Max Visits the Vet

Bonnie took Max to the vet today. The vet said Max is the perfect weight, and has very little body fat. We've had Max for a little over a year, and he's gained two pounds since we got him.

But the bad news is, he has heartworms. They didn't show up last year when we had him checked, and we've had him on a preventative. The vet believes the worms had not matured during the first test, and the preventative doesn't help him once he's infected.

Heartworms are passed to dogs via mosquito bites. Once infected, a dog may show signs of fatigue, coughing, weight gain, etc. If left untreated, congestive heart failure is the result. Treatment from our vet will run $300, but how can you put a price on the friendship.

Our options are simple: We either spend the $300 and treat Max, or don't treat him and wait for him to die (life expectancy of about 5 years). So we are starting the treatment in about a month.

The treatment consists of arsenic shots to kill the worms, but the hardest part for us will be keeping Max inactive once the worms are killed. Any exersion once the worms are dead in the blood stream could result in instant death. So we'll have to find a way to keep our normally hyper-active Boston Terrier under bedrest.

The goal will be to start getting him use to the inactivity a few weeks before the shots. This way, if he won't settle down for us, we can correct the action before it kills him. We'll try and keep him in his crate most of the time. The biggest problems will be people knocking at the front door, the cat running around, and his excitement when we finally make it home.

We'll have to do this for about 6 weeks once the treatment starts. So it seems like it will be an eternity. I've read the survival rate for heartworms is around 90%, so statistically we're on the good side. But we've recently beaten the statistics on the bad side for other medical conditions, so overall we're on borrowed time.

We're expecting the best from Max, and hope everything works out fine.