Just a quick reminder to start all of your dogs and cats on heartworm preventive medication and on flea and tick preventive medication if they are not already receiving these medications. It’s spring-time and, though current recommendations call for year round treatment, this is a good time to get started if you haven’t been giving these medications during the colder winter months. (We’ll talk about why you should use them year-round another time.)
Heartworms can cause serious problems for your dog or cat and can even be fatal. Don’t assume that your dog or cat cannot get heartworms because they don’t spend time outdoors. The fact is any dog or cat can get heartworms. All it takes is getting bit by one mosquito. And we all know those little pests can come inside very easily. So don’t wait. Heartworm prevention is simple and easy and there are so many options. Chewable monthly medications like Heartgard Plus, topical monthly medications like Advantage Multi. You have so many different options but you need to choose one and use it following the label directions. What is not an option is letting your faithful friend die from something that you could have prevented so easily.
While we’re on the topic of preventive medications, spring-time is also a busy season for fleas and ticks. Again, you have many different options in controlling these skin parasites. The important thing is choose one and use it following the directions on the label. Frontline Plus, Promeris and Advantage Multi are good choices but there are many others. Many of them are topicals that simply need to be placed on your dog or cat’s skin between the shoulder blades or on the back of the neck, so applying them is easy. Monthly flea preventive medication can prevent you from having to deal with a costly and unpleasant flea infestation later in the year.
Don’t forget to check your dogs and cats over thoroughly for ticks when they come in from playing outdoors, even if they are on tick preventive medication. Medications can be overwhelmed by large numbers of ticks and they can also take a few hours to kill ticks after the tick attaches to your pet. And always check yourself thoroughly also. Ticks like to feed on you, too.
So get your dogs and cats started on those heartworm preventives and tick and flea preventives now while you’re thinking about it.
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