Dear Dr. Forsythe: I just rescued two dogs that have been living outdoors their entire lives. Both of them are heartworm positive, and I want to know why they require special, expensive treatments rather than just those monthly heartworm pills. They even need X-rays and hospitalization before they can come home. I had no idea this disease was such a big deal.
Surprised in Sonoma
Dear Surprised: Heartworm disease is easy to prevent with those chewy, once-a-month treats, but once an unprotected dog or cat develops full-blown heartworm disease, the situation is very different. If they have the worms in their heart, they need injections of a drug that will kill the worms very slowly while their bodies reabsorb the dead worm over a month’s time. This injection is very costly, and the pet needs to be monitored very carefully.
Dogs need to be heartworm tested yearly and receive monthly heartworm-prevention medicine to stay free of this fatal disease. When an unprotected dog is bitten by an infective mosquito, heartworm larvae can get into the dog’s bloodstream and develop into heartworms. And if the thought of parasitic worms lodging in your pet’s heart isn’t gross enough, the fact that they are as big as vermicelli will certainly make your stomach churn!
The dose of medicine in the Heartgard preventative is strong enough to prevent new infections in dogs and cats that are bitten, but it won’t get rid of the full-grown worms. In this case, like with your two pets, they have a serious disease that is life-threatening. In order to survive, they will need to be given a series of deep intramuscular injections with Immiticide to slowly kill the adult worms. Although still risky, the treatment is often successful when administered with other supportive care such as fluids, antibiotics and tranquilizers to keep pets quiet as their bodies try to recover. Good luck to you with your pets as they overcome this challenge, which most certainly is a very “big deal.”
Dr. F
Dear Dr. Forsythe: I really want to be a small-animal veterinarian, but I don’t like cats. I love dogs and know a lot about them, but I hate cats. I cringe when I see one, and I feel all creeped out when I am close to one. How can I get around this limitation and enjoy a career as a small-animal veterinarian? Are there any dog-only practices?
DG, Boyes Hot Springs
Dear DG: No, there are no dog-only practitioners that I know of. Although there are doctors in multi-doctor practices that devote more of their attention to dogs and pocket pets rather than cats, I have not heard of a small-animal veterinarian that refuses to see cats. There probably are, however, some small-animal veterinarians who have been forced away from treating cats because of allergies. In those cases, I’m sure they’ve attempted to veer towards dogs and other small animals within their practice in order to maintain their career. But when it comes to choosing a profession, I would never recommend that a young person go into small-animal medicine if they hated cats and wanted to work only with dogs. I think you could be setting yourself up to be somewhat limited as a practitioner, and unless you are open to working with many other species – such as birds and exotics – or going into research, you may be disappointed with your career options after many years of hard studies.
Remember, cat owners are very discriminating about their species. They are fiercely devoted to their kitties, they want their veterinarian to know as much as possible about cats, to be skilled at handling them, and they require us to adore their pussycats from nose to tail. And most cat owners will freely admit to being 10 kinds of crazy about their cat, and expect their vet to be just as crazy about them too. I hope this helped you in your professional search. Good luck with your career choice.
Dr. F
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