Of dogs and vets...

My dog, Rocky Brown, is half-lab and half some other things and is smarter than the average dog. He turned one year old yesterday and although he looks great in the picture, this post is a warning to start your dog on heartworm preventative at the age of six weeks--or as soon as they are heavy enough to tolerate the smallest dose of preventative. (See your vet for details.) Checking for heartworms prior to starting Rocky on heartworm preventative turned up a nasty little surprise...he already had heartworms. So, now he's being treated. Based on his age, the life cycle of heartworms, and local mosquito season, he got infected as a pup, probably around six weeks or so of age.

Rocky's an outside dog and loves nothing more than chasing rats by the barn and wading in the pond, neither of which he can do right now. See, come to find out, despite all the advancements made in heartworm treatment over the years, it's not really a whole lot different than what your dad had to do to Ol'Buck when he got heartworms back in the day.

Rocky got treated with Immeticide, which is an arsenic derivative given in two interlumbar muscle injections, one a day apart. The vet that told us about it and assured us it was good because 1) there was no longer a need to take a daily pill and 2) he wouldn't have to be restricted like in the "old days". Now, this wasn't our favorite vet and really, a little more information would have been helpful. Because 1) even if you're not taking heartworm treatment daily, your dog typically will be on some kind of anti inflammatory medication, such as prednisone, daily for probably ten to 14 days AND will be on probably a single aspirin a day for a month. You have to keep your dog up, also...not up as in awake but up as in contained where he won't get excited and be barking. Most web references refer to it as making your dog "quiet" but don't specify much more than that.

Now, he's the real reason for this blog entry. I'm no heartworm expect and no dog expert. I'm just a nurse with a little background in physiology and pharmacology. And yet, after speaking with the vet PRE-treatment, I felt let down POST-treatment. A little more information would have been helpful and a lot more information would have been preferred. It wouldn't have affected treatment but it would have made us more comfortable.

Oh, and as with all medications and just like in humans, you have to watch for a change in normal activity. Rocky's been house broken since he was a pup but has pissed on my bed and three rugs because he has such increased urine output, possibly from the prednisone and increased thirst from the inflammation caused by destruction of the heartworms.

Heartworm treatment can make a dog sick as hell--and that's my professional opinion--and for a good month, you and your dog can be most miserable but if I had known going in, had not been so uncertain, the misery would have been more bearable.

So, the bottom line is this: Get your dog checked, get them started on preventative, and ASK. Probably, with both my girlfriend and myself working in the medical field, we might not ask as many questions as someone who has no clue about medications and illness. You would think it would be just the opposite but we might think we know more than an average person when in fact, we're just dog owners and not dog nurses.

Until next time, Free the Three...

Jb
www.wm3.org