Heartworms are medically known as “Dirofilaria immitis” and normally float around the blood vessels of the heart’s right ventricle. These parasites start their active life in the form of larva inside the mosquito. The mosquito is in fact both the host as well as the carrier of this parasite. The mosquito sucks the infected blood from a diseased dog and then injects the infected blood in your healthy dog. Once the larvae enter the body of your dog, they enter the blood vessels and reach to the heart’s right side with the help of blood movement.

These worms anchor themselves in the heart and start growing and multiplying.

The treatment of this disease entirely depends on the present stage of your dog. Preventive medication of heartworm disease is widely available. It is a little expensive but as a responsible dog owner you must give it to your dog as per the veterinarian’s recommendation. Usually the dose is increased during the mosquito season. It is always better not to miss regular checkups in order to keep your dog safe and healthy.

The most disturbing aspect of this disease is that the dog does not show much of the symptoms until it reaches to the last stages. This means that it is possible that your dog might be suffering severely from this disease without you knowing anything about it. So the best way to find it out is to take your dog for all the scheduled monthly checkups. The vet can easily check about the presence of heartworms by performing some simple blood tests. All these checkups and test can cost you a fortune hence, it becomes important for you to buy dog health insurance to cope up with huge amount of bills.

In Ajax Blog, Sreejith introduces us to a few new things. First is Vox a new blogging service from Six Apart that uses WYSIWYG with a taste of web 2.0. After that we learn about Krun.ch and Wishlistr.

Blogging Naked: Scarification and lip plates are shown to be some of the newest and more popular form of “self-expression” in recent years.

Bookadoodle: Nancy Callahan posted more in her series “Getting Published” and this latest edition was part 5.

Boomer 2.0 had posts that pointed out that boomers can still have that second career and another that shows many are not even planning retirement anytime soon.

In Class Action Questions find out about lawsuits involving pyramid scams, hair raising beauty product claims and why State Farm was penalized.

Credit Cardenza: Unfortunately, millions of people are drowning in  credit card debt, have to worry about credit scams and fraud, and let’s not even talk about the international fees.

Dealsneak managed to sneak more than a few deals pass us this summer including, the Samsonite laptop case, a gorgeous leather bench, and a sweet looking Thermaltake Tsunami computer case.

Feed Money discusses the fact the Ebay has jumped on the contextual ad bandwagon as well as blog feeds and a program called RSS To Blog.

If you need to Fix Your Finances one of the first steps is learning how to save your money. After that you can check out Mvelopes to learn all about budgets.

At Games For Money you can find places to play free online gambling games and also learn some card counting tricks and tips.

The High Heels Blogs show us which killer heels are on sale including boots, sandals, slides and mules. Also take a look at some killer wedding heels for this summers nuptials.

A few notable gadgets that were blogged in the HyperGadget blog were the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader, and the jumbled and messy looking organizer.

Over at the Medcare Forum, Kathleen Milazzo tells us more about that scary mad cow disease and our medical privacy laws.

Find out just how much house you can afford before you go running off to get that mortgage. And is the housing bubble really ready to blow? All this and more in Mortgage Updates.

At My Secret Side Biz learn how to make a profit, how to get your own powerwash, and simple business and Ebay tips.

On Healthy Living: Sarah White tells us all about a new study that could help with asthma reduction when it comes to do light exercise that involves stead breathing like yoga.

On Movies has a decade of super heroes list that includes recent and unreleased movies. Leafworks reviewed The Omen and we got to see the trailer for the new Ghost Rider movie.

Powersellers Blog: Ebay has done it. They finally reached 200 million members and they are also expanding into new ideas. Also people are fed up with Paypal while crooks are finding more ways to defraud your account.

Seo Updates: Yahoo one of the biggest email services was hit with a worm and Google expanded into real estate but won’t be making a browser, at least not anytime soon.

Get some free exercise tips from The Diet Logs. You will certainly need them if you plan to take a bite of this $100 burger.

Living the Single life? Well take a look at some great break up lines and if your looking to meet people Leafworks posted a great review of club La Rumba.

Thumb Gods: Nintendo is no, no to the name Wii for their new console a game system that is at the end of this long list containing The Evolution of Video Game Consoles.

Las Vegas Revealed that it was ill prepared for a massive disaster, but til then you can still get married and get comp’d in Vegas.

Wander the World, well the State of Colorado with Leafworks. He takes us to the Cherry Blossom Festival, Gothnic in Denver, Old Colorado City, Plaza del Arte Festival in Downtown Denver and Garden of the Gods.

A strong statement on the Uninsured Billing Class Action Suits: a Federal judge in Beaumont, Texas threw out one of the suits (not a Scruggs suit, though) with a strong, strong statement. As stated in Modern Healthcare’s daily emails: “A judge dismissed a federal lawsuit over uninsured-patient billing against Christus Health, Dallas, and related organizations, saying, “The plaintiff cannot prevail on any of her claims under any imaginable theory.” U.S. District Judge Howell Cobb in Beaumont, Texas, dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice on all counts and criticized a wave of similar suits filed against hospitals and health systems nationwide. “The bleeding must stop,” Cobb said in his opinion.” Of course, I have high regard for Judge Cobb, based primarily on the well-known quality of his clerks.

My favorite line: “plaintiff cannot prevail on any of her claims under any imaginable theory.”

Now that’s a judge you don’t want to mess with!

According to the Houston Chronicle, Christus St. Joseph Hospital sent approximately 16,000 letters to patients informing them that a computer stolen in a burglary earlier this year may have contained some of their medical records and Social Security numbers. According to the hospital letters, the only patient files affected, to their knowledge, are files for patients treated in the “emergency department in 2004, patients who sought outpatient services in radiology, sports medicine and rehabilitation from August through September 2003 and April through June 2004, and patient charts from 2001.”

Read more here

Seems IBM announced that it was acquiring Healthlink, the largest U.S. consulting firm dedicated to the health-care industry.

Rochelle Garner of CRN reports:

IBM announced Tuesday that it will buy Healthlink, the largest U.S. consulting firm dedicated to the health-care industry. The acquisition gives IBM Global Services the domain expertise of Healthlink’s 550-person professional organization, including 300 physicians, nurses and pharmacists. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is the second in one week in which a large IT consulting company acquired the health-care expertise of another. Last week, Accenture paid $175 million to buy the U.S. health-care practice of Capgemini. The 600 North American employees of Europe’s largest consulting company will join Accenture’s Health and Life Sciences practice in North America, the companies said. Paris-based Capgemini will retain its outsourcing contracts with U.S. health-care clients as well as continue health-care consulting in the federal public sector.