Winter has passed and our current warm weather will soon turn to hot times.
As you begin to plan outdoor activities and get out the insect repellant to protect your skin, remember that pets need you to take preventative measures to protect them from mosquitoes as well. Mosquito bites can infect dogs and cats with heart-worm. Heart-worm disease causes serious health problems and may eventually lead to heart failure and death. In fact, sudden death may be the first and only sign of heart-worm infection in cats.
Heartworm disease is completely preventable. All you need to do is give your pet a preventative one day every month. Unfortunately, it only takes one infected mosquito bite to transmit the disease to your dog or cat. Some people think indoor cats are not at risk, but mosquitoes can, and often do, get indoors. In studies performed on cats, 55% of the cats that tested positive were classified as living “strictly or mostly indoors” by their owners. If your pet becomes infected with heartworms it takes approximately six months for the adult worms to develop in the heart and then the problems start to progress. Veterinarians recommend once yearly testing for this deadly disease which is treatable in dogs. There is no approved treatment for cats, but giving them a once a month preventative is convenient and reliable. Many cats have unnoticeable respiratory complications related to heartworms that shorten the cat’s life. Heartworm preventatives not only protect against this, but also protect pets from other parasites including hookworms and roundworms.
Living in Florida, we have to deal with a mosquito population that never goes away. Standing water is a natural breeding ground for mosquitoes and all those rain puddles, ponds, lakes and canals produce billions of mosquitoes every year. You can fight back and protect your pet by using a monthly preventative. The manufacturer of the safest products offer a 100% guarantee if you buy the product through your veterinarian, which is the only approved source in order to assure that you do not get a counterfeit or tampered product. Talk to your veterinarian to find out which preventative is best for your pet.