Is it time to start your puppy on heartworm preventative?

Do you have a new puppy?  Even if it’s currently wintertime, we need to make sure your puppy starts on heartworm prevention.  Ideally puppies should be started on heartworm prevention at 6 weeks of age, and no later than 8 weeks of age.  Their first test would then be a year later.   If your puppy starts heartworm prevention after 8 weeks of age, we will want to perform a heartworm test 6 months later (and then annually after that).   There is no reason to test a puppy less than 7 months of age for heartworm disease (highly unlikely that the test could be positive).