Is my dog's heartworm treatment effective despite some pills spit up?

In depends on how severe the infestation is, but with the new treatment protocol most dogs recover eventually, it may take a very long time to finish the treatment course if the dog is heavily infested and you need to be very strict with physical activity as any excess in activity may put his life in danger as long as he is not cleared of this disease.

In this case, the heartworm treatment would need to be continued, but it's not like the entire process needs to be started again. In most cases, this would call for an additional injection or two of the medication that kills the adult heartworm and continuing the heartworm preventative. The treatment may vary depending on the dog's case and the doing the treatment. I reccomend consulting with the vet doing the treatment for more information. I hope that helps and all is well with Charlie.

hThanks for visiting Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. Heartworm treatment can be rough on your pets body. This involves injections given by your vet on 3 separate occasionas. The main concern after the treatment is creating a pulmonary embolism, or clot in the airway, which lead s to shortness of breath, lethargy, and inappetance. A bloated abdomen cannot be determined in this postiion and often requires a physical examination. A bloated abdomen from a heart condition if often not seen unless the heart is very far gone. This would have been likely detected in the work-up for your fur baby to determine if your pet is in congestive heart failure via a chest x-ray. Right sided congestive heart failure is what leads to a bloated abdomen. I hope that this helps and if you still have concerns about your pets health after starting heartworm treatment, then the next best step is a proper physical exam to determine if any heart murmurs exist and potentially repeat x-rays of the chest and abdomen if the physical exam warrants these. Best of luck with your fur baby Ayla moving forward. Take care. : )

I don't typically appreciate a raspy voice with heartworm disease, although it can definitely cause coughing. The definitive treatment for heartworm disease is typically a series of intramuscular injections that are given by a veterinarian, so I'm not sure what oral treatment you were given, unless it was the antibiotic doxycycline which is often used to treat a potential secondary infection, or the anti-inflammatory predisone, which controls the clinical signs (coughing). Neither of these is a definitive treatment, so I'm worried that something got confused in the instructions you were given, and I would strongly recommend calling the vet who made the heartworm diagnosis and having a conversation about what comes next.

This treatment could cause lethargy, it's quite common and this is one of the reason restriction is a must. if she becomes too lethargic you might need to take her to the ER, especially if you notice abnormal breathing.

A "low positive" may mean a low adult heartworm burden. The preventive is to kill any immature heartworm (microfilariae). The doxycyline is to kill the wolbachia bacteria. This is an organism that lives within the heartworm parasite as a symbiont. This portion of the treatment lasts 30 days after which medication is given via injection to kill adult heartworm. Treatment is outlined at the link below. https://d3ft8sckhnqim2.cloudfront.net/images/pdf/HeartwormTreatmentGuide_PetOwnerColor.pdf?1561720859

Some veterinarians treat heart worms with a slow kill method by giving heartworm prevention monthly which will kill the adult worms over time and prevent new ones. The more common treatment is with injections to kill the worms quickly. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. Doing it with a slow kill method is much less expensive. The shots are expensive, can be painful and you would need to keep your dog very quiet for six weeks. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care for Duke.