Emily_Babbelhund
Mama Red HOT Pepper
- Location
- St Merryn, Cornwall
Starting a new thread to document Carbon's heart worm treatment in the hopes that it may help someone else down the line. Also an effort to keep his other thread more about his/our travel adventures than all the medical stuff!
First, some background. Carbon is a rescue Labrador from Spain. He's anywhere from 1,5 to 2 years old and weighs 29 kgs. Info from the shelter in Spain is sketchy, but we know that he was left in a killing station to be euthanised as a young puppy. Instead of that fate, he was kept in a cage outdoors, likely with several other dogs. He would have had no vaccines or any parasite preventatives.
Around 8-12 months old he was rescued by a local private shelter. At this point he was tested for most diseases and given the normal round of injections. At the time he test positive for Leishmaniasis and negative for everything else, including heart worm.
The type of blood tests run in the shelter are 'snap' tests. From a quick search: "a snap test in the veterinary world is a blood test that is run in the hospital and provides results in 8 minutes. The test is a screening process for six vector-borne diseases: Heartworm, Lyme, Ehrlichia canis, Ehrlichia ewingi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Anaplasma platys."
What we guess is that this initial snap test at the shelter resulted in a false negative for heart worm. This is because it takes up to five months post-infection for the snap test to detect the heart worm, due to the worm's lifecycle (more on this in a follow up post). It is also possible that the monthly preventatives he was given subsequently were not effective and he was infected at a later date.
However, there seems to be a good argument for Carbon having been infected from puppyhood with heart worm. When I met him two weeks after arrival at the private shelter, he had a normal amount of energy. He subsequently developed anaemia, which was blamed on his Leish. He also started suffering bouts of lethargy and weakness when I brought him home as a foster six weeks later. But these also corresponded to when he started getting heart worm preventative tablets.
In preparation for traveling with Carbon back through a heart worm-prone zone (vs. in Germany where heart worm doesn't factor in), I had him tested prior to starting him again on a monthly preventative such as Milbemax. That brought us to yesterday, where we got his positive diagnosis.
NEXT: What is heartworm?
First, some background. Carbon is a rescue Labrador from Spain. He's anywhere from 1,5 to 2 years old and weighs 29 kgs. Info from the shelter in Spain is sketchy, but we know that he was left in a killing station to be euthanised as a young puppy. Instead of that fate, he was kept in a cage outdoors, likely with several other dogs. He would have had no vaccines or any parasite preventatives.
Around 8-12 months old he was rescued by a local private shelter. At this point he was tested for most diseases and given the normal round of injections. At the time he test positive for Leishmaniasis and negative for everything else, including heart worm.
The type of blood tests run in the shelter are 'snap' tests. From a quick search: "a snap test in the veterinary world is a blood test that is run in the hospital and provides results in 8 minutes. The test is a screening process for six vector-borne diseases: Heartworm, Lyme, Ehrlichia canis, Ehrlichia ewingi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Anaplasma platys."
What we guess is that this initial snap test at the shelter resulted in a false negative for heart worm. This is because it takes up to five months post-infection for the snap test to detect the heart worm, due to the worm's lifecycle (more on this in a follow up post). It is also possible that the monthly preventatives he was given subsequently were not effective and he was infected at a later date.
However, there seems to be a good argument for Carbon having been infected from puppyhood with heart worm. When I met him two weeks after arrival at the private shelter, he had a normal amount of energy. He subsequently developed anaemia, which was blamed on his Leish. He also started suffering bouts of lethargy and weakness when I brought him home as a foster six weeks later. But these also corresponded to when he started getting heart worm preventative tablets.
In preparation for traveling with Carbon back through a heart worm-prone zone (vs. in Germany where heart worm doesn't factor in), I had him tested prior to starting him again on a monthly preventative such as Milbemax. That brought us to yesterday, where we got his positive diagnosis.
NEXT: What is heartworm?