The easiest way to keep your pets healthy is to employ preventative medication, like Heartgard, to keep your pets from getting very damaging parasites and diseases. Heartgard is a chewable orally taken heart worm medication. The technical name for Ivermectin which treats a wide range of internal parasites including heart and hook worms, but the amount contained in this medicine only kills the larvae. The symptoms of heart worm are hard to detect and by the time you do the parasite will have already taken a heavy toll on your pet, which will cost you lots of money in medical bills and tax you mentally with stress.

The most common methods of testing for heart worms is blood tests. They can also do x-ray or ultrasound, which costs lots of money, time, and grief. Giving your dog Heartgard will save you all this trouble by preventing the larvae from being able to grow.

It is not until these parasites have really done some damage to your pet's health that it will be apparent that they are displaying symptoms of having heart worms. Your pet will usually start by coughing and as the worms take more and more of a toll they will start having trouble breathing, they will stop eating and lose weight, and it can even lead to death if you let it go untreated. But you and your pet do not have to go through any of this, it can all be prevented by taking medication that will kill the larvae before they are able to wreck your pet's health.

The life of the heart worm is pretty interesting. The adult heart worm will release a bunch of larvae into the bloodstream of the host and then those larvae will live in the blood for up to two years waiting for the chance for a mosquito to come along. When the mosquito does suck the blood from a contaminated animal and then preys on another animal the heart worm goes into the new host and lives in the infected area of the mosquito bite. Then after a month or two, the heart worm travels to the muscles around the heart and then after around a week migrate into the bloodstream and lodge themselves in the left ventricle in the heart and the whole process starts again.

These parasites are very dangerous and are even worse in hotter climates. This doesn't have to affect your pet or your life though if you plan ahead by taking preventative medication like Heartgard for pets, which will not kill adult heart worms but it will prevent the larvae from developing into adults.