friend and i were talking. she’s wondering why should she be buying expensive heartgard pills for her dogs when she can give them horse ivermectin and save herself a ton of $. she said she asked her vet and he simply said, no you can’t. she didn’t follow up with a why.
does anyone know? can you replace heartgard with plain horse ivermectin?
Excuse me while I grumble for a moment, about vets having to make a living but also taking advantage of controlling the drug supply… (In the U.K. they ruled this practice unethical and you can go to the drug store to pick up things for your animals).
I don’t know if it does heart worm, but D.E. is an excellent “natural” wormer and it’s very in-expensive.
Sure, you CAN. Should you? NO. Dogs are exceedingly sensitive to ivermectin and the risk of overdose is enormous. You need TINY amounts to treat a dog. You cannot scale that down enough to safely use a tube of horse ivermectin.
Heartgard isn’t expensive. It’s $5/month for a 50 lbs dog. The cost of getting a dog through an ivermectin overdose is huge, and there’s a large chance the dog will die anyway.
Nes, DE wouldn’t work at all from heartworms. They’re blood parasites, not intestinal parasites.
It’s a common and widely accepted practice to dilute either pour-on or paste Ivermectin to treat mites in Guinea Pigs. I can’t imagine dogs are more sensitive than GPs with the correct dosage.
That said, if Heartguard is only $5 a pop it’s probably not worth the aggravation to use anything else. Most of a $10 Ivermectin tube goes to waste after the month of weekly - 10 day mite treatments because of how you mix it, but it sure beats a trip to the vet for injections each time or paying for 3 or 4 doses of Revolution. I doubt I’d waste my time for one dog, once a month to save a couple dollars, though.
The dose even a big dog needs for heartworm prevention is tiny compared to what’s in even a small portion of the paste. It’s way to easy to accidentally overdose. What you can do is use the injectable form orally. If you’ve got many dogs this is the least expensive way to protect them, your veterinarian can get you the dosage. It’s a miniscule amount. For one or two dogs, Iverhart Plus which is a generic version of heartgard is probably your best bet cost wise.
And some quick math to illustrate what a horrible idea it is to try to parcel out dog doses from the horse tubes:
A tube of ivermectin is 6.08 g and contains 1.87% ivermectin, which means there is 0.113696 grams of ivermectin per tube.
The 25 to 50 lbs Heartgard contains 136 micrograms (MICROGRAMS!) of ivermectin.
That means there are 836 doses for a dog in a single tube of ivermectin, and the dose is 0.00727 grams for a 50 lb dog. That is a TINY, TINY amount that really cannot be accurately dosed without a super accurate scale (and, frankly, if you can afford a scale that is that accurate, you should not be troubling yourself with cheaping out on the Heartgard.) And any error is likely to kill your dog.
thanks everyone!
i’m too lazy myself to even consider doing anything beyond giving my dog the pill but i do appreciate the explanation and will link my friend to this thread so she can understand the why’s and the issues involved.
[QUOTE=Simkie;5783946]
And some quick math to illustrate what a horrible idea it is to try to parcel out dog doses from the horse tubes:
A tube of ivermectin is 6.08 g and contains 1.87% ivermectin, which means there is 0.113696 grams of ivermectin per tube.
The 25 to 50 lbs Heartgard contains 136 micrograms (MICROGRAMS!) of ivermectin.
That means there are 836 doses for a dog in a single tube of ivermectin, and the dose is 0.00727 grams for a 50 lb dog. That is a TINY, TINY amount that really cannot be accurately dosed without a super accurate scale (and, frankly, if you can afford a scale that is that accurate, you should not be troubling yourself with cheaping out on the Heartgard.) And any error is likely to kill your dog.[/QUOTE]
That is exactly why you dilute it with a precise amount of water or vegetable oil, shake well and dose by a separate syringe, once you know the calculations. I’ve done it myself more than 10 times and know of at least 100 other times that it’s worked without causing overdose. I certainly wasn’t talking about sticking a horse paste tube in a dog’s mouth and relying on the clicks.
Dogs are different than GPs, though, and the use of Ivermectin is different in this case. Always best to consult your vet or at least give it a google.
Dogs are supremely sensitive to ivermectin (and we’re just talking about your standard dogs, NOT the collies!)
The topical dose for ivermection for guinea pigs is 0.5 mg/kg.
The po dose for dogs for heartworm prevention is 6 mcg/kg, or 0.006 mg/kg.
Per this page you need 0.17 mg to treat the smallest guinea pig (12 oz) on the list. You need 0.136 mg to treat a 50 lb dog, and there is very little margin for error.
Sure, I’m sure you CAN dilute and be accurate for a dog–hell, I did serial dilutions plenty when I was in chemistry in college–but is that something the average pet owner should take upon themselves, with equipment they have at home? NO.
Not being even a tiny bit snarky… I appreciate you coming up with the link to Guinea Lynx. It’s a standard of “good” GP care. 
Since I am specifically referring to horse paste and not topical, can you use your superior calculation skills to compare the diluted GP oral to what’s in Heartgard? Topical and oral aren’t the same and I really am curious, but too lazy or stupid to work it out. :lol:
Some dogs who consume a small amount of horsey’s ivermection (ya know how sometimes half gets into Dobbin and half gets all over?) become extremely sick.
I think I’ve seen threads in Off Course about it, haven’t I? Herding breeds are particularly sensitive.
Tell your friend to shop around if she wants to save $$. And we all do! Smartpak prices aren’t bad :yes:.
Well, let’s take a look here. Looks like the oral guinea pig dose is 0.2 mg/kg, or 0.068 mg (0.000068 g) for our hypothetical 12 oz baby guinea pig.
We already know that
A tube of ivermectin is 6.08 g and contains 1.87% ivermectin, which means there is 0.113696 grams of ivermectin per tube.
0.113696 g = 113.696 mg, so there are 1672 doses of ivermectin in a tube if you are treating our wee guinea pig, and you would need 0.003637 g of that tube (recall that only 1.87% of that tube is ivermectin) to get your 0.000068 g of ivermectin.
An “average” 1 kg, 35.2 oz guinea pig would need 0.2 mg of ivermectin, or 0.0002 g. There are 568.48 doses of ivermectin in the standard tube for our standard guinea pig at 0.0107 g per dose.
Just a reminder that this is what we need for our 50 lb dog
That means there are 836 doses for a dog in a single tube of ivermectin, and the dose is 0.00727 grams for a 50 lb dog.
And it may be easy to say that because it is possible to dilute the paste and give it orally to guinea pigs without losing any of them that it should be just as straight forward to dilute it for a dog, but it’s not quite that simple. Since dogs are more sensitive and it takes less to treat them per pound, they are SO easy to overdose. You can do everything right and if the paste does not disperse evenly through your medium, your dog could die. If the ivermectin was not dispersed evenly through the paste, your dog could die. If you are not 100% exact in your measurements, your dog could die. If you miss a decimal point, your dog could die.
I recall several years ago, a injectible long term heartworm preventative came on the market. It contained beads of drug that would dissolve at various rates, I think, and came with a rocker tray to keep everything properly distributed. Some vets either didn’t use the rocker tray or didn’t use it as directed, which led to them injecting the solution without the proper dispersement, and dogs died–and that’s with an rx only product, with product training, by licensed vets.
It’s an interesting academic exercise to step through how, exactly, you could dilute horse products to work for dogs. But without the proper laboratory equipment and know how, it should not progress past an academic exercise. Especially when labeled preventative is so CHEAP!! :yes:
The other issue with using horse wormer, is that I would think that would be very tempting for folks to worm their dogs with it, without first doing a heartworm test, which can be deadly if they are positive for heartworms.
As others have said, the monthy heartguard isn’t that expensive, and if you have ever had a dog go through heartworm treatment - I have, and was so sad to see him so thin, and having to stay cooped up, which for him, was miserable, as he was a hunting dog) Not to mention, it was NOT cheap either.
it never ceases to amaze me that people are too cheap to pay for accurate doses of meds, but are willing to chance paying hundreds of dollars if the dose isn’t accurate.
it’s FAR cheaper to buy the appropriate meds for the appropriate species than it is to fix an over dose (if you can, hard to fix a dead dog).
Got no problem at all writing a prescription for HW meds.
Got a problem with them being sold OTC.
Size matters.
I don’t know if it does heart worm, but D.E. is an excellent “natural” wormer and it’s very in-expensive.
It doesn’t work on heartworm at all, and IMHPO, it doesn’t do much for any GI parasite either…
[QUOTE=Simkie;5784317]
Well, let’s take a look here. [/QUOTE]
Thank you. I didn’t realize dogs were more sensitive to Ivermectin and wouldn’t/didn’t mean to advocate taking the cheapest route over what is best for them.
As posted earlier if your friend has multiple dogs and a vet willing to work out the dose buying a bottle of ivermec and giving them precise oral doses will save a bit in the long run. BUT … the dose needs to be worked out properly and the dogs should be weight checked a few times a year.
HG also contains a small amount of pyrantel so her dogs will need to have fecals done to check for other parasites and possibly wormed separately using another product.
I buy the ivomec, my vet worked out the dosage for each of my dogs, this vet works with many of the large kennels here and is comfortable doing it this way.
I have a REALLY stupid question…if dogs can handle only the teensiest micro dose of ivermectin for deworming - how the heck can that teensie micro dose be enough to kill any parasites in the dog?
Typically I only use an over-the-counter dewormer for dogs about 2x per year and I don’t do the monthly pill for a few reasons that are beyond the scope of this post.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
