HW test positive after a neg. 1 year ago

i dunno what HW stands for. but i am sorry for you anyways.
all i can offer is some moral support. best wishes.

My mother's lab tested positive once for HW when she was about...8 maybe?
All we had to do was go back a couple of times for injections, I don't know if there
were pills involved or not ( I didn't live at home) but the hardest part was that we
had to severly limit her activity. No running, so swimming, no walking-nothing. Which
was hard since it was summer. At least now it's winter so it should be easier to limit
you dogs activity although I doubt Virginia winters are like Michigan ones. We had to
do that for something like 6 months. I think some people with smaller dogs go so far
as to crate them a lot during that time but it probably depends on the age of the dog
and whether you are around to make sure the dog doesn't get too active.
I just know it wasn't a death sentence and Licorice lived until she was about 11.

Good luck
Pam

I'm assuming HW is Heartworm.

Pam

I think it's going to be OK.  You've caught it and are taking care of it.  She's in a good place to recover with a great mom.  She'll be just fine. 

If you caught it ealy she should be fine. Doesn't Heatguard pay for the bill if the dog caught it while on heartguard?

One of my childhood dogs caught heartworm and by the time we realised he had it it was too late... I wish her the best!

yes, HW is heartworm. Thanks for all the moral support. I don't know if she caught in while on the HeartGuard, most likely it in that period right before, and since there's no way to prove it, I imagine they won't pay, but I will look into it if she requires treatment, as I know it can be quite expensive. Also, the vet said if it is just a few adult females, sometimes the treatment is to just keep the dog on preventive and let the worms die off of old age, because they are very hard to kill and the risks of TX, embolism, etc., are very high in ratio to the damage one or two dying worms can cause. I've also read about treating with doxycycline for 30 days for an adjunct, problem, the Wolbachia parastie.Anyone up to date on that? Gracie will be EXTREMELY difficult to keep quiet if we have to do that tx route, even in her crate she wallows and flips, so she would be at high risk for complications and death should anything go wrong.

i dont want to give false hope, but with dh's rott we had a positive result at a check up and we had the vet send in a blood sample to a lab for a more accurate test ( the quickie ones at the office can easily show a false pos.) and that came back neg. as every one since then has. i would not trust just one result anymore after that scare we had, especially when they are on preventative.
 
i hope everything goes ok for your dog!

Thanks Gayle. At this point I'll take even a little false hope, at least to get me through to our follow up appt. on the 30th! 

The heartworm test that we use don't detect heartworms that are younger than 6 months old.  So it is probable that your dog had very immature stages of heartworms that were not detectable on last years test.  Merial (producer of Heartgard) and Novartis (Interceptor producer) are very good about helping with the cost of heartworm treatment (if desired).  We have many young dogs that owners opt to continue HW prevention rather than treat.  Obviously there are risks with both tx and no tx.  Let them do a microfilaria count, but also consider have blood retested at an outside lab for hwms.  The tests that can be ran by an outside lab are more sensitive and more informative than the in house snap tests.

I got a Dobe once who had HW when I adopted her.  She was successfully treated and lived 5 more years.

Axl had heartworm the year after we got him, and he was in full blown heart failure before he even began to show any symptoms. The vet didn't expect him to survive the night, much less treatment, but he did and is still going 3 years later. The only effect it's had on him is that he seems to have a bit less stamina than before...but that could be age as much as anything.
 
Good luck with Gracie. Just don't let the vet tell you it's hopeless- mine did when we brought Axl in and he did his best to convince us the kindest thing to do would be to put him down immediately. If we had listened, I would have missed out on quite a bit of time with him. []

Vegas, that's exactly what the vet has planned for the next visit, a microfloria test and sending another HW test to an outside lab. Sounds like he's on the right track. It's a new vet, so I just wanted to be sure. And Ratsicles, he's practically the opposite of what your vet was . . .says its most likely one or two worms, not an emergency, etc., so I don't think he would even consider suggesting PTS. I'm just so worried about her and it just makes me physically ill to think of those nasty things inside her heart!

The way I understand Hearworm Preventative is such that the dog can be infected each month for example, and the " Heartguard " or any other product kills the eggs. So, your situation is a little confusing to me, unless the first test was possibly inaccurate.

Snownose, the preventive doesn't kill the adult worms, and the time period between infection and detection of adult worms can be up to six months.  So if Gracie was infected three or even almost four months prior to adoption and beginning preventive tx, she would've had mature worms that wouldn't be killed by the preventive, although any offspring should have been.