My dog missed heartworm medicine. Can I give another dose safely?

The good news is that Hartgard is a relatively safe drug, and it is difficult to overdose dogs with the medication. Typically, toxicity is worried about when the dog ingests 10-20 times the recommended dose. Your dog should be just fine :-)

If it was Heartgard, there is no cause for concern. It is an extremely safe product and very difficult to overdose. If it was a different preparation of ivermectin, a double dose may not be cause for concern unless your dog is sensitive to it or carries the MDR1 gene. Typically, a non sensitive dog requires dosing around 2000mcg/kg before clinical signs become apparent. See your vet for an exam as soon as you can if you are concerned. Bring the container of ivermectin with you. Treatment for ivermectin toxicity is supportive in nature. Monitor for vomiting, excess salivation, ataxia (wobbly gait), dilated pupils or tremors.

Wait two more days and it should be safe. Make a note in the calender to give it a month from now so you do not forget. Make a check mark next to the entry when you have given the medication, so you have a record of giving it to your dog. Happy Holidays!

No, there is no need to go to the vet for missing the dose. Your dog should be fine. SHould there be microfilariae present, the next dose you gave should kill them. Just keep giving the heartworm medication as prescribed. Your dog will need a heartworm test anyway every year. No worry!

Yes, you can give Fern two doses of the Heartgard so that she will get the correct amount of medication. Heartgard is a pretty safe drug, and you would need 10 to 20 times the recommended dose to see toxicity; however, in this case, because two of the chews from the green pack equals the same amount of medication in one chew from the brown pack, it's safe to give to her. I hope this helps!

If he has always been on it and hasn't missed any doses, then he should be fine to continue with the prevention. Now, that being said, no prevention is 100% effective so the reason we test every year is to check and make sure there was no break-though issues with the product. If a dog has heartworm disease there is a chance the prevention could cause a medical problem. In this case, I think the benefit of him taking the heartworm prevention outweighs the very tiny risk that he could be positive and have a reaction to the medication. Hope this helps. If you have more questions you can always opt for a private consultation where we can chat back and forth. That way you can ask as many questions as you'd like. Best wishes!

Heartgard Plus has a very high margin of safety, so I would not expect this to cause any serious problems. I would recommend monitoring her for the next day or two to make sure that she's acting normal, but otherwise you shouldn't need to do anything different :) You can go ahead and give her next dose on April 15th as scheduled.