Does my dog still need a heartworm test if they are on prevention?

Typically, yes. We recommend a heartworm test every year for monitoring. We want to make sure our products are continuing to be effective. We want to make sure there's been no lapse in coverage. We want to make sure that resistant heartworms aren't sneaking their way up the body and becoming a problem for our dogs. So we recommend a heartworm preventative every month, and we do recommend a heartworm test every year for the safety of your dogs and to make sure our products are continuing to be effective.

Absolutely. Kind of back to that point of prevention not being 100%, we recommend an annual heartworm test, whether it be during your annual wellness blood work or that snap test. The latter is a very quick test involving getting just a few drops to rule out that they don't have heartworm disease. If they do, the treatment's very different than prevention.

That's always the question because heartworm preventions are so effective. The answer to that is yes because, especially in Texas, we have one of the highest incidences of heartworm disease in the entire country. And heartworm prevention is not 100% effective, so even if you give it consistently, I have had dogs come back positive. And this is true even when we were sure that the owners were giving it consistently. So that happens rarely, but it can. And realistically, many dogs, if not most dogs, are not on the prevention 100% accurately and on time all the time. These little lapses can turn into an issue as well.

They do because there are cases, like any medication, where there's a breakthrough infection.

Yes, because of the resistant strain of heartworms, it's essential to ensure that the prevention is working. It's recommended to perform a heartworm test at least once a year, but some clinics recommend checking twice a year to catch heartworm disease early on.

Yes, I still recommend testing them every year because there are some heartworms that are resistant to these medications.