April brings more sunshine, warmer temperatures, and more time for people and pets outdoors. Spending more time outdoors increases your pet's health risks, so now is the ideal time to proactively check your pet's heartworm status and preventative measures.
Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization working to end the culling of dogs and cats in American shelters by 2025, is encouraging pet owners and adopters to use this Heartworm Awareness Month. We encourage you to educate yourself.
Heartworms are spread through mosquitoes and are increasingly occurring in every state, although many cases occur near large bodies of water.
“The most common signs of heartworm in dogs are cough, exercise intolerance, symptoms of weakness or fainting, loss of appetite, and weight loss,” said Dr. Erin Cutlaib, Best Friends Animal Society National Veterinary Program Director . “Although infection is less common in cats, the disease can manifest as an asthma-like cough.”
Katribe provided the following five facts to help educate pet owners about heartworm disease prevention.
• Because heartworm disease is endemic across the country, give your dog or cat a preventive medication of your choice year-round, regardless of location.
• Even if a dog has not taken preventive medication and tests negative, it may take a long time for symptoms to develop and be confirmed by standard tests, so a positive test result may occur within 6 months. There is a possibility that
• If your dog tests positive for heartworms, it is important to understand that most dogs can be treated without complications. The treatments used today are much safer than those used in previous generations, so there is no longer a stigma against heartworms.
• Many of the shelters struggling with overcrowding across the South are the same ones with high heartworm disease prevalence. Sadly, heartworm-positive dogs are an at-risk population in shelters because they are the first to be killed when capacity becomes an issue. The good news is that heartworms cannot be passed directly to other pets in the household, so there is no reason not to adopt or adopt a heartworm-positive dog.
