How to Protect Your Child From A Sick Dog

For my daughter’s eleventh birthday last year, we adopted a dog into our house. I was never a huge fan of animals myself – got bit by a darn dog when I used to be a small girl, and the childhood trauma stayed with me throughout my entire life. Nonetheless, both my children are huge animal loves, and they had been practically begging me to get an animal in the household. We did own a few goldfish for a while, but admittedly the experience is not the same as owning and caring for an actual dog.

When I finally gave in to my children’s requests, I was not prepared for the responsibilities that came with raising a dog. For the first month or so, it almost felt like I was raising a third child in my family! We made a few mistakes here and there, but the three of us slowly found our way around the dog and before we know it…even I felt really attached to the newest honourary member of our family!

However, caring for a dog remains a daunting task, and there were still a lot of responsibilities that I didn’t feel prepared to overcome. I was surprised when my dog became sick with the heartworms disease. I mean, I always knew that dogs could get sick, but I had no idea how to make it feel better. I didn’t even know it was sick at first, to be honest, but my observant daughter – sharp as a tack, that girl – noticed that the dog hasn’t been as lively as usual, and its eating habits changed abruptly. After a few days of moping around the house, we all concluded that the dog must be sick, so we took it to the veterinarian.

The veterinarian confirmed our suspicions, and prescribed him to some heartgard plus for dogs as medication. The medication was a bit on the pricey side, but how could I simply let the dog continue to be ill after graciously accepting it into our family? My daughter would have been devastated – heck, even I would have been crushed to see our dog continue its suffering.

The pet medicine worked in the end. Despite some annoying side effects – our dog had a nasty case of diarrhea after consuming the first dose of medication – it ended up feeling much better soon afterwards. Nonetheless, I learned an important parenting lesson after today. I read that heartworms are particularly dangerous to human children, so I made sure to segregate the dog from the kids. The dog never entered the living room or any other common areas while it was sick, so the house was completely clean and sanitary even during the medical crisis. You have to treat a sick dog like a sick child, after all.