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Dr.Carpino & her dog Katie Important Dates:		Animal & Bird Medical Center of Temple Dr. Mary Carpino "Where we treat your pet like our own" (254) 899-8800 Animal & Bird Medical Center will be Closing as of March 16, 2011 We have enjoyed taking care of your pets these past 13 years. However, the physical demands of the job are significant, and the time is right for me to take a position that is less physically challenging. I am a "big dog" person at heart, but when our many 130 lb patients seem to weigh 180 and our one 227 lb patient seems to weight 400 lbs, it is time to make an adjustment. I will be moving out of the area, but will continue to be accessible at katie@animalandbird.com. We will be taking care of records after March 10, 2011 and will let you know the details of that as the week progresses. Please be sure we have your email. If you are not sure we have it - please send it to katie@animalandbird.com Please be patient with us as we close the clinic.	NOTE: All equipment, fixtures and supplies must go. Equipment and fixtures are being auctioned online at www.shattuck.com Click on Online Auctions and then on Veterinary Hospital - Temple Check daily as we add more items. Inspection of items will be Fri & Sat 3/11-3/12 from 10 am to 12 noon The auction ends 3/14/11. Pickup of auction items will be 3/18 & 3/19 from 10am to 5pm
Last appointment date:	3/10/11
Last day to order prescription food:	3/9/11
Last day to order prescription medicine:	3/12/11
Last day to pick up pre-ordered food or medicine:	3/16/11
Large Reductions in all non-prescription items:	3/7-3/16/11
Big "Garage/Lobby/Yard Sale" - Yes - this is a Sunday 8am-5pm.	3/20/11

Heartworms!! Why do we check every year?

Okay, for all of you who have been led to believe that if your dog has been on heartworm prevention, you do not need to check yearly for heartworms, let me explain why you STILL MUST CHECK YEARLY!

1. Why do we check every year?

2. Why, then, do you continue to give heartworm prevention even though it is dangerous to give heartworm prevention to a heartworm positive dog?

3. Why can we potentially give heartworm prevention to cats without yearly testing?

Why do we check every year? It takes heartworms 6 months to mature to an adult. That is why we do not test puppies under six months -- not because they cannot get heartworms, but because the heartworms will not be mature enough for us to find either adults or babies. So if a mosquito bites your puppy when it is 1 month old, and the puppy did not start heartworm prevention until it was 4 months old, there is a very real possibility that we will find heartworms on its yearly screen 1 year later.

To complicate matters more, the tests we use will only consistently show positive for heartworms if there are 3 or more adult female heartworms. So if your dog only has 1 heartworm at 1 year old, we will not find it. If he has 3 females we will. If you missed a month of heartworm prevention and he has an immature heartworm, we will not find it. The following year he may have 2 adults and we will not find it. You may be completely diligent for another year but be late one month in the 3rd year and "suddenly" in the 4th year your dog shows up positive. The goal is to PREVENT ANY HEARTWORMS - but if any occur we want to treat BEFORE your dog is showing signs.

Why, then, do you continue to give heartworm prevention even though it is dangerous to give heartworm prevention to a heartworm positive dog? With certain heartworm preventions (not all), we can continue to give heartworm prevention to prevent more heartworms from maturing, but we do not just arbitrarily give heartworm prevention to an untested dog. The risk factors are directly related to the heartworm and microfilaria load that an individual dog may have. If we cannot pick it up on our screen, the load is considered low enough to have reasonable safety in continuing to give the prevention.

SO - no yearly test means no preventative given. Heartworm preventative is still a prescription drug with serious consequences for your pet if given without testing.

Why can we potentially give heartworm prevention to cats without yearly testing? One heartworm is enough to kill a cat. Cats have essentially zero tolerance for heartworms. Therefore the odds of two or more heartworms living in a healthy cat are low. I have personally seen one cat with 11 heartworms. The cat came in with severe respiratory distress, was euthanized and necropsied at the owner's request. Eleven, yes 11 heartworms were in that cat. So don't mistakenly believe cats cannot get multiple heartworm infections. However, the occurrence is rare enough that although we do recommend yearly heartworm checks for all cats, we can in most cases put otherwise healthy cats on heartworm prevention safely without a screening test.