Annie,

I've never tried Heartguard, and had used Interceptor
for my dogs until we got Ranger. His reaction to each
month's dose was to walk around in a daze, vomit
profusely and have diarrhea for a couple of days.
After that I used Filarbits daily treatment for a
while. In the last 6 years we have not given any
heartworm treatments. The dogs are tested each year
when they get their rabies shot, so far all tests
have been negative. This is nearly unbelievable by
most since heartworm is considered rampant in
Oklahoma. I really can't answer the question of why
my dogs have been (so far) immune to heartworms. I
can only guess that a dog fed a healthy diet and
given plenty of exercise is less susceptible to
heartworms (and all other kinds of diseases) than
your average pet eating cheap dog food and
languishing in the back yard.

The last 6 years have convinced me that there is not
nearly enough research on why some dogs fall victim
to heartworms and some don't. Almost all heartworm
research is directed toward finding new treatments
(all heartworm medications are treatments, not
preventatives, they either kill the microfilia or
they kill the adults). What research is done doesn't
provide any answers, it just shows that 1) some dogs
will have the microfilia in the bloodstream but they
never develop into adults, 2) some dogs get a small
infestation of adult worms which eventually die off
and the dog never develops a severe infestion and 3)a
large percentage of dogs develop a severe enough
infestation to cause symptoms and health problems.
The research has also never answered why wolves don't
get heartworms.

Heartworms are a very nasty parasite. I've watched an
autopsy on a dog with heartworms and must say I've
never seen such a hideous sight as all those worms
flowing out of the dog's heart when the incision was
made. I was sitting in on a lab at the vet school and
more than one student nearly lost their lunch at the
sight. Having seen the potential horrors of
heartworms, it was a very difficult decision to take
my dogs off the drugs. But as I get older (and
older...) I hate chemicals more and more and have
moved everyone in the house, whether man or beast, to
a more natural lifestyle. Basically I've gone from
subscribing to Architectural Digest to Mother Earth
News.

I would never tell anyone to not use Heartworm meds.
For now it is the surest means to prevent an
infestation. I would however encourage folks to
pester their vets to ask the vetrinary research
community to put more effort into learning more about
heartworms.

===
Amy Garner
Confederate Collies
http://home.att.net/~rpgarner/
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