Update on Sweetie’s heartworm-treatment fundraiser.
You good Friends of Sweetie are doing it again. 🙂 After 36 hours, we’ve received a total of $605 via PayPal ($580.83 after PayPal fees) from 18 donors. About half are repeat donors, half new.
In addition, two Friends of Sweetie have pledged to send checks totaling $150 to the non-profit our ACD expert works with. And a good friend of Sweetie’s and mine has sent his third contribution, amount unknown, via snail.
So thanks to you, Sweetie will get her heartworm treatment and be on her way to being a healthy, adoptable dog.
We’ll continue taking donations. There are always contingencies to cover (not to mention a few more months of dog food, at least). And maybe Sweetie will even be able to sport that vibrating training collar so useful to deaf dogs and their people. But know this: You’ve done it once again.
“Which are You?” You are the Lifters. (H/T W for that one.)
Woot!!!
This is such great news!! Thank you all so very much!
Add another $50 to the pile. Pay Pal inbound.
Yay, Mossyrock. And UnReconstructed. And sagebrush dog walker … and … ALL of you whom I haven’t yet thanked personally (damned deadlines!). You’ll be getting a one-on-one thanks very soon. In the meantime, know that Sweetie thanks you, I thank you, Mary Lou thanks you, and Linda thanks you.
Speaking of dogs, here’s a link about an insane woman and two soggy dogs.
http://missboaty.blogspot.com/
Claire,
There is a way cheaper way to end the heartworm issue once and for all. We had a 95 lb Golden retriever/ St Bernard mix named Chewbacca (Chewie) who did a splendid job of keeping the local criminals away from our ranch in the Klamath River valley. The ass@^%$@s could not approach our selves or house without Chewie trying to tear their heads off. They put out salmom offal on our property which is poison to a dog ONE TIME. Chewie and our black lab ate a bunch of it. The Lab (Augie) had survived an earlier bout with it and was mildly ill. We got Chewie to a vet in Arcata who saved him but found heartworms. The vet wanted $650.00 for the treatment but couldn’t get near him so we took him to his regular vet in Willow Creek. The vet prescribed Ivomec injection medication for cattle and swine 1% sterile solution. The Ivomec is not injected into the dog but into a small amount of hamburger or buttered bread and fed as a treat. Chewie’s dosage was .26cc every 30 days. After 3 months the animal is heartworm free and an ongoing 30 day regimen prevents further infection. Ivomec is available at most feed stores.
Most vets will not recommend this treatment as the medication is cheap ($26.00 for 50ml) which has lasted us 9 years but must not be exposed to light.
For further info contact: Menegay, Michael L DVM. 39032 Hwy 299, Willow Creek, CA 95573 (530) 629- 2310. Good Luck
Thank you, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ. Sweetie has actually been on a treatment similar to what you describe for several months. It has killed the baby worms in her system. But it’s a very slow way to kill adult worms that actually live in the heart.
Sweetie’s vet has recommended the more expensive, more drastic, and more quick method because the infestation that’s actually IN her heart is severe enough that it might damage her heart before all the worms die.
Furrydoc (who isn’t the vet who made that recommendation) might want to chime in here. I’m new to heartworm — which, knock wood, is extremely rare here — so I don’t want to misrepresent anything. But if you want to protect your dog you need to know that there’s more than one type of heartworm test. There are tests that detect microfilariae, the baby worms, and tests that detect the adult worms. It’s quite possible for one test to be negative — while the dog actually still has heartworms. So take care!
Some folks around here (SC) use cattle Ivomec for their dogs HW prevention (as described above) as its cheaper, frankly Heartgard isnt that expensive and much easier to ‘prepare’. As Claire said, this is also used as a ‘slow kill’ HW treatment; yes, it will eventually kill the adult worms as well as the microfiliae, but it takes 1-2 years before the animal is HW free. The upside of ‘slow kill’ is that there is very little risk to the dog, and you dont have to keep the dog quiet-crated for 1-2 months. The downside, it takes 1-2 years. And if you have a rescue dog that you want to find a home for, its best to get the HW treatment ;over and done with’. It is unlikely that your dog was HW free in 3 months after ivermectin treatment, yes, the microfiliae would be cleared out but not the adult worms.
Mary Lou — Thanks for chiming in. I don’t feel at all confident talking about heartworm, so it’s good to have your voice of experience.
Yes, making a rescue dog adoptable is another sound reason for going with the faster, more expensive treatment. Would be bad enough if nobody wanted a dog because of HW. Worse if they adopted her thinking she was heartworm free (or knew she had HW but didn’t continue treating her), then the dog ended up with an advanced case of HW.