PETS ARE AT RISK FOR INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PARASITES, WHICH IS WHY
YEAR-ROUND PROTECTION
is so important, as many parasites can lead to potentially serious diseases.
They may be tiny, but parasites can create a lot of problems for your dog or cat. That’s why we recommend parasite preventive products to keep your pet safe month after month. Here at Harlingen Veterinary Clinic, we place a strong emphasis on parasite prevention because we have seen firsthand the dangers that parasites can create for pets. We know how taxing, painful, and costly the treatment can be. The best way to treat parasitic diseases and other health conditions is to rob the parasites of their opportunity to affect your pet.
For your convenience, we carry a wide range of topical and chewable products from the most well-known brands in our online pharmacy. These include Simparica, NexGard, Bravecto, Trifexis, Sentinel, and Revolution, to name a few. We’ll be glad to discuss our recommendations for your pet at your next visit.
Intestinal Vs. External Parasites
Regardless of your pet’s lifestyle, they can be at risk for both intestinal and external parasites. Some of the most common intestinal parasites that affect pets include roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms, and giardia. As the name implies, these critters live in the intestines of an animal and can lead to malnutrition, vomiting, weight loss, anemia, and diarrhea. In most cases, these parasites cannot be detected outwardly with the naked eye.
External parasites, on the other hand, can be detected with the naked eye, since they live on an animal’s skin and fur. The most common ones include fleas, ticks, and mites, which can cause issues like dermatitis, itching, hair loss, Lyme disease (ticks), and other conditions. In many cases, pets that spend time outdoors are more at risk for external parasites, since these parasites live outdoors.
Heartworms
Heartworms are another parasite that can affect both dogs and cats, but they differ from most other parasites because they are transmitted by another critter: mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can become infected with parasitic roundworms, which they can pass on to any dog or cat by biting them. The infected mosquitoes inject larvae into the animal as they bite, and over time, the larvae matures in the animal’s heart and pulmonary arties. The presence of these worms is what’s referred to as heartworm disease.
Heartworm disease involves four progressive stages. The fourth stage involves the most severe symptoms, including fainting, anemia, and high blood pressure. Although heartworm disease can be treated in any stage, treatment in the fourth stage can result in unpleasant side effects, be very expensive and time-consuming, but left untreated, the disease can be deadly. Since 1991, our team has made heartworm prevention a critical component of our approach to preventive care.
