As I said, we have the adult heartworm, and then we have some larval stages. And so often, when you think of heartworm and talk to your veterinarian, we're talking to you a lot about heartworm prevention. And what we're trying to do with that prevention is kill the larval stage of that heartworm so that it never develops into an adult worm that lives in the heart. Whereas when we diagnose a pet with heartworm disease, it's because we're picking up those adult worm antigens that are living in the heart or maybe the pulmonary vessels—the vessels going to the lungs. And we do a separate protocol for the treatment of those adult worms.

I probably see, on average here, at least between 10 and 20 cases a year. So that might not seem like a lot, but to me, it's significant. Especially with the river being right here because, of course, heartworm is transmitted by mosquitoes, so where you've got lots of water, you've got lots of mosquitoes.

Indirectly, yes. It's not like if a dog with heartworm disease touches another dog that they'll instantly pass that heartworm disease. But the adult heartworms are producing larval or baby heartworms. We call that microfilaria that can be picked up by a mosquito and transmitted to another pet.

It's possible. Ticks don't discriminate. So once they take a blood meal from one pet and digest that, they may go over to you or another pet for another meal.

Yeah, sometimes they're tiny and hard to find. So even though you might not see a big, fat, obvious sucker right on your dog’s nose doesn't mean that they're not there.

Looking for the tick itself is going to be a big thing. Making sure that you have your pet on a preventative to try to prevent them, to kill that tick if they do bite your pet is going to be the best thing. But if you're concerned that they may have had a tick and developed a tick-borne disease, then testing at the veterinary hospital would be the way to go.