One frustration with pet care is continuously battling fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes from feeding on your pet. You try to be diligent about giving your pet her flea, tick, and heartworm preventive medications, but if she spits out the medication or you forget a dose, you could face a flea infestation in your home or heartworm disease in your pet.

Frustration, be gone. We’ve chosen two products that will make prevention simple and allow you to stop worrying about these parasites.

Heartworm disease in pets

Heartworm disease in pets is a serious concern, with cases documented in all 50 states. Brush up on your knowledge of heartworm disease by checking out these facts:

  • There is no cure for heartworm disease in cats. There is no approved treatment for cats with heartworm disease, so year-round prevention is crucial.
  • Heartworm treatment for dogs is complex and costly. Treatment can take several months, depending on the disease severity. When we diagnose a dog with heartworm disease, we first perform additional testing to confirm the diagnosis. If confirmed, we take chest X-rays to check for heart and lung damage and run blood work to monitor organ function. Treatment also includes antibiotics before the injection stage, which may be two injections given a month apart. Even after heartworm treatment is completed, your dog must stay inactive for a month to prevent potentially deadly side effects.
  • Signs of heartworm disease differ in cats and dogs. Both cats and dogs with heartworm disease will cough, but that is the only similarity. Cats may show these signs:

    • Weight loss
    • Vomiting
    • Asthma-like attacks
    • Fainting or collapse
    • Sudden death

Dogs suffering from heartworm disease may experience:

    • Exercise intolerance
    • Rapid breathing
    • Decreased appetite
    • Swollen abdomen caused by fluid back-up

We recommend ProHeart 6 to prevent heartworm disease in your dog. Call us to discuss our recommendations for cats, since ProHeart 6 is only for dogs.

We love the simplicity of ProHeart 6, which requires just one shot twice per year. ProHeart 6 differs from monthly heartworm preventives because its active ingredient, moxidectin, is stored in the dog’s fat tissue in microspheres that dissolve slowly and release the moxidectin evenly over six months. ProHeart 6 is the only product that prevents heartworm disease for six months. In addition, the ProHeart 6 injection treats hookworm infections at the same time.

Fleas and ticks in pets

Fleas and ticks transmit a variety of diseases to both pets and people. Check out these flea and tick tips:

  • Their life cycle makes fleas difficult to eradicate. Fleas can lie dormant in the pupal stage for a year, emerging as adults only when conditions are right. People often think their flea problem is over and discontinue treatment, only to discover adult fleas are plaguing their pets again.
  • Fleas and ticks can make pets deathly ill. These pests transmit many diseases, including tapeworms, anemia, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, anaplasmosis, and babesiosis.

We recommend the flea and tick preventive Bravecto for both cats and dogs. Bravecto is available as a topical application, an added benefit for hard-to-pill felines.

Bravecto pairs well with ProHeart 6, because it is also long-lasting—a single dose protects your pet from fleas and ticks for 12 weeks, although some tick species, such as the lone star tick in dogs and the American dog tick in cats, may sneak back after only eight weeks. Bravecto has formulations for both cats and dogs. A topical version is available for both species, while a chewable form is available only for dogs. In addition to its extended effect, Bravecto kills fleas within two hours and ticks within 12 hours, making it one of the fastest and most effective products on the market.

Is your pet protected from fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes? Schedule your pet’s heartworm test today, and we will set you up with ProHeart 6 and Bravecto, the perfect pair for year-round protection.