Information recently gathered by PetFinder.com has revealed that just about 63% of all dog owners and 58% of all cat owners will give their pets Christmas presents. This kind of caring is cherished and should be highly valued. However, it is also important to make sure your pets get the proper treatment and health care which includes a heartworm test.
Right now, just about 2 million people own horses. Horses are much more likely to develop heartworm as opposed to cats or dogs but it is still possible for those more domesticated types of pets to come down with this horrific disease. It’s estimated that 70-80 million dogs and 74-96 million cats are owned in the United States. Make sure that you get your heartworm test.
Every single year almost one million dogs are believed to be heartworm positive. So it is imperative that you give your pet a heartworm test to be on the safe side of things. Plus, keep in mind that a heartworm treatment can end up costing nearly $1,000, which helps to give a monthly preventative a bargain when comparing these two.
While infected dogs may have 30 or more worms in their heart and lungs, cats usually have 6 or fewer—and may have just one or two. But while the severity of heartworm disease in dogs is related to the number of the worm, in cats, just one or two worms can make a cat very ill. If these types of diseases that can be dangerous and deadly can be prevented then do the work needed to help your pet!
Puppies under 7 months of age can be started on heartworm prevention without a heartworm test, it takes at least 6 months for a dog to test positive after it has been infected, but should be tested 6 months after your initial visit, tested again 6 months later and yearly after that to ensure they are heartworm-free. A canine heartworm antigen test is not expensive and will take only a few minutes.
By far the majority of horses are inapparent carriers: they show no overt clinical abnormalities as a result of infection. They survive as reservoirs of the infection for extended periods and have dramatically lower concentrations of EIAV in their blood than horses with active clinical signs of the disease. Only 1 horsefly out of 6 million is likely to pick up and transmit EIAV from this horse.
One-fifth of a teaspoon of blood from a chronic case of EIAV during a feverish episode contains enough virus to infect 10,000 horses. When horses are exposed to equine infectious anemia virus, also known as EIAV, they may develop severe, acute signs of disease and die within 2 to 3 weeks.
Every single year animals will suffer from the horrific disease that is heartworm disease. If a simple heartworm test can help protect them from this disease becoming too rampant then be sure to take your dog to get checked on!
