6 month heartworm medicine warning

here is some info on this sight for people who are using the 6 month heartworm meds or thinking about it.

http://www.nzymes.com/Articles/proheart ... odgeLetter

honeybear

 

Yesterday Jamiya posted a reply about Proheart 6 and added a some sites talking about the dangers. I was reading it as my dog Grace was in for her physical and getting her Proheart 6 injection. Just last week my other dog Reese got his. It really freeked me out! So I printed the article and took it with me when I picked up Grace. The staff said they were aware of the bad propaganda about this preventative med and said it was nothing more than a senationalize story that grew. Neither Reese or Grace had any bad side effects. Maybe since they are young and so healthy, there isn't as much risk as in comparrison to a dog which is old and has a weak immune system. Even so, I think I will ask in 6 mos. when it's time to vaccinate, just to give the HeartGuard. We have mosquitoes here all year round which might make the risk of H.W. a little higher. Personally, I have not talked to one person who's dog has been affected except for one member on this board. I use to think it was a one in a million chance for my dogs to become affected. With the dogs I have now, I want to do everything by the book. I'm putting a lot of faith in my Vet. Hope I'm not wrong!

 

luvdapits, you have mosquitos in AZ, I thought it was a dry and arid place!

I dont think it is propeganda - I think it is like any drug, there will be side affects and serious illness/possible death. thats why when you see all these ads on TV for human drugs , they state all of the side affects.
It is each persons judgment call on whether to use the various product.

I also live in area of lots of mosquitos and give my dogs sentinal, its the combo flea/tick medicine and wont change that.

honeybear

 

We have so may mosquitoes because of all the irrigation and canals, and evaporation coolers. Also it never gets cold enough to kill any larva. But I think like any medicine, we should be aware of any side effects that may occur, just like they do for people. Then we can decide if we want to take the risk. I have 6 mos now to do some research and some other alternatives.

 

I have never agreed to letting Sadie be injected with this stuff...and i'm glad I was hesitant. I feel that a shot that injects 6-months worth of pesticide into any creature can't be a good thing. My vet still pushes the stuff and we had a little discussion on the effects of it - their logic is out of all the dogs in the world getting this vaccine the percentage of dogs having nasty side effects is low. My logic is...it still ain't worth it!!!!! Especially if my dog were to be one of the ones dying from this stuff.

Let one young child have a nasty reaction to any vaccine and the stuff is gone until it can be worked out....let 200 dogs have a nasty reaction and they find justification for it. I know you can't compare children to dogs (well some people can't)....but it still isn't right.

 

Although I never had any problems with my previous dogs, I am glad that I have done more research this time around and am no longer doing things "by the book." I think vets (and human doctors) promote a lot of things that are actually harmful to our pets (and ourselves). I don't think they do this maliciously - it is the way they are taught!

But the more I look at the problems of pets and humans and how little doctors can do a lot of times, the more I think we are headed down the wrong path, despite all the apparent progress in recent years. Have you ever noticed that things without a specific name or syndrome are almost impossible to cure? And often the cure for things with names is worse than the disease!

Before any of you blindly follow the advice of your vet, please do your own research. As consumers, we have to be knowledgeable about our alternatives and advocate for our pets.

With my previous dogs, I fed Science Diet and had their annual vaccinations and was pretty good about using heartworm preventive. I never used Frontline or anything like that - I really didn't know I was supposed to. One dog ran away at about 10 years old and we never got her back. The other dog died last summer at 11.5 years, healthy right up until she died. So, on the one hand I guess the vaccinations and heartworm meds and Science Diet didn't hurt her.....on the other hand, we really don't know why she died.

Also, a lot of the harm is not visible for many, many years. When your 10-year-old dog suddenly gets cancer, most vets consider it "normal." Oh, he's an old dog. Old dogs get cancer. I refuse to believe this is "normal." A lot of vets miss the connection between cancer and autoimmune disorders later in life with earlier treatments like vaccinations and heartworm preventive. And it's very difficult to prove the cause and effect link - but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Fear is a powerful thing. We are afraid that if we don't feed food from a bag formulated by "scientists" who know more about our dogs than we do (supposedly) and we don't vaccinate them every year and put poison on their bodies just in case they might get sick sometime, that we are going to somehow harm our dogs. It's scary to go against the mainstream. That's where research and the support of people who have done it before you become invaluable.

Here are some sites to get you started:

http://www.bullovedbulldogs.com/ (links for nutrition, vaccinations, and heartworms)
http://toller.tripod.com/vaccine.html (limited vaccination protocol)
http://www.holisticat.com/vaccinations.html (vaccinations - written about cats but applies to dogs as well)
http://home.earthlink.net/~pawsreflect/vaccinosis.html (vaccinosis and other health issues - scary-looking page but try to get past the rainbow background and read it anyway)


Jamiya

 

I don't mean to change the subject but whats a evaporation cooler. Is that like a de-humidifier?

 

puttin510: Since we have such low humidity and such high heat we have a cooling system that looks like a central air system, but what it is is a "box" that have sponge like pads with water being constantly being sprayed on the pads by a pump. Then there's air being blown through the pads that are soaked with water being vented through duct work throughout the house. There's a pan with water in the bottom of the evap cooler that always have water in it. Once we go into our monsoon season and the humidity is higher, the evap cooler isn't effective anymore. That's when we need air conditioning. But it can be 110 degrees and low humidity and the evap cooler works just as good as central air and cost a whole lot less to run.

 

Aww, thank you for the info. I'm thinming of buying a de-humidifier for our apartment. Not sure why its moist but mold does grow, and thats not good. I had bought one, but wow was it loud. No way anyone could sleep thru that noise. So back to my hunt. They are hard to find around here.