Categories: Pets, Pet Health, Cats, Dogs, Pet Care, Multivitamins for Pets, Pet Medicine

Author: Brian Jenkins

Title: Symptoms of Heartworm

Body:

Pets are a great addition to any household. However, there are costs involved to caring for a pet. When it comes to sicknesses and diseases a pet can befall, heartworm is quite common. Pet owners should ask themselves: is your pet's life worth $5-7 a month? That's all it costs to protect your pet against heartworms. A once a month heartworm treatment can prevent your pet from becoming infested with heartworms.

Heartworms, one of the most dangerous parasites in domestic animals, are particularly insidious because they often show no signs at all until the infected animal – usually a dog – is heavily infested and severely ill. In fact, according to the American Heartworm Society, most dogs show no physical indications of infection until the disease has progressed to the point where treatment is no longer feasible.

In other words, when signs of heartworm become visible, it is usually too late to treat the dog for the disease. The best way to diagnose heartworms in dogs is through a blood test done by your veterinarian. A blood sample taken by the vet is examined through a microscope for the presence of microfilaria – immature heartworms. If microfilaria are present, it means that your dog has adult heartworms in his heart muscle and must be treated for them. The treatment is a long, involved process, and can be dangerous to your dog, so prevention is extremely important. To understand how important routine heartworm preventative is to your dog's health – and to the health of other dogs in your area – you need to understand what heartworm is, how it spreads and how it affects your dog.

What Heartworm Is

Heartworms are parasitic round worms that live primarily in the heart muscle of dogs, though there is a growing incidence of heartworms being found in other animals including cats, wolves, foxes, skunks and ferrets. They can grow as long as fourteen inches. A single heartworm can eventually kill your dog, though infected dogs may have up to 300 adult worms living inside their hearts. A heartworm can live for up to seven years, and produce millions of microfilaria in its lifetime.

Microfilaria are also present a danger to your dog. The microscopic worm larvae live in your pet's bloodstream and travel through his circulatory system. When they are present in large numbers, they can clog tiny capillaries and impair circulation, causing multiple problems.

The signs of heartworm infestation vary with the number of worms, the location of worms, the length of time the worms have been present and the amount of damage done to the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys from the adult worms and the microfilariae.

Adult worms cause damage by clogging the heart and the major blood vessels leading from the heart. Their presence keeps the heart valves from working properly, and reduces the blood supply to the lungs, liver and kidneys. This leads to a malfunction of these organs, including cirrhosis of the liver.

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