We “officially” kicked off Hiro’s Heartworm treatment plan a few days ago, on August 28th. Last week, he had a chest X-Ray done so that the vet could look for signs of damage to his heart and lungs before she could determine how to proceed with treatment.
Thankfully, his heart and lungs still look fairly healthy, with some minor changes/damage noted to the surrounding blood vessels. Some dogs need to have a course of prednisone along with antibiotics prior to the actual adult “wormicide” treatment. The prednisone helps reduce inflammation and the antibiotics weaken the worms and thin the herd of harmful bacteria that live inside the worms. Because Hiro’s heart and lungs did not appear to be too inflamed on the X-Ray, we are moving forward with a month of doxycycline (antibiotic) only.
It took me 3 tries to get him to take 2-1/2 tablets the first day–they must taste awful. I have since found that coating the pills in peanut butter or putting them in a Greenies Pill Pocket makes this much easier–Hiro used to inhale food and sometimes non-food items indiscriminately, but since I once spiked his food with doxycycline ONE TIME, he no longer trusts me and eyes every meal with suspicion….
The hardest part of this is the exercise restriction. He doesn’t realize that he’s sick and doesn’t understand why I go for walks and runs without him now. He whines every time I put on shoes or anything with long sleeves. I went to lift weights the other day and closed the gate on the landing at the top of our stairs, so that I could try to get a workout done without his “help”…..
After he finished pouting, he decided to channel his energy into destroying the TV remote:
He has so far destroyed 2 of these, and I have had to rescue the third remote from him a couple of times before he had a chance to really dig in to it. He watches us like a hawk now, hoping against hope that we leave the surviving remote within his reach…..He loves his Kongs, but they don’t give him the satisfying crunch of destruction, or quite this variety of delightful textures….
So far, we’ve got this–I just need to find something that is more entertaining to him than destroying the remote control…..for the next several months.