They also need regular checkups and seasonal medications, such as tick medicine and heart worm pills.
I also learned how he'd likely contracted heart worm.
The heart worm treatment was difficult and expensive, she said, and depending on what she called "the worm burden," there was no guarantee he'd survive it.
"By law, I have to inform you he's tested positive for heart worm," the woman behind the counter said.
He saw him through the painful, risky, expensive heart worm treatments that involved injecting chemotherapeutic arsenic deep into his lumbar muscles.
At the vet the next morning, Ford tested positive for heart worm, and also what proved to be a pernicious parasite.
The heart rate was regular, heart sounds were normal.
The French heart worm Angiostrongylus vasorum is a parasitic nematode of the pulmonary arteries and heart of canines often with severe and in some cases fatal outcome.
Chest auscultation revealed normal breathing sounds and a regular heart beat without murmurs.
A compound called efsevin restores regular heart rhythms in tremblor mutants.
