ONE
Mosquitoes, most of the year
Heartworm travels by mosquito, and the Delta climate keeps them active for a long season. A short winter is not much of a break.
Guide
Why the vet keeps insisting on a heartworm test.
Because of where we live. Arkansas is one of a handful of states that has sat in the top tier of heartworm incidence since the American Heartworm Society began tracking it in 2001, alongside Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Tennessee.
The worst of it is the lower Mississippi Delta — and Blytheville is in it.
Why here
Three things have to line up. Here they all do.
TWO
Untreated dogs
Every dog not on prevention is a reservoir. In a rural county where a lot of dogs live outdoors and never see a vet, that reservoir is large.
THREE
Wildlife carries it too
Coyotes and foxes carry heartworm, so the infection has a route back into the population even where every pet dog is protected.
In the American Heartworm Society's 2019 survey, close to one in ten dogs tested in Mississippi came back positive. Arkansas has consistently ranked in the same band. These are dogs that were tested — usually because they were already seeing a vet.
The arithmetic
Testing is cheap. Treatment is not.
This is why a shelter with a tight budget still tests every dog over four months. A positive result changes everything about what that animal needs: months of restricted activity, a course of injections, and veterinary supervision throughout. Treatment is hard on the dog and expensive for whoever is paying.
A test costs a small fraction of that. Monthly prevention costs less again. Skipping the test does not save money — it defers a much larger bill and risks handing an adopter a sick animal they did not sign up for.
If you have a dog in this county
Prevention is the whole game.
Year-round preventive medication, and a test on the schedule your vet sets. That is it. It is not an upsell; in this part of the country it is the difference between a routine expense and a crisis.
We are a thrift store, not a veterinary practice — take the medical decisions to a vet. But if you have been putting it off because of cost, ask the Blytheville Humane Society what low-cost options exist locally. They are working towards a low-cost spay and neuter programme for the area, and they will know what else is available.
Source: American Heartworm Society incidence surveys, which collect antigen test results from veterinary practices and shelters every three years.