Heartworm Prevention for Dogs and Cats - By: Dean Severidt

As a pet owner, your first responsibility is to keep your pet healthy. Your pet is completely contingent on you. One urgent part of caring for your pet is providing medicines to stop diseases when possible. An overwhelming sickness that may cause death in a cat or dog is heartworm. Heartworm is a sickness that's passed from animal to animal thru mosquitoes. Your strongest defense against heartworm is to practice heartworm prevention. Heartworm is commonly not possible to treat, so the right way to handle it is to stop it. There are various ways to go about heartworm prevention.

One of the most typical is to only defend against the sickness. There's a medicine for dogs called heartgard. This is a chewable tablet a dog can take which should hinder them from getting sick with heartworm. This is an once per month tablet that really must be given at the very same time each month. If this medicine is forgotten during mosquito season, the dog could be in danger for developing the probably fatal sickness. Another medicine in this realm would be sentinel. This one is a tablet also even though it offers protection against both fleas and heartworm.

There are also heartworm prevention medicines that are put on their skin vs having your pet take a tablet. There are a few of preferred medicines that work against both fleas and heartworm that are essentially for both cats and dogs. If you're a pet owner of both cats and dogs this is an easy solution. Advantage multi and revolution are simple to apply as it is put onto the back of their neck.

Irrespective of what you select as your sort of heartworm prevention, the main thing is to pick one of them. If you're not in an area prone to fleas, then select one that's only to guard against heartworm. If you have issues with fleas, then by every means go with one that can defend against that as well. Whatever you select, the main thing is that you defend your pet against catching this probably lethal sickness.

Lastly, it is important to protect your pets from heartworms year round, regardless of the climate you live in. Many people choose not to apply their heartworm preventative during the cold month because they think that there are not any mosquitoes around and therefore, their pet will not get heartworms. However, it only takes one mosquito, so I highly recommend keeping your pet on their prevention year round.

Copyright (c) 2010 Dean Severidt

About the Author

Dr. Dean Severidt has been a practicing veterinarian for over 30 years. Dr. Severidt founded DiscountFlea.com to provide pet medications to pet owners at a low cost. You can learn more about heartworm prevention and other dog and cat flea treatment options at the DiscountFlea.com blog.

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