I’m so upset. My dog is 15 now, and I’ve carefully given him his heartworm medicine since I was, what, 12? but I guess at some point I let him down. His heartworm test came back positive and he has to go in Monday to get some kind of horrible heartworm-killing shots to the tune of a couple hundred bucks, either that or just die a horrible death. Well, of course I’m going to take him in; he’s very healthy and in great shape otherwise, and one way or the other it’s clearly my fault. I must have given him the chew late one month or something and almost killed my dog. Any idea how much that sucks?
I assume the treatment in itself is probably risky, since she warned me she might have to wait a month before giving him the second shot if he “responds poorly”. I’ve known for a while now that Haplo isn’t going to live forever, but I don’t think I could deal with him dying because I let him down. I feel so awful about it.
Cyberhugs for both of you, and fingers crossed that Haplo will respond well.
Some of the heartworm chews come with a guarantee – if the dog gets heartworm while taking the medication, the vet costs for treatment are covered. It wouldn’t hurt to ask your vet if that’s the case with Haplo’s chews.
Sorry to hear about that - heartworm is a nasty, nasty thing. Fortunately, the treatment is much safer and easier on the dog than it was even 20 years ago. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Haplo.
Heartworm preventitive only kills heartworms at one specific stage of the lifecycle, which is why it is so important to give it regularly.
I think the heartworm preventitive guarantee only applies if the meds are purchased from a vet.
He’s in there today. I’m trying not to worry about it too much, because it’s completely out of my hands, but I came in and told my dog loving work friends about it and they came out with all these putting-dogs-down stories - yeah, that helped, thanks. Luckily one of them just spent four hundred bucks to save a dog that ate rat poison his partner left out, so that’s definitely more his fault than either giving Heartgard late or getting it from the wrong place, right?
sniff.
Please keep in mind that having a 15 year old dog is evidence that you have been caring for him. Our wee canine buddies are remarkably fragile and all medicines do not work all the time under all conditions.
Zsofia, let it go. You are human, and you have done the best you could for Haplo. Consider that you might have just gotten a bad batch of preventive, even. Nothing you could do about that–could have happened with the vet or the 'net. You love Haplo, and Haplo loves you and that’s all that matters. Fingers crossed for your baby.
TroubleAgain
(who just had a beloved dog put down Friday)
Fragile? Hap? Hell, that dog runs on hate and vinegar. That dog bit the building inspector on the final walkthrough when my parents built their addition. That dog will die when he is good and ready to die, and probably with some guy in a uniform’s hand in his mouth. I’ve had him longer than I haven’t had him, you know, and I’m getting close on to 30.
(He’s very sweet to the family, but anybody else? Doesn’t help that he’s gone mostly deaf and partly blind. Just makes him more likely to bite the hell out of you.)
It’s good that you found out about the heartworm in time to have him treated. I have some friends at church whose family Lab suddenly keeled over and died one day of heartworm; the kids were saucer-eyed as they told me about it. Seems with both Mom and Dad working, and so many swim meets and soccer games and such, busy-busy-busy, they kept forgetting to give the dog her pill that summer.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
Fragile? Hap? Hell, that dog runs on hate and vinegar. That dog bit the building inspector on the final walkthrough when my parents built their addition. That dog will die when he is good and ready to die, and probably with some guy in a uniform’s hand in his mouth. QUOTE]
I was just trying to be sweet. It’s funny how you can respect a dog’s indiscretions. A former landlord says he clocked mt dear Maddie at 35 mph as she chased him the hell off the property. good girl.
Well, I just got a call from the vet - x-rays suggest a heart based tumor as well as the worms. Since the dog is in very good health, very peppy, no respiratory issues, I told her to go ahead with the treatment - she says they have no way to tell how long it’s been there or how long he could live with it, and since there’s no treatment for it, I mean, why tell me? I know they have to, but it doesn’t really help me any.
Except… it kinda does. Because if he dies now, I mean, I didn’t give him a tumor. It’s kind of a relief, you know?
He’s a Westie. I took some pictures this morning, and my boyfriend was, “Are you taking pictures of that dog? You’re such a morbid pessimist! Show a little expectation of good outcomes for once!” I’ll post them. I don’t often take pictures of him since he’s no longer a puppy, since he’s usually so dirty and overgrown when I think about it, and he’s always trying to jump up in my lap when I try to take them, so I figured, if anything does happen and I can’t find any pictures of him, I’ll be glad I took some today.
Re: the pictures thing. Although it’s kind of off topic, because it has nothing to do with dogs or heartworms.
I visited my grandmother in July. While there, I posed for pictures with all visiting relatives in a variety of arrangements. And my mother, whose camera was being used, took a picture of her mother, just lounging there in her chair, kind of at random.
Just over a month later, my grandmother died. That random image became the picture used with the obituary, on the programs for the funeral, etc. It was a good picture of my grandmother as she looked when she died.
There were also pictures taken of my grandmother in her casket. Some of those are kind of hard for me to look at, even as I understand the desire of the photographers to take in the whole scene–Grandma, her quilt, her flowers, etc. Or the desire of my aunt to replace the image of Grandma dying in the hospital after a stroke, with an image of Grandma apparently healthy and sleeping.
I have a ton of old Southern relatives who take tons of casket pictures. When they were kids you didn’t have so many pictures taken, I guess, and there’s lots of people their parents’ age who have no photographic record of them at all. I still find it creepy.
I don’t know what I’ll do if he does die at the vet’s and I don’t have a chance to say goodbye - I saw them give somebody a plastic wrapped package containing an ex-cat once, which presents the problem that I guess I’d like to bury him in the yard, but you don’t want to bury something in plastic, and I don’t think I can really unwrap a dead dog. Dig a hole, yes, unwrap, not so easy.
Hey, Zsofia… Heartworm treatment these days is much less risky than in the past years, since they’ve come up with a better treatment (Immiticide, if they still use Carpasolate, run the other way). Side effects may still occur, but they’re not as frequent or as bad as the older treatment. And since your dog seems to be doing OK (not in really bad cardiac failure, right?), he may do great and come out of the treatment with flying colors. So don’t torture yourself thinking about the dog keeling over right after treatment at the doc’s, since that is not what usually happens.
Contact Pet Meds about the Heartguard problem, and see if you still have a paper trail from buying the meds and if they do too. Veterinary students are in a similar position as we get them for free every year, so our paperwork is nil… My classmates whose dogs have come up positive call directly to the company and (I guess diplomatically) chew them out until they at least agree to provide the drug or cover part of the treatment.
And the idea of putting a dog down because of heartworm disease, when it is in a treatable stage, annoys me… the treatment is there, is not overly expensive, and it is less risky than it used to be.
And the dog that die suddenly from heartworm disease, after having a spotty record during the summer… must’ve had lots of spotty records before, sad to say. Heartworms take at least 6 months to mature into adult worms, so if they forgot in May, the adult ones would be barely reaching the heart and start producing babies on their own by now, not earlier.
Keep in mind that in South Carolina some years we have mosquitoes nearly year round. His last test was this time last year, and there are DEFINITELY mosquitoes still around now! So say I was late or got a bad batch or something right after his checkup, I suppose the oldest they could be is a year? (Assuming the test they do at the vet catches them in all their stages?
No, the heartworm test done at the vet (and for that part, done everywhere) is specific for mature female heartworms (the antigen is a worm protein). If they did a direct or Knott’s, that means they looked at blood and saw the presence of microfilaria (baby worms), that means that there are mature worms too.
So if you had juvenile worms last year that were less than 6 months (the earliest the test can catch them), the test would’ve been negative. Either way, no older than a year and a half, say.
Sadly, there have been reports that either the worms are getting resistant to the drug (most cases I’ve heard are about Heartguard, aka ivermectin), or the companies have been slacking and making shoddy batches (less concentration or amount than that printed on the label).
Luckily one of them just spent four hundred bucks to save a dog that ate rat poison his partner left out, so that’s definitely more his fault than either giving Heartgard late or getting it from the wrong place, right?