Labs Funded
Success Stories
Prince, July, 2001
Prince is an approximately 1 1/2 year old male chocolate Labrador Retriever.
He was picked up by Animal Control and taken to the local shelter in Woodstock,
Georgia. At the shelter he was diagnosed as heartworm positive. Prince was
lucky, his stellar temperament earned him a spot in rescue, where he could be
given time to recover from his illness without the pressure of other dogs being
turned away.
Once in a foster home, Prince was evaluated by a veterinarian to see if his
heartworm burden and his temperament would allow for a new method of heartworm
treatment. Dogs with a small amount of worms and a quiet disposition can
sometimes be treated slowly with a heartworm prevention medication. The drug
sterilizes the worms and causes them to die slowly over a period of time. The
drawback to this method of treatment is that as a heartworm dies, it breaks up
into pieces which are swept along with the blood and can cause blood clots to
form in the lungs and elsewhere. The more active a dog is, or the greater the
number of worms in the dog, the more likely this is to happen. These clots can
cause illness and even death.
If the worms die slowly, there is no way of
knowing when it might be breaking up, so it is hard to monitor activity during
the long treatment. Conventional heartworm treatment causes all the worms to
die at once, during a period when the dog can be observed in the hospital and
treatment can be quickly administered. Although the conventional form of
heartworm treatment
is more expensive, it is generally considered less risky than long term
treatment, especially in active dogs. Two weeks into Prince's foster home stay
it was determined that he would be too active for the new long term treatment
option and the conventional option was selected by the rescue.
Prince is a fine example of the dogs LABMED was created to help: he's a dog that with a little medical care can be easily placed in a Forever Home. LABMED and LLL shared the funding of Prince's heartworm treatment.
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