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  North Hoffman Veterinary Clinic

NEws/BLog

Mystery Canine Respiratory Illness
To date we have not seen any unusual cases or respiratory illness in any of our patients.  We are monitoring the situation and will post updates of any reliable information that we can find.
You can find the latest update from the University of Illinois School of Veterinary Medicine on the current situation and steps you can take to protect your pet at the link HERE.
Heartworm- Prevent it so you don't have to treat it!

A common question I get is whether or not it is really necessary to give dogs heartworm preventative.  Usually the owner is concerned about overmedicating their dog.   This simple answer is: Yes.  It really is necessary to prevent heartworm.

How likely is your dog to get heartworm if they aren't on preventative?  In Cook County they track the prevalence of heartworm in coyotes, and the prevalence is about 41%.  Coyotes of course are not on heartworm preventative.  So if your dog isn't on heartworm preventative, you might imagine that there is about a 41% chance they could contract it.  Of course most dogs don't spend 24 hours a day outside like coyotes do.  But mosquitoes find their way into houses too.  I have diagnosed dogs who allegedly are seldom and only briefly outside with heartworm disease.

Let me describe what happens if you don't use the preventative.  Heartworm is transmitted via mosquito bites.  From the transmittable larval stage it takes about 6 months to develop to the adult stage.  It is the adult stage that we are able to test for.  So if your dog tests positive for heartworm, it already has adult heartworms living in its pulmonary artery.  Hearworms are in the nematode family, the same family as earthworms, and they are large enough to see with the naked eye.
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They are also large enough to damage the heart and cause heart failure.

At that point, we have to kill the adult heartworms, and using heartworm preventative will not isn't enough.  First we treat the
dog with a month antibiotics to weaken the heartworms.   Then we can give the medication that will kill the heartworms.  This medication contains arsenic and must be injected deep into the muscles that run along the spine.  As you can imagine, these injections are painful.  A series of 2 or 3 injections is required.

Once that is complete, the heartworms should die, but they don't just disappear.  Now your dog has dead heartworms in their heart, which isn't much better than live ones.  As the dog's immune system slowly breaks these dead worms down and  removes them, there is a risk that these small bits will cause a blood clot in the lungs which can be fatal.  In order to prevent that from occurring, we recommend continued cage rest with minimal activity until the dog is rested as negative for heartworms, usually 4-6 months after the treatment has been concluded.  So cage rest for about a 5-9 month period altogether.

The moral of the story here is: it's much better to prevent heartworm disease with a monthly medication of some kind, than it is to have to get rid of these worms after the fact.
Raw Food Diets

Raw food diets have become more and more popular over the last several years.  Pet owners are either feeding their pets diets entirely consisting of raw foods, or often supplementing more conventional diets with raw animal products as treats.

The question is:  Are these raw diets beneficial for your pet?

There is, as of right now, no scientific study that shows that feeding raw diets will benefit your pet in any way compared to regular pet foods.  There is no study that shows that raw diets will lead to improved health or longer life for your pets.

There are a number of studies and case studies, however, that have shown that there are some health risks associated with feeding raw diets.  Using a raw diet exclusively or even feeding raw diets as treats, can potentially cause an imbalance in the diet (for example, too much fat).  More importantly, raw foods have an increased risk of being contaminated with harmful organisms such as Salmonella.  These harmful bacteria can cause vomiting, diarrhea, or even death in your pets.  And they also pose a risk to the human members of the family who have handled the raw foods, or who have handled the pets after they became ill, or in some cases, just carriers of Salmonella or one of the other pathogens associated with raw foods.

For more information, check out this link to the Tufts University vet school's nutrition department:
​ ​http://vetnutrition.tufts.edu/2016/01/raw-diets-a-healthy-choice-or-a-raw-deal/



Summer is here...

5/31/2017

5 Comments

 
Mosquitoes are out!
If your dog isn't already on heartworm preventative all year round (and they should be), make sure you get them on preventative NOW!
Heartworm is transmitted by mosquito bites.  The mosquito bites a dog infected with heartworm, then bites your dog and transmits it to them.  If you give your dog an effective heartworm preventative within a month of the bite, the heartworm will die.
If the dog is not taking an effective preventative (or if you forget to give it), the microscopically small heartworm larvae transmitted by the mosquito will grow up to a worm large enough to easily be seen by the naked eye which lives in the pulmonary artery coming off the heart.  If untreated, these worms can cause heart failure and death.
If you discover that your dog is positive for heartworm, the treatment is a series of painful injections in the back muscles with a drug containing arsenic.  What this does is kill the adult worms, and what you are left with is dead worms in the pulmonary artery.  These can also cause death by pulmonary embolism (blood clots to the lungs).
It is much better and easier to prevent heartworms than it is to treat them after they have developed to the adult stage.  
Heartworm is common in this area.  The local resevoir is the dogs that have the adult form of the disease and the coyote population.  Mosquitoes bite these animals then bite your dog, transmitting hearworm larvae.  
Come in now, get your dog tested for heartworm and pick up some heartworm preventative.
5 Comments
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6/4/2017 08:46:26 am

I am also a person who is concerned about the dogs because some dogs are sensitive to heat and summer is here. We need to take some precautions to avoid some problems like heat stroke and some of the problems includes pulmonary embolism which is a problem in the lungs. We need to be smart and we need to give our pets the comfort that they need.

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    Dr. Jon Jacobson DVM

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  • Home
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