Preventing Heartworm In Your Lovable Pets

Three years ago my daughter adopted a pitbull puppy who we just adore! Over the years Miss Nellari has become a valuable and lovable member of our family.

When she went into the vet for her very first checkup as a young adult the doctor talked to all of us about the nasty heartworm disease. Back then, I had never heard of heartworm so the vet gave us a nice education on it and how it can be prevented in dogs, cats and other small mammals that are typically household pets.

After Miss Nellari was tested for heartworm and tested negative for the disease, her vet recommended that we put her onto preventive heartworm medication. After some research we finally found some discount interceptor and put her on that. Thankfully since we have taken these preventive steps she has been heartworm free and gets tested regularly for it.

For those of you who have pets and would like to learn more information about heartworm you can check out the American Heartworm Society. Once on their web site you can learn about what heartworm is, what the signs are, how to treat it and how to prevent it from occurring. It’s a really great site that is just jam packed with valuable information that all pet owners need to know about.

Here is something I learned from the site. The infected larvae enter your pet’s blood stream via a mosquito bite. It then can take up to 6 months for that larvae to mature into full-sized adult worms. These worms then set up “shop” in your pet’s lungs and/or heart. Having heartworm causes your pets serious health problems and can lead to death. Wow, that is so scary so I am thankful we are preventing that from happening with Miss Nellari.

I hope if you are a pet owner that you head on over to their web site and check it out today. The information there may help to save your own pet’s life should they be infected with the deadly heartworm disease.