, maybe they would have even kept their pet and maybe had them on prevention.
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That wouldn't have been a deal.
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Or maybe, you know, with our German Shepherd's friend Thor, you know, I just thought we had educated but maybe, you know, we didn't impress it enough.
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So now it does stimulate me and my team to make sure.
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You know, hey, you know, this monthly prevention you can get it as low as you know, $5 or $6 a month is worth it.
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You know, because you don't want your dog that you're expecting to have.
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You know, 10 years or more to die at two.
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Yeah Well, and like you mentioned the, you know the issue that people they start off maybe on track and then they get off track or they forget, or they forget to renew it or whatever, and then everybody has a reason for it.
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But can you you that I don't know if you said this in the episode or if you said it before, but that they don't really live in the heart, that they live in the vessels outside the heart?
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How do they get?
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there?
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That's a good question.
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So they have this very elaborate life cycle with seven stages.
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I mean quite a few stages of life.
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But we'll start with where they first get in contact with it, and that's a mosquito bite.
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Okay, so only mosquitoes are transmitting, only mosquitoes can transmit them.
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And one thing, and we'll get to it later.
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As we describe this, you know, sometimes people will say I rescued a heartworm positive dog.
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Is a mosquito going to bite him and then give it to the other dog?
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That's not how that works.
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Actually, the worm has to live in the mosquito from a positive dog and then it multiplies over or changes its larval stages, that is, over several weeks before it actually will become infectious.
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And most of the time, if a mosquito is, let's say, in your home or whatever, it's going to die before then.
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Or let's say, a mosquito bites someone, a dog from the, the outside world, it's going to go somewhere else, it's not going to usually come back and bite this other pet.
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That being said, it's not like an instantaneous bites one and then injects yeah, like a vampire, like a vampire.
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Suddenly you're a vampire, so yeah.
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So once that mosquito gives a certain larval stage and actually that little baby worm gets injected into the animal's muscle or skin tissue, it takes six months of it migrating throughout the body before it actually becomes an adult worm that lives in the heart or around the heart.
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The pulmonary vessels, arteries and veins around the heart is a perfect place for these worms to get their food, which is your pet's blood for one.
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And then of course, what's in the serum in that blood can be things like oxygen and carrying that sort of thing, as well as proteins, and it absorbs all those things.
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And if it meets its boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife in there, then, if you have one male and one female, they'll actually start making another kind of larval stage called the microphallaria.
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Those become a certain stage.
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That's when a mosquito can potentially bite a dog and pick it up from a dog, and then later on it'll go through several stages inside the mosquito weeks later.
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But the whole time that's happening you're oblivious, so you're kind of at risk all the time.
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Yeah, you see no signs of it.
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And I think we do hear lots of people say he doesn't go out much or he will get to that we're going to get to the BS reasons people have.
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Of course, we just always want to put ourselves in a most positive situation or positive light and we make an excuse essentially.
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But if we're really logical about it, we'll figure out that it's not the way to bury your head in the sand.
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It's better to be aware and go okay, look, I can skip Starbucks this month and I can definitely have my heartworm permission instead.
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Yeah, exactly, so, yeah, so they live.
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Adult worms live mostly in the vessels near and around the heart.
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The microflaria or the other larval stages are migrating through the muscle tissues and again, they can migrate through the kidneys.
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They can migrate into the liver.
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Anywhere your blood flows, the microflaria will flow through too, so we will see sometimes changes in those other organs as well.
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So it can cause multi-organ failures.
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So what are usually the first?
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I mean other than a positive test.
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Let's say, somebody didn't test their pet.
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What's the progression of the disease in the animal?
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That's a good question.
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It starts off with just like this little hacking cough Sounds like they're clearing their throat, you know, and we might just say, oh, he drank his water too fast or he was pulling on the leash, or his allergy season, or, you know, maybe he got a little kennel cough or something like that.
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But then it's just persistent, maybe months or years.
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It might just be this little annoyed little cough going on.
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Really it can go on.
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It can go on that long and then you know, depending on how many worms they get, like, for example, a cat can get homes too.
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Yeah, I want to.
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I want to definitely get on that they might only get, you know, two, three, four heartworms, but that their little tiny body, that's a huge load for them.
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A big dog might get two, three or four heartworms and and then, let's say, they move somewhere where there's not many mosquitoes.
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They stop getting new worms, let's say, but they'll still have almost like an allergic reaction to it.
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That's what causes that cough.
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The lung tissue itself gets swollen and inflamed and angry and that's where we get this little irritated cough.
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But dogs can easily have 50, 100 heartworms and clog up those vessels and then pieces of lung can be dying.
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We've seen it all, that's for sure.
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So, yeah, so at first it's a little insidious cough and then the most common thing after that is true heart failure, because the blood circulation really depends on how much pressure is in that circulatory system.
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Your heart is a pump and of course all the pipes going in and out of that need to be clean and clear, just like our sewage system.
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If it gets clogged it's going to back up.
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That can happen.
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If it backs up in the wrong place, you can get fluid in your lungs.
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If your blood backs up in the wrong place, you can get fluid in your abdomen or really because your liver starts to leak fluid out of it.
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Again.
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We talked about how the worms can get in there.
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And so sometimes people will come in with their dogs at the later stages in true heart failure congestive heart failure we call that.
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Or then sometimes we see these other weird sequelae not weird, but you know unfortunately side effects of the micro filaria, like the kidney disease or the heart cable syndrome, where it's very sudden instead of slow and city it's changed, but it can be dormant looking or you may not pick up on it for years.
00:11:11.803 --> 00:11:13.990
A dog has heartworms and the earliest that a test can show up is six months.
00:11:13.990 --> 00:11:18.003
And again we talked about how when the mosquito first bites it takes six months for that worm to go through.
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Let's say it bites and somehow and this has happened it only has male worms.
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The test tests for a certain female hormone.
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So I've had dogs test negative and we're still suspicious of heartworms.
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They have maybe signs of this cough or heartworm disease.
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Or maybe we take an x-ray and we see the heart is misshapen.
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That can indicate heartworm disease.
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I put the test is coming up negative.
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Sometimes the reason is because it's just male worms.
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And will it come up?
00:11:45.091 --> 00:11:50.844
Because one of the things that I hear people you know make excuses or they don't do the annual test.
00:11:50.844 --> 00:11:52.715
Oh, do I really need to do this every year?
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Like, to me, that is a good reason to do it every year, Because would it catch?
00:11:57.034 --> 00:12:03.942
it the next year, eventually, especially if we don't for some reason put them on heart prevention, they might catch it the next year.
00:12:03.942 --> 00:12:09.381
Or maybe one of the babies that was still developing and hadn't fully developed yet was female.
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Then it would show up.
00:12:10.182 --> 00:12:14.721
There are other ways that we can find it, like an echo or a heart ultrasound in certain cases.
00:12:15.289 --> 00:12:27.818
And then there's another interesting phenomenon where a dog can be negative because their own body has created antibodies to try to combat the worms, although unfortunately it doesn't do much for getting rid of the worms.
00:12:27.818 --> 00:12:33.356
But what it ends up doing is it gets in the way of the test and it can block the test, and so you can get a negative from that.
00:12:33.356 --> 00:12:40.135
And there's another special test you can send out to the laboratory to confirm whether or not you know man, it quacks like a duck.
00:12:40.135 --> 00:12:43.837
It sounds like a duck, it's probably heartworms, but for some reason my in-house test isn't working.
00:12:43.837 --> 00:12:50.432
Let send it off to the laboratory.
00:12:50.432 --> 00:12:53.767
Another reason why it's important about testing every year is we do have resistant heartworms coming up, that they're resistant to heartworm prevention.
00:12:53.767 --> 00:12:56.960
It seems to be the way with all kinds of diseases, all the fungal.
00:12:56.960 --> 00:13:01.375
Everything is getting tougher to combat and the world is trying to kill us.
00:13:01.414 --> 00:13:04.912
Yeah apparently it's a dangerous world out there people, it's a dangerous world.
00:13:05.111 --> 00:13:14.919
And so, yeah, especially from the Mississippi Valley, in that area we've been seeing this population of heartworms that is resistant to some of our good, old-fashioned heart preventions.
00:13:14.919 --> 00:13:17.519
Heartguard, a very popular brand, has been around a long time.
00:13:17.519 --> 00:13:21.889
We're seeing some resistance to that particular ingredient from those areas.
00:13:21.889 --> 00:13:29.014
And with the way our world, we travel, we travel with our pets, yeah, we're spreading it around eventually and rescue.
00:13:29.014 --> 00:13:31.618
You know, we do send animals all over the place nowadays.
00:13:31.618 --> 00:13:34.422
You yourself have traveled to the East Coast with one before.
00:13:34.442 --> 00:13:47.993
Well, I remember growing up on the East Coast and when I worked at a vet, all through high school and college, it was like heartworm prevention was given seasonally yeah, like you started in the spring and you stopped in the fall and winter.
00:13:47.993 --> 00:14:11.038
And it's like I remember I don't know if it was you that said this I think it was you that told me it's not a matter of if your dog is going to get infected with it, it's just a matter of when, because, especially here in Texas and depending upon where you are listening in the world, you know there's probably a gazillion mosquitoes floating around with it, and so your dog is going to get injected with it basically, absolutely.
00:14:11.139 --> 00:14:17.788
It's spreading around the world and it's a very safe and easy preventative, so I do think it's worth covering them for that risk Plus.
00:14:17.788 --> 00:14:21.927
You're going to cover other things which we'll probably get to later on too with a prevention.
00:14:21.927 --> 00:14:36.490
An interesting thing we learned about in vet school was a population of seals out of California were bringing heartworms back and forth from Alaska to California Because being in California, they're kind of iffy about heartworm prevention.
00:14:36.510 --> 00:14:37.393
Because it's so dry.
00:14:37.634 --> 00:14:44.075
It's so dry, but there are certain pockets where they could get exposed, yeah, and I didn't realize.
00:14:44.115 --> 00:14:48.697
I mean, obviously the whole thing about cats getting it is relatively recent.
00:14:48.798 --> 00:14:58.464
I mean that wasn't a thing back in my day, we didn't push prevention, honestly, because I think we had a hard time proving it to owners or anybody else whether their cat had gotten it.
00:14:58.464 --> 00:15:01.158
And still, testing cats for harm is very hard.
00:15:01.158 --> 00:15:03.851
Yeah so it's not the same testing process.
00:15:03.851 --> 00:15:12.238
It's a similar kind of test but because they might only have one, two or three, they're more likely to have a single sex infection, like just an all-male infection.
00:15:12.238 --> 00:15:15.280
So false negative we get a lot of false negatives.
00:15:15.721 --> 00:15:21.546
Yeah, so, honestly, most of the time when we actually find out a cat has heartworms, they've already started to have heart disease and that's awful.
00:15:21.546 --> 00:15:27.320
And so then we're doing it, working backwards, like okay, now we have heart disease, could it be because of a heartworm, and let's find out.
00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:29.429
And then maybe we're doing echoes or ultrasounds.
00:15:29.429 --> 00:15:33.639
If the heartworm test is up, then come up with a special heartworm test that we send to the lab.
00:15:33.639 --> 00:15:39.798
They do this Basically they alter the temperature and gene nature of the proteins and so the test is a little more sensitive when we send it to the lab.
00:15:39.958 --> 00:15:53.083
Yeah, so for cats, honestly, without a on heartworm prevention 24-7 or basically every month of the rest of their lives, just as a precautionary thing.
00:15:53.083 --> 00:16:00.955
And, as you know, things like revolution that's a very popular brand have flea prevention, tick prevention, ear mite prevention and um and heartworm prevention and intestinal worm prevention.
00:16:00.955 --> 00:16:01.856
You know which cats?
00:16:01.856 --> 00:16:04.173
You know I'm gonna eat your dirt out of your plant pot.
00:16:04.173 --> 00:16:08.171
No, I don't go outside, but I'm gonna eat that so they can pick up parasites through there.
00:16:08.171 --> 00:16:10.376
So you're kind of covering everything with revolution.
00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:12.422
And that's good to know.
00:16:12.422 --> 00:16:16.301
So I want to talk about the expense, because that's one of the myths.
00:16:16.301 --> 00:16:26.355
But all of these things that you're talking about, once an animal has it, that's a lot, that you're putting your animal through A lot of procedures, a lot of testing Don't always work out.
00:16:26.355 --> 00:16:27.977
Yeah, a lot of testing Don't always work out.
00:16:27.977 --> 00:16:34.023
Yeah, a lot of money, and it could be prevented with a monthly pill or a every six months shot or a topical or something.
00:16:34.143 --> 00:16:38.980
Oh yeah, dogs, too won't take pills sometimes, so they have topicals for dogs, yeah.
00:16:38.980 --> 00:16:52.001
And so, yeah, you can do, and we even have a shot that lasts six months or a year, depending on what life is conducive to you know, or because, let's say, you're a mom with three kids, are you going to remember to give that monthly pill, or chew every month, maybe?
00:16:52.042 --> 00:16:55.207
not Barely remember to pick up your kids from school, for God's sake.
00:16:55.227 --> 00:17:01.509
Oh yeah, I have children and offspring, yeah, so maybe consider the shot or ask your doctor for that sort of thing.
00:17:01.509 --> 00:17:05.902
So there's a lot of ways to work around what we call compliance.
00:17:05.902 --> 00:17:13.980
You know the study of whether or not people are actually able to give medicines that are recommended or are required for keeping their pet healthy.
00:17:13.980 --> 00:17:22.859
So the good thing is, if you want to be competitive or relevant in business, you have to come up with a new method that's better to get people to be able to do that in a confusing way.
00:17:22.859 --> 00:17:28.015
So the shot, the topicals, the chews, the pills yeah, there's lots of ways to do it.
00:17:28.236 --> 00:17:29.817
It's kind of like me with flossing my teeth.
00:17:29.817 --> 00:17:33.022
I'm terrible about flossing my teeth, but I'll use those little flossy sticks.
00:17:33.423 --> 00:17:37.396
They're so much easier, they're so much easier, I agree, and you can keep them in your purse and you can do it right after you eat.
00:17:37.396 --> 00:17:38.539
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:41.703 --> 00:17:42.667
So I'm on the same boat as you.
00:17:42.667 --> 00:17:57.118
Convenience is definitely good through, but let's I mean you talked about those two animals that died and obviously you were able to humanely euthanize but let's you know if somebody needs any more motivation and we're going to do some myth busting, but tell us what the death is like.
00:17:57.118 --> 00:17:59.914
It's because I know it's bad and it's really bad suffering.
00:17:59.954 --> 00:18:01.778
Yes, congestive heart failure.
00:18:01.778 --> 00:18:07.296
I hate to use this analogy but it's probably the truest thing and I do use it when I need to explain to owners.
00:18:07.296 --> 00:18:09.078
You're drowning in your own fluids.
00:18:09.078 --> 00:18:23.607
Essentially, if your blood can't flow because the worms are blocking your blood flow, that blood, or the little sort of the filtrate of it, called plasma, will build up in your lungs in particular, and your lungs are like a sponge and they just want to hold on to fluid.
00:18:23.607 --> 00:18:33.835
So if you just if anyone has experienced like pneumonias or COVID, of course, and that sort of thing if you just have 10%, 15%, 20% bad lung, that feels awful.
00:18:33.835 --> 00:18:40.598
But when all your lung is affected with fluid I mean, if it was a person, they would probably think I would rather die.
00:18:40.598 --> 00:18:44.059
If it's an animal, they don't know how to deal with that.
00:18:44.059 --> 00:18:46.000
So sometimes we have to step in to help them.
00:18:46.060 --> 00:18:59.627
Basically, we're allowing our pet to slowly drown in suffering, so we don't want an excuse for that it's terrible, yeah, and we don't want to hide our head in the sand for that, because then let's say they do pass or we put them down.
00:18:59.627 --> 00:19:03.215
Then there's years of regrets after that and that's a whole.
00:19:03.236 --> 00:19:14.587
You need to start the psychological therapy session type of I just did an episode on grief, psychological therapy session type of just did an episode on grief, but you know, but most of this episode on grief that we did was you did everything you could and you still felt like shit.
00:19:14.587 --> 00:19:17.476
Yes, well, how about if you realize it is really your fault?
00:19:17.476 --> 00:19:22.363
Yeah, I mean, I hate to say that I have to be the ugly person but we all make mistakes and we learn from them.
00:19:22.423 --> 00:19:27.115
But this is your chance to learn before your pet ever has to even experience anything like this.
00:19:27.115 --> 00:19:28.917
Yeah, we don't want that for your pet for sure.
00:19:28.917 --> 00:19:30.279
So let's talk about the myth.
00:19:30.279 --> 00:19:31.082
Was that for your pet?
00:19:31.541 --> 00:19:32.182
yeah, for sure.
00:19:32.182 --> 00:19:51.667
So I went out to the and I stole some of these from the american heartworm society, which I am wonderful website yeah, and I'm gonna put that link to that website because you want to know anything about heartworms, there's I mean, they've got infographics and all kinds of information I was gonna tell you there's a really in-depth like if you want to nerd out on it video, but they make it very entertaining.
00:19:51.708 --> 00:20:00.210
It's, of course, it's a cartoon on YouTube that kind of goes off of AHA's thing as well, so I'll send that to you if you want to look at it.
00:20:00.230 --> 00:20:01.290
Yeah, okay, put that in there.
00:20:01.290 --> 00:20:04.473
So some of the myths that people believe, which you know.
00:20:04.473 --> 00:20:12.799
So it's not just I'm intentionally neglecting my pet, but I didn't think it could happen, because and I want you to kind of bust some of these myths.
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:20.244
So one of them is, you know, like the example that you gave it was on prevention I skipped a month and suddenly my animals got heartburn.
00:20:20.244 --> 00:20:21.826
He's never missed a dose.
00:20:21.987 --> 00:20:24.550
Yeah, that's a tough one, yeah for sure.
00:20:24.550 --> 00:20:29.542
The way these work is that they reach back for usually 30 days if you're doing like a pill or a chew.
00:20:29.542 --> 00:20:38.125
So if you miss a month you don't get that reach back of killing whatever was in the system that got infected in the last 30 days.
00:20:38.125 --> 00:20:54.660
Also, once the mosquito bites this particular larva stage the heartworm prevention is only killed one or two of those, but then it'll start to change again to the next Marvel stage and even though it's not in the heart, yet again the heart reprimand won't be able to kill it because it's past the stage of which we're.
00:20:55.201 --> 00:20:56.867
So you've got to kind of continually give.
00:20:56.867 --> 00:21:00.190
You have to give it continuously at the 30-day mark if it's that kind of product.
00:21:00.190 --> 00:21:09.088
Again, that's why the injections can be super helpful, because people do get busy, forget, miss a month or whatever it might be, and then again the test takes six months for it to show up.
00:21:09.088 --> 00:21:16.105
So let's say in that one month that you missed, the mosquito did bite and inject a heartworm and it got past where you couldn't treat it with the next dose.
00:21:16.105 --> 00:21:35.007
You won't know for six months, if you even know at the six-month mark because maybe his annual vaccine visit to the vet doesn't fall where that is, or maybe you don't go that year or whatever which you should, but things like that happen, and so then those worms have a chance to become multiple and large and start to block blood flow around the heart.
00:21:35.188 --> 00:21:42.553
Yeah, I know we would never have this excuse in Texas, but we didn't see any mosquitoes so we didn't think we needed to.
00:21:43.721 --> 00:21:47.105
Yeah, I know you have out-of-state listeners Out of the country.
00:21:47.105 --> 00:21:48.534
I've got people all over the world.
00:21:48.534 --> 00:21:52.761
I love that, which, yeah, that is an excuse.
00:21:52.761 --> 00:21:57.104
And the thing is, are you really on guard, watching for every mosquito to come through your house or your window?
00:21:57.104 --> 00:21:57.624
No, of course not.
00:21:57.624 --> 00:21:59.884
Watching for every mosquito to come through your house or your window?
00:21:59.884 --> 00:22:00.265
No, of course not.
00:22:00.285 --> 00:22:04.567
My most dreaded of all, and it's probably one of your myth buster things the indoor only one.
00:22:04.567 --> 00:22:11.710
Oh yeah, that was my next one, that's the best next one, because in an exam room often I have to tell the story to people.
00:22:11.710 --> 00:22:13.951
I'm like, oh, he's indoor only all the time.
00:22:13.951 --> 00:22:17.392
Okay, well, have you ever laid in bed and heard that buzzing noise?
00:22:17.392 --> 00:22:21.933
That mosquito comes and you're slapping your face and you're slapping everything trying to kill the mosquito in the middle of the night.
00:22:21.933 --> 00:22:31.317
It happens to your dog and cat too, and it happens more to your dog and cat because they have a little heat-seeking device and they're going to find them before they're going to find you.
00:22:31.317 --> 00:22:31.898
Good target.
00:22:31.898 --> 00:22:34.082
So, yeah, they're the perfect target.
00:22:34.082 --> 00:22:39.894
And usually when the pet is sleeping they're very, very still, so a mosquito can bite right through that unhaired area around the nose and on the ear.
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