Annual Heartworm Injection

[Crisovar]

I never realised that there was any controversy over this before coming here. I've had my vet give my old girl the injection for years and years (so long, I can barely remember giving her the chew) and we have been lucky enough not to have any reaction. There are lots of mossies here in Brisbane, and I can be forgetful so the yearly dose seemed like a great idea at the time.

I'm not sure if I'll have my puppy dosed with this or not...the vet is keen to give it to him as soon as he is old enough.

I am interested in what reasons the vet gives for being so keen? What is the real advantage to this yearly injection besides convenience?

Mine was keen also but I think it was more convenience and maybe if it is more expensive they get more in the end.. Although mine said it was a cheaper option.. Who knows I am disappointed in the 2 vets I have been to thus far.. I didn't think finding a vet I trust and doesn't come across wanting me to keep putting my hand in my pocket would be so hard... I feel like I have to have a degree and worldly product knowledge of everything vet related. lol..

Yep - I haven't found one I am totally happy with either. For instance I would like to be given some ideas about why he may be having skin problems instead of just treating with an injection which in hindsight I don't think was warranted. As for the annual heartworm injection I find it hard to understand why people can't just get a cheap calendar and keep it on their kitchen bench - it only takes a couple of minutes to mark the same day each month with the necessary treatments. Maybe people don't have calendars and diaries any more

Why have a calendar and have to give monthly treatments when you can get it cheaper in an annnual dose? My vet didn't push me to get the injection for my dog, I asked her about it, and she didn't mention any potential side effects, nor see any problem administering it, other than suggesting she gets tested for heartworm first. For me another reason to do it, other than me forgetting a lot of the monthly doses, is that my dog doesn't happy swallow the tablets. She doesn't like them and will spit it out if mixed with food, so that means forcing them down her throat every month.

I don't see why you'd give a monthly dose when you can give an annual dose? There is the potential for side effects with any treatment, but a few horror stories doesn't mean that the potential for harm is greater than the good effects (no missed doses, fewer dogs with heartworm).

If they were that dangerous, the vets would refuse to give the injection, or at the very least warn people of how dangerous they are.

My vet does advise against it, and in the USA you cannot have it administered unless you sign the consent form. Personally I think there should be more of that here in Australia.

[Sempre (Haylee)]

If I was to post the photos of my friend dogs reaction to the injection it would make somepeople rethink, drains hanging out him everywhere and huge vet bills to fix him back up. I, not sure why a dog who was on a monthly spot on was given the injection anyway but it was a few years ago now, not something I would do lightly

[WeimMe]

I am thinking that I may have him take the monthly chew or just keep up the advocate until he is fully grown and then start with the annual heartworm shots. So many chemicals - it makes you wonder how any dogs ever managed to survive to adulthood way back before we had them.

[RiverStar-Aura]

My old dog Poochie lived to 16 and she was never heart-wormed or vaccinated (with the exception of her puppy vaccines). We never had a problem with her and we live in a high risk heart-worm area.

I'm definitely taking my 2 dogs off the injection this year.

[darlingdog]

I read with interest of the comments here...having just picked up an absolutely lovely rescue foster and have her test positive to heartworm and caring for her through her treatment...all I can say is I don't care what type of heartworm preventative people use so long as they use SOMETHING and do it regularly.

[german_shep_fan]

In my searching of the forums, I've found the response to the annual heartworm injection tends to be "don't do it" - but I can't find anyone explaining why not.

My pup is going in to be desexed next month and they've suggested the heartworm injection. Is it suggested more for convinence than anything? My pup is flea'd every 2 weeks, so a monthly heartworm tablet (using Interceptor Spectrum at the moment) is just part of the routine and definetly isn't an inconvinence.

Are there benefits to the injection vs monthly tablets?

For me personally its easy to do a once a year injection and that is it. I am so paranoid i may forget to give a mnthly tablet for it ect. I have all my dogs done on the yrly injection and have never had a problem. I got my new girl injected at 6mnths and didnt have any problem with her either :)

[Jumabaar]

I read with interest of the comments here...having just picked up an absolutely lovely rescue foster and have her test positive to heartworm and caring for her through her treatment...all I can say is I don't care what type of heartworm preventative people use so long as they use SOMETHING and do it regularly.

Good luck DD.

I am sure you will have a much happier dog after treatment. I hope it all goes smoothly

[darlingdog]

I read with interest of the comments here...having just picked up an absolutely lovely rescue foster and have her test positive to heartworm and caring for her through her treatment...all I can say is I don't care what type of heartworm preventative people use so long as they use SOMETHING and do it regularly.

Good luck DD.

I am sure you will have a much happier dog after treatment. I hope it all goes smoothly

Thanks so much Jumabaar....after being quite a sick girl for the first week after starting her treatment we are now into the second week and she is feeling very much better now...I now see her smiling face more than the sad one though not so sure I'm smiling that much....keeping an active gun dog quiet for a month is no picnic !! ;)

[Sayly]

I do trust my vet - it's not in her best interests to make my dogs sick.

Though I do think individual owners should decide the best thing for their pets... I disagree with this statement. Making your dogs sick means return visits and more money. It certainly is in a vet's interest to keep you coming back.

Most vets these days opt for doing health checks and preventative treatment which ends up with more profit IMO than actually treating sick dogs..... Much better mark ups on chiropractic treatments than there are on surgeries lol.

Also making dogs sick might be good for business in the short term but dead dogs and word of mouth does tend to kill a business pretty quick. Also making dogs sick regularly probably would mess with a vets mental status so even on a personal sense it is in the vets best interests to not make her dogs sick ;) So I think KTB probably has the right of it.

Several practices I have seen have actually treated anything thought to be 'vaccination' related for free, so really, making the pets sick actually works out as a loss. Not to mention no vets like to see a sick animal, they see enough of them in a normal let alone try and add to them on purpose.

I don't use the yearly injection, but I can understand vets reccommending it for many dog owners. Not all clients are as dog savvy/keen/enthusiastic as DOLers and forgetting monthly is easy. I write it in my diary but I have been late on giving it to them in the past, and my dogs mean to absolute world to me, let alone a dog owner who isn't as passionate and may just have a dog who hardly leaves the backyard.

I honestly can't get over the mentality on DOL that vets really don't care about their patients though.

[Tralee]

In my searching of the forums, I've found the response to the annual heartworm injection tends to be "don't do it" - but I can't find anyone explaining why not.

My pup is going in to be desexed next month and they've suggested the heartworm injection. Is it suggested more for convinence than anything? My pup is flea'd every 2 weeks, so a monthly heartworm tablet (using Interceptor Spectrum at the moment) is just part of the routine and definetly isn't an inconvinence.

Are there benefits to the injection vs monthly tablets?

For me personally its easy to do a once a year injection and that is it. I am so paranoid i may forget to give a mnthly tablet for it ect. I have all my dogs done on the yrly injection and have never had a problem. I got my new girl injected at 6mnths and didnt have any problem with her either :)

I've changed to the quarterly heartworm and all-wormer.

Since I was religiously giving the dogs their tri-mester wormer at the beginning of every season, its one less pill round every month.

Its easy to overlook.

I think you run the risk of the yearly injections attenuating as the months pass.

Or loading them with drug at the beginning of the treatment.

And some Vets do become blasé about their practice and even attempt treatment they don't have the expertise for.

Of course the dogs, and their owners/carers are disadvantaged by less than adequate care.

Regards

[Jumabaar]

I do trust my vet - it's not in her best interests to make my dogs sick.

Though I do think individual owners should decide the best thing for their pets... I disagree with this statement. Making your dogs sick means return visits and more money. It certainly is in a vet's interest to keep you coming back.

Most vets these days opt for doing health checks and preventative treatment which ends up with more profit IMO than actually treating sick dogs..... Much better mark ups on chiropractic treatments than there are on surgeries lol.

Also making dogs sick might be good for business in the short term but dead dogs and word of mouth does tend to kill a business pretty quick. Also making dogs sick regularly probably would mess with a vets mental status so even on a personal sense it is in the vets best interests to not make her dogs sick ;) So I think KTB probably has the right of it.

Several practices I have seen have actually treated anything thought to be 'vaccination' related for free, so really, making the pets sick actually works out as a loss. Not to mention no vets like to see a sick animal, they see enough of them in a normal let alone try and add to them on purpose.

I don't use the yearly injection, but I can understand vets reccommending it for many dog owners. Not all clients are as dog savvy/keen/enthusiastic as DOLers and forgetting monthly is easy. I write it in my diary but I have been late on giving it to them in the past, and my dogs mean to absolute world to me, let alone a dog owner who isn't as passionate and may just have a dog who hardly leaves the backyard.

I honestly can't get over the mentality on DOL that vets really don't care about their patients though.

Its actually getting quite depressing really- why bother studying i the first place since apparently I could do just as much 'good' walking in off the street

Tralee- what is this quarterly heart worm treatment that you are using?

[jrm88]

Tralee, there is no quarterly heartworm treatment that I'm aware of??

What is its name?

Jumabaar I agree.... being on dol can be very hard when you are in the vet profession, because apparently we are stupid, money hungry idiots who don't know how to care for animals properly and we just want to make them sick :rolleyes: (despite vets studying 5+ years, and also many vet nurses having had studied for 2yrs and we have done it due to a love for our pets!)

Edited March 22, 2012 by jrm88

[koalathebear]

Several practices I have seen have actually treated anything thought to be 'vaccination' related for free, so really, making the pets sick actually works out as a loss. Not to mention no vets like to see a sick animal, they see enough of them in a normal let alone try and add to them on purpose.

I don't use the yearly injection, but I can understand vets reccommending it for many dog owners. Not all clients are as dog savvy/keen/enthusiastic as DOLers and forgetting monthly is easy. I write it in my diary but I have been late on giving it to them in the past, and my dogs mean to absolute world to me, let alone a dog owner who isn't as passionate and may just have a dog who hardly leaves the backyard.

I honestly can't get over the mentality on DOL that vets really don't care about their patients though.

Lyndsay - I agree with you about how perplexing it is that people assume that vets don't care and why they would continue to go to a vet who doesn't care when there are plenty who do ...

My dogs are on the annual injection but that doesn't mean that I don't care about my dogs or that they are left in the backyard. They are dogs with access to both indoors and outdoors, they've done obedience, they do agility, they're healthy and well-fed. We put a lot of effort into socialising them and keeping them enriched. They're part of our family and we love them dearly. Our local vet cares about our dogs, too. If I believed at all that they did not care, I just wouldn't go to them any more. We've driven to Sydney for training assistance, to Tuggeranong when our local vet was closed. We'd be happy to drive anywhere in Canberra for appropriate vet care for our dogs so it's not just a matter of convenience for me.

Our dogs almost never go to the vet anymore - they went a lot as puppies for preliminary vaccinations and little things like ringworm, mange etc but since being pups, the visits are very infrequent. There are many times when I've phoned and asked whether I should bring them in and and sometimes the vet will say yes (usually anything to do with the eyes) but for most other things, they'll talk us through them on the phone to assess if it's serious or not and frequently they say it's not necessary to bring the dogs in. When we first got Elbie, my father was dying of cancer and we were in and out of hospital all the time. Every day was unpredictable - I had absolutely no way of guaranteeing that I could administer medication to Elbie on a regular basis. The annual injection was entirely appropriate given the circumstances and given the lack of adverse effects and the fact that we had discussed the options at length with the vet that we know and trust - it made sense to me. Hoover's now on it, too and both are fine. They aren't on 'heaps' of other medications - just usual vaccinations and the heartworm injection.

I am not trying to say all vets care but ours definitely do and I know that there are others out there, too. There have been times we have visited the vet as a follow-up for something and we've been sent away without being charged for anything because it was such a quick consult. There have been times when we've called at the last minute and they've just shoe-horned us in at the last minute because they knew we were worried. There was once when they couldn't guarantee Hoover a consult on the Saturday morning and we couldn't go to the surgery and just wait for a spot because we had other things on so they let us just drop him by at the surgery and pick him up when we were able. We were running late and picked him up after surgery hours had closed and that was fine.

The most lingering memory I have of our vets is that a long time ago, one winter night when our family dog grew old and sick, we could not get him to the vet because he was in so much pain he was trying to bite anyone who approached him. The vet drove to our house, picked Kitt up and carried him to his car and put him on the beautiful seat upholstery without a blanket and drove him back to his surgery. That vet saw Kitt from the time he was a puppy and was also the vet who cared for him in his last days. We still go back to the same vet surgery and they have seen my dogs through puppyhood and I expect that they will also be the vets who care for our dogs during their last hours.

It's not just money for them - they are extremely busy and there are loads of people with sickly dogs. They'll also probably get loads of money out of us when our dogs are old and infirm.

So there are many, many reasons why I choose to believe my vet over and above faceless internet people who may be very knowledgable - but do not know or care about my dogs ... While I feel very sorry that many people have had bad experiences with vets, I've had good ones and I believe that they care about my dogs.

Edited March 22, 2012 by koalathebear

[Tralee]

Tralee- what is this quarterly heart worm treatment that you are using?

Tralee, there is no quarterly heartworm treatment that I'm aware of??

What is its name?

I will have to ring the Vet tomorrow and ask them because I've forgotten.

I think its got a couple of m's in it, so maybe a game of hangman while we're waiting.

.. m _ _ _ _ _ m _ _ _ _ _ _

Regards

PS Found it Milbemax

I have been using it as a quartely all-wormer AND heart wormer on the recommendation of one of the Vets here.

[Crisovar]

Milbemax® (milbemycin oxime, praziquantel)

Product Type

For the treatment of internal parasites, roundworm, hookworm and tapeworm, in dogs.

Properties

Milbemycin oxime and praziquantel are the active ingredients in Milbemax®.

Milbemycin oxime interferes with nerve transmission in invertebrates, which helps protect against heartworm, roundworm, hookworm and whipworm.

Praziquantel causes muscle spasm in tapeworm, which are then attacked by enzymes and disintegrate. It kills all intestinal forms of tapeworm except Spirometra spp, which require a higher than standard dose rate.

Indications

Milbemax for dogs is a broad spectrum intestinal wormer. If given monthly, it also offers prevention against heartworm.

Milbemax for dogs protects against roundworm (Toxocara canis, Toxascaris leonina), hookworm (Ancylostoma caninum, Ancylostoma braziliense), whipworm (Trichuris vulpis) and tapeworm (Dipylidum caninum, Echinococcus granulosus, Taenia spp).

If given monthly, Milbemax protects dogs against all of the above, as well as heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis).

[Tralee]

Indications

Milbemax for dogs is a broad spectrum intestinal wormer. If given monthly, it also offers prevention against heartworm.

Milbemax for dogs protects against roundworm (Toxocara canis, Toxascaris leonina), hookworm (Ancylostoma caninum, Ancylostoma braziliense), whipworm (Trichuris vulpis) and tapeworm (Dipylidum caninum, Echinococcus granulosus, Taenia spp).

If given monthly, Milbemax protects dogs against all of the above, as well as heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis).

Granted.

But it has been recommended to me as a quarterly treatment for heartworm.

However, if you are familiar with the history of my Vet as some people on DOL are, then there should be no surprises here.

So, it goes without saying that further inquiries will be made.

Px

[redangel]

Old topic discussing this here

[Jumabaar]

Indications

Milbemax for dogs is a broad spectrum intestinal wormer. If given monthly, it also offers prevention against heartworm.

Milbemax for dogs protects against roundworm (Toxocara canis, Toxascaris leonina), hookworm (Ancylostoma caninum, Ancylostoma braziliense), whipworm (Trichuris vulpis) and tapeworm (Dipylidum caninum, Echinococcus granulosus, Taenia spp).

If given monthly, Milbemax protects dogs against all of the above, as well as heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis).

Granted.

But it has been recommended to me as a quarterly treatment for heartworm.

However, if you are familiar with the history of my Vet as some people on DOL are, then there should be no surprises here.

So, it goes without saying that further inquiries will be made.

Px

Completely off topic

Are your dogs around stock? If so using Milbemax monthly would be beneficial as it protects them (and more importantly you) from the Hydatid worm!!

Edited March 23, 2012 by Jumabaar

[Tralee]

Completely off topic

Are your dogs around stock? If so using Milbemax monthly would be beneficial as it protects them (and more importantly you) from the Hydatid worm!!

Off topic!! How so??

I responded to this question from the OP:-

Are there benefits to the injection vs monthly tablets?

with this comment:-

I've changed to the quarterly heartworm and all-wormer.

Regards

which to my mind, is information not at hand.

In regard to the question of being in the vicinity of stock, we live in the dairy country of Northern NSW.

You might say there are one or two cows. ;)

Px

[Jumabaar]

Completely off topic

Are your dogs around stock? If so using Milbemax monthly would be beneficial as it protects them (and more importantly you) from the Hydatid worm!!

Off topic!! How so??

I responded to this question from the OP:-

Are there benefits to the injection vs monthly tablets?

with this comment:-

I've changed to the quarterly heartworm and all-wormer.

Regards

which to my mind, is information not at hand.

In regard to the question of being in the vicinity of stock, we live in the dairy country of Northern NSW.

You might say there are one or two cows. ;)

Px

I went off topic by bringing up hydatid worm in a topic about heart worm- your statements were all on topic. Hydatid worms can be transferred to humans via the dog so perhaps something you can do some research on.