How common are heartworms in dogs?

Heartworms are on the rise, and it depends on the area. In the Southeast United States, they're pretty common in dogs not on preventatives. You can look at theheartwormsociety.org, and they have incident maps there that are interesting. And you can look and see how it has increased over the years. I believe the incidents in our area are up about 12% or something like that, but I might be wrong. And it changes all the time. If you're near a heat stamp or water or something like that, rural areas can be hot spots for heartworm. Some cities are warmer, so they promote mosquito growth for more extended periods. And how many positive reservoirs are running around? It depends on many things, but it's relatively common in dogs not treated or on preventative medication.

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.

It depends on the part of the country. In this part of the country in the Southeast, unfortunately, we do see heartworms. It is a huge problem throughout the southeastern US mainly because we have mosquitoes for a very long time. To be more specific, we potentially see heartworms or mosquitoes year-round. Mosquitoes start to emerge when the temperatures get into the low 50-degree range. So even in the months of January and February, we always are going to have some days where it's in the fifties or even up into the sixties. Even in the wintertime, we expect that. We're not going to see the mosquitoes in January and February as we do in August, September, and so forth, but the point is that we do see mosquitoes year-round. We do have a heartworm risk all year round in this part of the country from about Virginia all the way south. It is a horrible issue in the Gulf states, like Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana, because they also have a lot of low-lying watery areas. But particularly in the southeast, it's the biggest problem. Some places where it's extremely arid out west are not so much of an issue, but it does exist on the entire east coast and a significant part of the west coast.

Heartworm disease is fairly common in dogs. We see it quite frequently in the southeast of the United States.

Heartworms are most common in the Mississippi Delta down to the Louisiana area, which has the highest number of heartworm cases in the entire country. If you live in this area, your dog should be on heartworm prevention year-round because it is incredibly common.