There was a time in my career that I thought maybe in certain parts of the country we would win the battle against heartworms. We got to the point here in southeast South Dakota that we would go years between positive tests. In the last decade trends have changed and we now have multiple positive dogs each year. A lot of this has to do with the mobility of our society. Rescue organizations now move dogs all over the country and so each year a good portion of our cases are brought into South Dakota from other parts of the country. We also see it in our hunting dogs that travel outside of the region. When you combine this mobility with the concern in certain parts of the country for resistance to our preventatives and you have a disease that once again is high on our list of concerns.
This is a condition that hit a little close to home two years ago. I acquired my lab as a started dog through a friend. She had been current on preventatives and tested negative prior to heading to South Dakota. Unfortunately the year before she had spent the winter down south training in an area of the country where resistance is a concern. Because I'm overly paranoid, and even though she had initially tested negative, I decided to test her again that winter after hunting season and sure enough her test, and confirmatory testing, was positive for heartworms. Around the same time I had several people reach out with questions on heartworm and so I decided to do this video series.
#gundog #huntingdog #birddog #duckdog #sportingdog #canineathletes #vetmed #gundogdoc