As a pet owner, your first responsibility is to keep your pet healthy, and it starts with Heartworm Prevention.  Your pet is completely and totally dependent on you. One critical part of caring for your pet is providing medications to prevent illnesses whenever possible.  A devastating illness that can cause death in a cat or dog is heartworms.  Heartworms is an illness that is passed from animal to animal through mosquitoes. Your best defense against heartworm is to practice heartworm prevention.  Heartworms can be very difficult to treat, so the best way to deal with it is to prevent it.

Heartworm Prevention 101

There are different ways to go about heartworm prevention. One of the most common is to only protect against the illness. There is a medication called Heartgard Plus for Dogs.  This is a chewable pill that a dog can take which will prevent them from becoming ill with heartworms.  This is a monthly pill that must be given at the same time every month.  If this medication is forgotten during mosquito season, the dog could be at risk for developing the possibly fatal illness.  Another medication in this realm would be Sentinel for Dogs.  This one is a pill as well, although it protects against both fleas and heartworm.

Different Heartworm Prevention Medications

There are also heartworm prevention medications that are put on your pets skin as opposed to having your pet take a pill. There are a couple of popular medications that work against both fleas and heartworms and can be used for both dogs and cats.  Advantage multi and revolution are easy to apply as it is put onto the back of their neck.

Heartworm Prevention is IMPORTANT!

Regardless of what you choose as your form of heartworm prevention, the important thing is to choose one of them.  If you are not in an area prone to fleas, then choose one that is only to protect against heartworms.  If you do have issues with fleas, then by all means go with one that will protect against that as well.  Whatever Heartworm Prevention you choose, the important thing is that you protect your pet against catching this potentially deadly illness.