Because dogs tend not to show any signs until they have a very mature, advanced infestation. By that point, they often have had damage to their heart and lungs, so this is a disease we want to catch early before they have signs. We want to screen for this disease every year. If a dog has had heartworm for years, they're more apt to not do well through treatment because they've had this infestation for so long. There's often a lot of permanent damage to their lungs and heart.

In some cases, the damage is reversible. Usually, the earlier that you catch it, the better, but the more prolonged the infestation, the more apt the dog is to have complications during treatment, which can be fatal, quite frankly. And also, they can develop some permanent lung changes that lead to heart problems later on.

Usually, I'm going to run a test called an ELISA test. It's a blood test that we run here in the office. It is screening for adult female worms, which are 90% of the worms that dogs are infested with, if not more. This test is also recommended yearly because it screens for some of the tick-borne pathogens, Lyme disease, Ehrlichia, and anaplasmosis, which are also essential to screen for in your dog. If the dog is positive, we will also continue to look at the blood, looking for baby heartworms to confirm that diagnosis. We look in the microscope for those, and you can see them wiggling. They look like tiny, wiggly worms.

We don't always want to just throw medications at animals. We want to consider things like how they are at home. Are they eating too much? Could they lose some weight? Do they have arthritis? If they lose some weight, that will really help a lot.

ASPCA has a poison control hotline that you can call. You would need to know what the dog ingested. You can't just call them with a random question and say, "Hey, I think my dog ..." Instead, you’ll want to say, "Hey, my dog just ate Devon-CON rat poison," or whatever it is, and they can tell you exactly what the active ingredient is and what you need to do. Again, your veterinarian will have to be part of that solution in 99.9% of the cases. But to at least give you some immediate information about how to handle things, and what you may or may not experience with that dog, what your dog will experience, calling the ASPCA hotline is probably the first step.

Well, certainly, if they're not eating or not drinking, if they're vomiting, having diarrhea, or if they're not urinating or not pooping, those would indicate a medical problem. If the cat is not interacting with you the way they usually do or sleeping all the time, those would be the things you would be looking for to indicate a problem.