Ok, so I am more than upset to find out that my dog Eva tested positive for Lymes. I mean I consider myself, and my husband, good dog owners. We do all the shots, run all the test, feed them the best food, give them the best medication, run with them, take them to the river, train them– you get the point. I thought I was doing everything right.
So this is like getting stabbed in the back to find out another dog has Lymes. Luckily she currently has no symptoms so she should, hopefully, be ok and live a happy normal life.
As all of you know I lost in December my dog Oliver to Lymes… well you don’t lose them to lymes you lose them to kidney and liver failure. It was torture to see a dog that was about to turn 5 die right before my eyes. He showed NO symptoms till it was too late.
So please learn for my experience:
1) Revolution SUXS… it controls ticks but is not a tick preventative. Ask your vet for the right flea/tick medication. You will have to do a separate heartworm medication
2) Use tick/flea/heartworm preventative ALL year. I recently found a tick on Brice in the dead of winter since this winter was mild they were not killed off. (We had them on treatment all year but I wanted emphasize this)
3) Make sure your vet does a yearly lymes test which should be included with the yearly heartworm test. The vet we were using did not test yearly for lymes— it could have saved Oliver’s life and because our new vets test yearly for lymes, hopefully, we were able to get Eva treatment early enough so she will not have the same fate as Oliver. The test that is only heartworm will say on your bill “Occult Heartworm Test.” You DON”T want this test. You want your bill to read “Cite 4DX HW/Ehrichia/Lyme/Anapl” or “Heartworm/Lymes/Ehrlichia test” or something similar to that. The combination test does NOT cost more to run than the heartworm only test. If your vet says they run them separately and wants to charge you more to do so, find another vet.
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