Ivermectin

I have never heard of it being used as a dewormer for dogs. I have heard of people using it for heartworm preventative after the animal was tested neg for heartworm.
 
I would be very careful if I were you. Know what you are doing before you just do it and hope for the best. Know what I mean?

The vet told me how much to dose the dog.  I just find it interesting that using ivermectin to prevent heartworm and I use it as a broad spectrum wormer on my horse.  Its just in pill form for dogs and cost way more for the dogs dosages then it does for the horse.   I wouldn't just give the dog stuff like that again unless the vet recommended and explained why, etc pros and cons?  Just because you can use something on a horse doesn't mean you can use it on a dog and vice versa.

I do use it for my dogs, I have had no adverse affects from it since using it which has been over 7 years.
 
One caution I will add is that it is NOT FOR EVERY BREED, Herding dogs especially have issues and should NOT be given it. I have been reading that other dogs besides herding dogs have been found to alos have issues so IF you were to use it, be cautious, know the dosage, speak with your vet prior and watch your dog.

The horse wormer form is one twist of the ring per 50lbs of dog
 
I twist the wormer ring up till the paste is at the top of the nozzle then mark one of the grooves with a marker and mark the tube at the same place, turn the ring until the two marks meet and squirt.
It MUST be done three days in a row to be effective

Ivermectin is the aspirin of anti-parasitics. [] It eliminates or prevents an entire zoo of critters, and has an extremely low incidence of side effects when used at the proper prevention dosages (!!).

As pointed out, there are some dogs - as with all medications - that are sensitive to ivermectin. However, if in doubt, you can test your dog for that by visitinghttp://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-vcpl/test.asp and ordering the test there (60$ to have your dog tested).

Good luck []

ORIGINAL: amstaffy

The horse wormer form is one twist of the ring per 50lbs of dog

I twist the wormer ring up till the paste is at the top of the nozzle then mark one of the grooves with a marker and mark the tube at the same place, turn the ring until the two marks meet and squirt.
It MUST be done three days in a row to be effective

 
Oops! I've been giving ivermectin to my dogs when I worm the horses, but I didn't know I was supposed to do it three days in a row. Good thing I have some left over.

I used my horse's ivermectin to worm my cats many years ago and gave them waaaayyy too much and ended up making one of them temporarily blind.  His sight was back within 24 hours and he had no after effects but lesson learned!  (I was only about 20 so I plead the ignorance of youth!!!)

I have never heard of it being used as a dewormer for dogs. I have heard of people using it for heartworm preventative after the animal was tested neg for heartworm.

I had heard of ivermectin being used to treat heartworm positive dogs, but I didn't know the specifics, so I googled and found this:
--------------------------

The only product currently available for the treatment of adult heartworms is melarsomine dihydrochloride (immiticide made by Merial).

Melarsomine treatment is expensive and often out of reach for rescue groups, shelters, and many individuals. If the dog is stable (Class I) one option is to simply leave the dog on an ivermectin based preventive. This option has led to a great deal of misconception about the ability of ivermectin to kill adult heartworms. Let us lay the rumors to rest now:

* Ivermectin does not kill adult heartworms.
* Ivermectin does shorten the lifespan of adult heartworms.
* Ivermectin does sterilize adult heartworms.
* Ivermectin does kill microfilaria (keeping the dog from being a source of contagion)
* Ivermectin does kill L3 and L4 larvae (preventing new infections).

This means that if one opts to treat a heartworm positive dog with an ivermectin heartworm preventive only, one can expect the dog to remain heartworm positive for a good 2 years and the heartworm disease will be progressing during that 2 years. This is not good for the dog but certainly beats getting no treatment of any kind. This approach should only be considered for patients who are Class I and may be able to withstand 2 years of heartworm infection.

What are your thoughts?

It *does* work, BUT (BIG BIG BUT!) it's EXTREMELY dangerous if you don't get the dosage EXACTLY right. Your dog is a small dog. What's he weigh? 20 pounds, max? The horse weighs 100 times that, or something ridiculous. You'd have to measure the dosage VERY VERY VERY VERY carefully. Talk to your vet about it, but he'll probably reccomend Heartguard or Interceptor.

Oops Mini-mom, not quite right (not sure what your source is but this is another thing I have a lot of experience with).
 
You can get a clear occult within a year treating with ivermectin.  That's how we treated Ms. Socks because her heartworm was SO advanced she wasn't a candidate for the imiticideg (it would have killed her -- her heartworm was EXTREMELY advanced and heart damage and lung damaged had already occurred). 
 
We gave her daily doses of ivermectin (in the preventive dose).  LONG TERM it does not only sterilize the adults but if you give it daily it will actually kill the adults.  But SLOWLY enough so the body can re-absorb the dead parasite material.
 
If you are treating this 'long' way, you are keeping the microfilaria population zero'd out so it's not progressing. 
 
I know some people are using different protocol.s for this -- I've heard some people just giving the ivermectin once a month and eventually you will get a clear occult (but probably not in anything close to a year), and some give it weekly. 
 
I have a problem with both of those because then you have a dog who is a "heartworm factory" (so you can be contributing to theh eartworm problem in your area while treating your dog). 
 
My other problem is that if you only give the ivermectin weekly or monthly then you have the same problem every time -- EVERY time it becomes a big huge risk for the body because you are killing a lot of microfilaria (because you are letting them build up between times) so you have a bigger risk.
 
However if you do give ivermectin daily, then you have another challenge -- ivermectin dose this weird "pseudo-immune boost" thing that essentially causes the dog's own immunity to get really lazy, so when you are nearing the completion of your treatment plan, you have to actually find ways to stimulate the dogs won immune system and build that up, and literally 'wean offf' the ivermectin to force the body to re-adjust. 
 
We learned that the hard way -- when we were treating Socks, I let someone else take her as a foster for a while and they decided unilaterally to only treat her monthly rather than the daily doses I'd been giving her.  She wound up REALLY sick (a major lymph infection that looked like lymphoma) and then I had that to deal with as well as the heartworm treatments.
 
BIG HUGE LETTERS AGAN -- you can't give a dog ivermectin if it has ANY kind of herding dog in it -- not just collies.  But any kind of collie, shepherd, sheltie, corgi, and on down the line. 
 
but ultimately it apparently does kill adults -- I got a clear occult on  Ms. Socks within a year -- and she was literally SO positive she was nearly dead when we took her.  Several vets had just plain refused to treat her with the immiticide because her symptoms were SO pronounced they were sure it would kill her.  And for me to get a clear occult on her within a year was something we're pretty proud of.
 
But altho it's an inexpensive treatment it is work intensive and you have to know what you're doing.
 
And Jennie is right -- you GOTTA dose it very carefully -- literally you dose it with a syringe!!  Mere drops even for a 50 pound dog -- and for a small dog it would be a very minute dose but one that needs to be measured carefully.

I used it on my Rottie and I wanted to see what people had to say about it.  Heartgard is ivermectin.

Honey was heartworm positive when we adopted her (she was right at a year old) We had her treated, two shots, one day apart in the hips and then 6 weeks in wire crate.  At the end of 6 weeks she tested negative. and boy was she happy to get out of that crate and run, run, run.
 
On an interesting note. She had been declared parasite free when we adopted her, had her HW pill the day before we picked her up.  A month later she tested postive at my vets.  He did another test and I watched it show positive.  I made arrangements for her to be treated a few days later.  Called the Hunmane Society and they said take her to their vet and hav her tested.  I did, it showed negative.  Few days later the HS vet called and asked if i would be willing to bring Honey over and let him take blood and send it to Texas A&M for better testing, i said yes, did so, went ahead and had her treated and a few days later the HS vet called and said the results were in from A&M--she did have heartworms.  Why did my vet's tests show postitive and the HS vet's show negative.  Apparently it was the kind of test.  My vet uses the Heska (witness I think he called it) and the HS vet used the Idexx Snap

Oops Mini-mom, not quite right (not sure what your source is

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_heartworm_treatment.html

I actually thought about pointing that out also, that the information on this site is not all correct, but I then decided to just let it be. [] Heartworms (like human 'worm' diseases, ie trypanosomiasis) are a real trouble to get out of the system, and for instance in humans the school of thought moves more and more towards removing the perpetrators very very slowly (basically, as if treating a dog with ivermectin for a year) to reduce all the side effects ... and deaths ... that are not uncommon otherwise.

Lesson to be learned: lets never slack on heartworm prevention, and all this is academic in the future. []