How to Save Money on Heartworm Medicine for Your Dog

Let’s face it – if you have a dog then you know that heartworm prevention medicine can cost an arm and a leg!  I started on a quest to see if we could learn how to save money on heartworm prevention medicine.  The results will shock you – I found a safe and reliable method to get our dogs heartworm protection for less than 5 cents a month!!  If that peaks your interest, then read on to find out how to save money on heartworm medicine for your dog.

How Much are You Spending on Heartworm Protection?

I became interested in saving money on our dog’s heartworm protection medicine when we had a recent run-in with our vet.  We were on vacation and my wife received a call from our vet saying that our dogs were due for their heartworm “check”.  They told her we could not continue to buy heartworm prevention medicine from them unless we go and get the heartworm “check”.  They said it needed to be done THAT week.  OK – a couple things with this:

1. Why the heck are they calling us the week that the heartworm check needs to be done?  Is this an emergency or something?  We were on vacation hundreds of miles away from home, it’s not like we could drop everything and bring our dogs in for this redundant check.
2. Why are we being forced to get a heartworm “check” if both dogs have been on heartworm prevention medicine for more than a year?!?!?!?

This call from our vet was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.  The heartworm “check” was completely unnecessary and we were just getting screwed here!  So, I set out on a quest to learn how to save money on heartworm prevention medicine for our dogs.  This expensive heartworm prevention medicine was something that has bothered me ever since I had to start paying for it myself (around 18).  Why was this routine heartworm prevention medicine purchased by millions always so expensive?  It really never made any sense…  I was determined not to give up until I found a lower cost option for heartworm prevention medicine.  In other words, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Is Heartworm Protection Even Needed for Your Dog?

I first started out with Googling to learn more about heartworms in dogs and if heartworm protection is even needed for dogs.  It turns out that for our area (southern Georgia), we are at pretty high risk.  Check out this map of the US with heartworm prevalence mapped out:

If you are in one of the yellow/orange/red zones, then you really don’t want to mess around.  If you skip giving your dog heartworm prevention medicine, then your dog really stands a good chance of getting these parasites.

So, it was pretty clear to me that we needed to protect our dogs against heartworm at least some of the time.  But what factors affect the chance your dog could get heartworms?  I found a great website – www.dogs4dogs.com that discussed heartworms in detail in their article entitled: Heartworm Medication Safety.  If you couldn’t already guess, the chance for your dog to get heartworms is GREATLY impacted by the outside temperature.  This is because heartworms are spread by a specific type of mosquito that needs temperatures to be above 57F to transmit the heartworm parasite.

That’s right – if the average daily temperature is consistently below 57F, it is impossible for your dog to get heartworms!  So, you can lay off those heartworm medications as things get cooler in your area.  This was definitely a great tip to learn as we even get below this range pretty consistently in the winter months where we are.  For folks up North, they may only need to administer heartworm prevention medicine 4-5 months out of the year!

Talk about a money saver 🙂 – for some northern readers I may have just found a way for you to save 50% on your heartworm prevention costs right off the top!

Cheaper Alternatives for Getting Heartworm Prevention Medicine

Now that I knew I would have to give my dogs heartworm prevention medicine because of the specific area in which we live (Southern Georgia), I was on the quest to see if we could find a cheaper heartworm prevention medicine brand.  We were giving our dogs Trifexis which is a heartworm, flea, and intestinal parasite medicine in one monthly pill.  This is basically the Cadillac of heartworm prevention medicine and we were somehow paying for it under the thinking that we were saving money :-(.

On that www.dogs4dogs.com website – they had some advice that really spoke to me.  As I mentioned, we were paying extra for the Trifexis that had the medicine to combat intestinal parasites.  The author of that blog likened this to applying sunscreen at night.  It is completely unnecessary!  We should only be giving our dogs medicine to fight intestinal parasites if they actually have them – not beforehand!  I honestly never thought of it like this, but it makes complete sense.  There is really no need to pay for this premium product month-in-and-month-out!

Another point that the author brought up is that heartworm medicine has been found to be perfectly effective when administered every 45 days vs. every 30 days.  This is contrary to what the heartworm prevention medicine manufactures would have you believe.  I checked into this further, and it appears to be 100% true.  So, following this guidance is another way to save ~3 months worth of cost on your heartworm medicine each year!

Which Heartworm Prevention Medicine is the Cheapest?

Now that we’ve established that you can eliminate giving your dog heartworm prevention medicine during winter months and you can extend out your delivery from 30 days to 45 days, it’s time to look at which heartworm prevention medicine is the cheapest.  Check out this simple table I put together below based on prices from 1-800-PetMeds.com and WorldPetExpress.net.  These prices are likely 10%-25% cheaper than what you could obtain from your vet.  The table is showing the annual cost based on owning 1 dog (heartworm prevention medicine administered monthly), and I also break out the price per dog per 45 days if you only have one pup.

	Annual Cost per Dog	Price / Dog / 45 days
Trifexis	$207.88	$11.39
Heartgard	$60.28	$3.30
Interceptor	$65.68	$3.60
Nuheart	$47.98	$2.63

One trick with using 1-800-PetMeds is that you HAVE to obtain a vet’s prescription for the heartworm medicine.  Good luck with that!  I see that WorldPetExpress.net comes highly recommended by many folks.  I have not used them myself, but the idea is that you are ordering heartworm prevention medicine out of Canada which is then shipped to the US.  It is perfectly legal and allowed.  This is very similar to a money saving method used for human medicine where folks order from Canada and have the medicine shipped to the US.

$2.63 per dog per 45 days for the Nuheart is about as good as I could find in a chewable/pill.  Of course, I have adjusted this for the 45 day administration of the heartworm prevention medicine vs. 30 days.  This also assumes that you give the pill year-around.  Factoring for only 9 months out of the year will give you even more savings!  If we switched from Trifexis to Nuheart, we could really save a bundle each and every year for our two dogs.

The Holy Grail of Heartworm Prevention Medicine Savings

So, any normal and sane person would have stopped there.  $2.63 per dog every 45 days is pretty good money savings.  We were paying close to $18 per dog per month for the Trifexis.  But I didn’t stop here – something was telling me to keep researching for a cheaper heartworm prevention medicine.  I wanted to see if I could get the annual cost of heartworm prevention medicine even lower for us!

Throughout my research into how to save money on heartworm medicine for your dog, I kept running across people referring to using “sheep drench” to protect their dogs against heartworms.  You may be wondering “what the heck is sheep drench?”  Well, a little more Googling brought me to the Holy Grail of Heartworm Prevention Medicine Savings!

You see, the active ingredient in many of the heartworm prevention medicines (such as HeartGard, Nuheart, etc.) is ivermectin.  Ivermectin kills all sorts of parasites such as:

• lice
• scabies
• Onchocerciasis
• Strongyloidiasis
• Lymphatic filariasis
• Dirofilaria immitis (heartworm)

Bingo – now if there were just a way that the normal house-hold consumer could get their hands on bulk ivermectin, they could probably save a great deal of money…  I don’t have any sheep, and I did not really have any idea how I could get my hands on sheep drench.  Maybe a farm supply store or something?

This is when I tried just searching for sheep drench on Google.  The first hit that came up was an Amazon ad to buy sheep drench for about $37 for an 8 ounce container.  Don’t mind if I do!  If you check out some of the reviews of this product (or similar ivermectin products) you will see that there are a great number of people administering this to their dogs.  The overall cost if you decide to go this route is less $0.02 per dog per 45 days!  That’s right – less than 5 cents per dose for a small sized dog!!!

One 8oz bottle of ivermectin from Amazon is enough to last you for ~2,365 doses or about 394 years if you have one small 25 Lb dog.  Of course, that is if this heartworm prevention medicine stuff never expired :-)!  I believe it has a 2-3 year shelf-life, so you kinda have to factor that into things.  One suggestion is to find a way to share the product with friends and family so they can give it to their dogs.  Below is the oral dosage information I found that we should use (keep in mind I’m not a vet – so don’t sue me if you screw it up!  Please do a little bit of your own research so you’re convinced the numbers below are accurate.  Note that the volumes below are FRACTIONS of a cubic centimeter <milliliter>):

• up to 14 pounds: 1 drop (0.05 cc)
• 15 to 29 pounds: 0.1 cc
• 30 to 58 pounds: 0.2 cc
• 59 to 88 pounds: 0.3 cc
• 89 to 117 pounds: 0.4 cc
• 118 to 147 pounds: 0.5 cc

Just grab yourself a pack of 1cc syringes without a needle and you can simply administer the proper amount of this heartworm prevention medicine for your dog every 45 days.  The syringes I have linked there are a 10-pack for $2.50.

Is Administering Ivermectin to My Dog Safe?

As you can read from the hundreds of Amazon reviews (noted in the link above), it is perfectly safe to administer ivermectin to your dog using a syringe without a needle.  You just suck up the 0.1cc – 0.5cc depending on your dog’s weight (see chart above) and squirt it into the back of your dog’s mouth.  If your dog is picky with having their mouth messed with, you can always squirt the ivermectin it into a piece of chicken, beef, or a piece of bread/roll.

One thing to note: some breeds of dogs (especially herding dogs) can have adverse reactions to ivermectin.  These dog breeds with increased ivermectin sensitivity are:

• Old English Sheepdog
• English Sheepdog
• Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie)
• Australian Shepherd
• German Shepherd
• Long-haired Whippet
• Silken Windhound
• Skye Terrier
• Collie

If you have one of the dogs above, hopefully your vet has been smart enough to recommend a different heartworm prevention medicine brand that Heartgard or Nuheart.  If you have one of the above dogs, you may want to consider just sticking with Interceptor heartworm prevention medicine since that has the different active ingredient Milbemycin Oxime.  You won’t save as much, but you’ll keep your dog safe from adverse reactions.

Video Guide on Saving Money on Heartworm Prevention for Your Dog

Here’s a quick guide that shows off the Ivermectin product that you will get if you order through the Amazon link here, what the syringes look like, and how easy it is to administer:

How to Save Money on Heartworm Medicine for Your Dog – Final Thoughts

So, let us recap what we’ve come up with in terms of how to save money on heartworm medicine for your dog.  Here’s the progression of savings that we outlined.

1. $207.88 – annual cost per dog using Trifexis monthly.  This is our starting point.
2. $155.91 – annual cost if we administer Trifexis and do NOT give dog heartworm prevention medicine in winter months (assume 3-months per year of winter).
3. $103.94 – annual cost if we follow above but administer to dog every 45 days.
4. $23.99 – annual cost if we follow all of the above, but switch from Trifexis to Nuheart.
5. $0.10 – annual cost if we buy the 8oz bottle of ivermectin from Amazon, administer every 45 days, and do NOT administer in the winter months.

There you have it – I was successful, yet again, on another of my money saving quests.  This time I set out to determine how to save money on heartworm medicine for your dog.  Once all the research was complete and the dust settled, I found a safe and surefire way that just about anyone can use to save over $200 a year on heartworm prevention medicine for their dog.  Veternarians, heartworm prevention medicine manufacturers, and heartworm medicine distributors wouldn’t want you to know this.  But, those little pills they tell you to administer to your dog monthly for ~$20 are overpriced by about 100,000%!  It really is possible to keep your dogs safe from heartworms for less than 2 cents a month!