The Most Frequently Asked Questions about Heartgard Plus by Dog Parents

As a pet owner, you might be familiar with heartworms. They are spaghetti-like creatures that can bring pain and suffering to your dog. To ensure that your pet remains free from heartworms you must administer a worm preventive on them. Heartgard Plus is the most well known preventive treatment, among the various treatments available for preventing this disease.

If you have decided to administer your dog with a preventive and if you wish to choose Heartgard, carry on to get the complete information about the product that may help you decide if this is the right treatment for your pup or not.

Frequently Asked Questions about Heartgard Plus

What is Heartgard Plus?
The simple answer is that it is a preventative for dogs, which should be administered once a month. The tablet actually comes as a beef flavored chewable, so it becomes easy to administer to your dog.

Along with preventing the infection, the oral chew also works against common roundworms and hookworms – which imply you don’t have to worry about your dog having those nasty worms find their way into his system.

How does it Work?
It should be noted that Heartgard Plus only works as a preventive. Before administering this treatment, you need to diagnose your furry pal for the heartworms. If your dog is already infested with these worms, then you immediately need to consult your veterinarian.

Instead of adult forms, the Ivermectin tablet kills the larva that turns into these awful parasites.

You can protect your dog from undergoing serious treatments by using preventives as it kills the larvae in their immature stage and controls them from developing into an adult form. Treating your pet for heartworms can be stressful for both you and your dog and very costly as well.

Is Heartgard Plus Safe for Dogs?

When it comes to our pets, we want to take care of them as our own children. Heartgard Plus has been proven to be safe for most breeds of dogs. However, exceptional are always there as for some breeds, there is a warning about giving this treatment.

The active ingredient in the monthly treatment called Ivermectin can prove sensitive to herding breeds such as collies and shepherds. This is due to MDR1 gene, which is surprisingly not listed on the Heartgard website.

Are there any Side Effects?
Assuming your dog is not in a breed, considered as a herding breed then the chances of side effects is very low. As long as you follow the rules and treat your dogs with the correct dosage, there will be no side effects. Adverse effects of this treatment are seen in extremely rare cases.

Heartgard or Heartgard Plus?
You might’ve noticed that when you Google about this treatment – most of what pops up is Heartgard Plus. This is because when compared to the original formula of the preventive, the advanced formula serves well as a complete preventive.

The big difference between the two products is that the original version protects against heartworms alone.

Moreover, the advanced version prevents heartworms and in addition to this, it can also be administered for treating roundworms and hookworms.

Is there a Generic Alternative?
Years ago there may not have been, but today you can get a generic alternative of Heartgard called Nuheart. Nuheart comprises of the same ingredients that are used in the exact same amount. So both the treatments should be equally effective.

I personally, would recommend Heartgard Plus above all the other versions since it has been around for well over a decade. In these years, it has been proven that they will supply a high-quality product that does exactly what it’s supposed to do.