So, it’s early March, and the birds are chirping, the weather has been unseasonably warm and oh yeah, those pesky mosquitos. What’s wrong with the previous statement. Maybe it’s the fact I passed a mosquito in my stairwell in mid-January. What ever happened to the seasonality of Heartworm disease? Well truth be told; seasonal recommendations went by the way side 20+ years ago, not just secondary to global warming, but human error and zoonotic disease also plays an important role in the year-round Heartworm protection that you hear us talk about at every visit. We strongly recommend year-round heartworm prevention, not only because of the mosquito I see every January, but also because of the added benefits that every heartworm prevention offers and that is the protection against roundworms, hookworms and whipworms, that can be infectious to humans. So, put simply, if our pets are protected, so are we! So, next question, if you are protected year-round, then why do we test annually? Great question… Well its simple, it’s like the analogy, of seat belts and airbags, we drive with both but why, because we have the added safety benefits. We test yearly, in case there was ever a period of Ooops we forgot, or also the inevitable development of mosquito resistance to the older preventatives that we have in our arsenal. Then newest advantage to yearly testing was with the onset of Lyme testing in combination with heartworm testing. Lyme as devastating and elusive as it can be, is treatable if discovered early. Over the course of this past year, we have introduced the 4dx test which is an in-house Snap Test that tests for Heartworm, Lyme and two other diseases that ticks carry. The more we test the more we find, and that’s why it’s important to do every year without fail. We are the advocates for our pets, we are all they have, so we must do the best we can for them, and be the best advocates possible.