W/ ALL THE HEARTWORM TALK

[gator]

i'm curious what you pro's that take on dogs (often times from previously unknown clients/conditions) do to protect yourselves and your dogs from possible "infestation".

do you guys require a negative test w/in "x" months as documented and signed off by a vet or something along those lines?

also, say a dog comes in taking "x" medication.....do you guys switch them if you've not had good luck w/ "x" brand??? or, is this something you leave up to the owner to buy/purchase and deal w/?

-Gator

[Tripp DuPerrieu]

Negative when they come in and have a vet to come by once a month to pop meds in. It is documented by the vet for every dog. If they wish to use something different than me, they can get it from vet and visiting vet will pop it in and document. All bases covered and if dog ends up positive, liability isn't there. You can only do what you can do..., but I have yet to have a dog test positive.


I forgot,... "knock on wood"...

[Troy Williams]

I admin whatever a customer wants me to admin. I inform them of what I do and why. I make no suggestions.

I also have BIG shop fans that blow thru kennel runs from both ends. I think I'm about to redesign and have rewired so that each kennel will have it's own high speed/volume fan. It will be pretty cool. May wait til I move.?.

Something else about HW's. ONE, I say again, ONE infected dog can infect ALOT of mosquitos in your yard then perpetuating the cycle thus UPPING your chances for breakthroughs. If you have no infected dogs then the mosquitos can't get infected. BUT one dog can possibly ruin an entire area. So yes, I require a clean bill before accepting dogs. That's a problem with living in town; Lot's of dogs around with no prevention.

Troy

[goosebruce]

I don't think town or not figgers in. If there are mammels around you, theres infected animals. Remember the #s we saw on infected coyotes last year? Estimates ran from 40-60%. I can only assume other mammels would be the same %s (never seen any research on squirrels and whutnot). I don't think worrying about effected animals is a problem, because supposedly the reason for prevatitves is the fact your dog WILL be bitten by an infected skeeter, and the prevatives work from there. Root problem is the same, if the prevatitves worked, this wouldn't even merit a discussion. travis

[cdwyer]

Speakin of other infected animals and what not. Here is a hypothetical:

If there were such things as Werewolves and a misquito bit one and then bit you, could you possible become one through transfer of blood that way? Or is it Saliva from a werewolf that infects you? Cant remember.

[Troy Williams]

From the HW website:

How Heartworm Happens: The Life Cycle
First, adult female heartworms release their young, called microfilariae, into an animal's bloodstream. Then, mosquitoes become infected with microfilariae while taking blood meal from the infected animal. During the next 10 to 14 days, the microfilariae mature to the infective larval stage within the mosquito. After that, the mosquito bites another dog, cat or other susceptible animal, and the infective larvae enter through the bite wound. It then takes a little over 6 months for the infective larvae to mature into adult worms. In dogs, the worms may live for up to 7 years. Microfilariae cannot mature into adult heartworms without first passing through a mosquito.

Hence my reasoning for saying that an infected dog can start an infestation in an otherwise clean kennel area. Is the kennel clean to begin with? I don't know but an infected dog surely contaminates it if it was. So, I ask for a clean HW test on new arrivals.

Therefore since people that live in town have no control over what their neighbors do then it would stand to reason that neigborhood backyard Fido's are not consistently treated as we do our trained & expensive dogs. Wouldn't then the "closeness" of the untreated neighbors pets (sometimes 3-4 houses per acre or more) mean that your dogs infection probabilities could, and in my mind probably does, increase. The odds of mosquitos in your area biting infected dogs and hosting the larvea and establishing an infestation go WAY up. Then your infection probabilities also would go up.

Many questions however:
Do the mosquitos in my kennel travel 300 yds to the river to bite coyotes and return to infect my dogs? I don't know; Sure I guess it's possible but I think not probable. Are the coyotes in my area even infected so that the mosquitos in my area are infected? I don't know. But what I think is my mosquitos are my mosquitos. If I had neighbors I would think My mosquitos are also THEIR mosquitos.

The HW website looks updated so it would probably be wise to read thru it again....it has been some time since I've visited it.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do: There is a cat that lives in an old barn on the levee next to my house. He lives there, eats mice, snakes and such and is essentially wild. iu like hime there becaseu of the snakes and field mice and such, BUT I'm going to catch him and take him for a test. Then I'm going to "catch" a coyote as well and take it for a test (Dont ask!). But when done I will let you all know what we find.

Troy

[Tripp DuPerrieu]

Make sure you get a video of that.

[gator]

TROY WILLIAMS

da da daaaadum.......................PET DETECTIVE



-Gator

[goosebruce]

He goes trying to catch a feral cat, hes gonna be PET DEFECTIVE! bwhahahahah

One cat or one coyote isn't a sample though. It might tell you yes, but it wont tell you how much, and it certainly won't tell you no. I think its an ideal with merit, but without doing a decent sized sample, I think it might be misleading.

Still don't know if I buy the inefected dog theory, but I certainly think a hartworm postive dog can't decrease your chances, but could thereoritacally increase them. But since the tests don't show for 5 months, in reality you can't say ANY dog is negative. Even then, the way prevention has always been portrayed to us is the fact ALL dogs get bit by skeeters with worms, ALL dogs will be exposed on a regular basis. Thats the reason for prevention. is because your dog WILL be exposed. I think decreasing #s of skeeters is more of a concearn, than postive testing dogs could ever hope to be. As far regular fidos infecting our dogs (our dogs being performance event dogs), seems to me the breakthrus are at a much higher % for perfomance dogs than regular dogs. Troy brought up a point (during a conversation about this), our dogs are problably tested much more frequently, and that I agree with, but still %wise, its still skewed towards performance dogs in this part of the country. If non pets can impact breakthrus, and regualr joe dogs can impact it, then it shouldnt be regional. Whats happening this area ought to be reflected nationwide, and it isn't.

The survey I did online last week. My point to troy, and I might be WAY overly sensative, is the questions seemed to be pointed toward 'why didnt you give your dogs the medicines'. I think survery is great, Im glad people are working toward this, but I still thought it was trying to figger out a pattern of non complience, not a pattern of breakthrus.

All the surveys, infected dog theroys, and everything else, would all be moot if the prevantives worked as advertsied, like they did for years, and seemingly still do in other parts of the country. There wouldnt be conversations if the meds worked, troy wouldn't need to get bit by a feral cat, or any other stuff we've done or talked about or spent money on. travis

[Troy Williams]

Not trying to solve the HW breakthru problem. I can't do that. I can catch a cat that has never had preventative and is bitten thousands of times, guaranteed, and test it. If it's negative then the theory of a clean area holds water, maybe.

Troy

[Copiah Creek]

Here is the skinny on HW according to the doc. If a skeeter bite's dog (A) who has the L3 stage larva and then bite's dog (B) who does not have it ,,,,they are transferred to dog (B) ......Heartguard kills L3 and L4 stages for 30 to 40 days ,,,,if some slip through to develope into L5 (Ivermectin) will not kill them and they turn into adult heart worms . And they only have 1 drug that will kill adults ,,,even after treatment your dog can test positive up to a year . Still dont make me feel any better about them or the preventing meds no matter what brand .