Worms

Question
I am trying to decide what worm protection I should use for my dog. Which worm is more dangerous tapeworms or whipworms? All the protections I find don't protect for both of them.

Answer
All parasites are dangerous if left unchecked. A lot of what you use has to do with the age of your dog, whether or not he is on heartworm prevention (which he should be all year long) and what kind of flea protection you want or use.

Heartworm medicine given monthly all year also treats dog for the most common worms: roundworms, hook and whip worms.

So dogs on monthly prevention are usually pretty worm free.

Tapeworms are usually ingested from chewing on fleas or eating mice. Fleas are by far the largest carriers of tapeworm eggs. Once a dog eats a flea with a tapeworm egg in it, it takes around 28 days for the tape segments to start crawling out of the anus of the dog. You will see little whitish moving grains on the stools as well.

Tapeworm medicine must be bought separately from other worming medicine. Tapeworms need an entirely different type of drug to kill them, which is why they don't put it in things like heartworm prevention. Plus since they have to eat a flea or mouse to get the worm, it's not like they will get them every 10 days like they can with roundworms.

Whips used to be more common in the south but have now traveled pretty much to all states. Monthly heartworm medicine will kill these and keep them in check.

Most adult dogs also have a higher immunity to most worms. It's puppies that are typically affected the most by them.

So that's the basic run down on your worms. Hope that helps!