Ensure a healthy, happy life for your pet by preventing heartworm.
Dogs are natural hosts for heartworms. These parasites can live within a dog comfortably, mating and producing offspring as time goes by. In dogs, heartworm disease can cause extensive damage to the arteries, lungs, and heart. Even after the heartworms are gone, they can affect your dog’s overall health and quality of life permanently. For these reasons, heartworm prevention is one of the best things you can do for your dog and their health and happiness.
Your pet may have heartworm disease if they are reluctant to exercise, experience fatigue after moderate activity, start to lose weight, and have a decreased appetite. As heartworm disease begins to progress, your dog may have a swollen belly because of excess fluid buildup in the abdomen.
At Plaza Veterinary Hospital, we believe that dealing with heartworm is not something you should tackle after it becomes a problem. Rather, heartworm prevention should be a routine part of caring for your pet. We can recommend different heartworm prevention medications and treatments that can reduce the likelihood of heartworms becoming an issue for your pet.
If you believe your pet already has heartworms, bring them into our veterinary clinic in Burlington, North Carolina. We can test your dog for heartworms and lay out an effective treatment plan that can minimize damage and protect their health moving forward.
Do you have any questions about heartworm prevention? Contact us at Plaza Veterinary Hospital today!
FAQs About Heartworm Prevention
Our team at Plaza Veterinary Hospital knows you care about your dog, and we are here to help you take care of your furry family member. If you have questions about heartworm prevention, we encourage you to keep reading to get the answers you need.
How do dogs get heartworms?
The most common way dogs contract heartworms is via exposure to the feces of other dogs, insect bites, or contaminated soil. They can occasionally get heartworms through contaminated food as well, but this is rare. In addition, when dogs do get heartworms via food, it is usually through wild game such as rodents, rather than processed dog food or table scraps.
How can I tell if my dog has worms?
Some of the most common signs that your dog has heartworms include weight loss, loss of appetite, vomiting, diarrhea, and lethargy. In addition, you may find that your dog’s coat loses its sheen and becomes dull, or you may even see visible worms in its feces. If you notice any of these symptoms in your dog, we encourage you to bring them in to our clinic for treatment. We will take steps to cure your dog and advise you on heartworm prevention so that you can protect your dog going forward.
What can I do to protect my dog from heartworms?
The most important heartworm prevention step you can take is to bring your dog to us for regular vet checkups. Our trained experts know how to identify signs of heartworms and to check your dog for them, and we can prescribe medication that will attack any heartworm larvae that do manage to infect your dog and prevent them from growing to adulthood.
At Plaza Veterinary Hospital, we offer pet heartworm prevention for patients from Burlington, Graham, Mebane, Glen Raven, Elon, Central Heights, and Haw River, North Carolina.