The Pet Health Journal: A 6 Month Journal For Medications, Exams, & Healthy Living was officially published this week!

We're so excited to share this work book with you and hope you get a chance to see it in person. If you live near Ashley or Yvonne, you've probably seen the proof copies because we've been carrying them around everywhere with us the last few weeks!!!

If you'd like a journal of your very own, visit Amazon and grab a copy today! We'll be setting up with additional online retailers in the next week or so, so keep a look out for the Pet Health Journal at your favorite retailer.

We are also making the Pet Health Journal available for wholesale to veterinary clinics and hospitals, so if you think your veterinarian might want to carry it have them send us an email at [email protected] and we'll get them set up.

We want to give a big thank you to everyone who helped get the Pet Health Journal finished. 

​We hope this journal helps pets and their families live a happier, healthier life together.

The pancreas is a small organ that sits just below the stomach, tucked into a bend in the small intestine. It is an accessory organ of the gastrointestinal system and has both endocrine and exocrine properties. 

Exocrine means the body uses series of ducts to excrete things outside of the body, like sweat. 

Endocrine means the body secretes hormones directly into the blood stream, like insulin. 

​Heartworm disease is what is called a vector borne disease.  What this means is that a vector, in this case a mosquito, transmits or gives the disease to the animal through a blood meal. 

When the mosquito is feeding on your dog or cats’ blood, they are simultaneously injecting an immature form of heartworm! It is caused by the nematode (small worm) parasite, Dirofilaria immitus. We abbreviate their name as D. immitus.

When these immature heartworms, or larvae enter the body they start to grow and mature.  Depending on whether they enter a dog or cat, as to when the problems will start to occur. 

Dogs are what is called the ‘definitive or natural’ host for heartworms, cats on the other hand are known as ‘aberrant’ hosts.  Because of this, the disease behaves very differently in each of these host species.

​Let’s first look at heartworm disease in dogs, the natural host.  All canid species can become infected with heartworm disease, that means not only the neighborhood dogs, but the foxes, coyotes and wolves (yikes!).  If you have mosquitos in your yard, you have heartworm disease!

We're so excited to start 2019 with big plans for the year. Thank you for joining us since we launched in August. We hope the information we're providing is helping you and your family live happier, healthier lives.

2018 was a learning year for IMFPP. We launched the website in August and since then have been working hard at creating weekly blog posts as well as creating the disease pages.

Our weekly blog post has been a place of pride for us. We're working hard to ensure it is released every Thursday morning and has the highest quality information. We've had some amazing contributing authors and plan to keep bringing you the best we can.

Currently the pages that have the most information are the urinary, endocrine, liver, hematology, and immunology. These pages are not 100% complete, but most of the basics are there. As we continue to grow, these pages will continue to be fleshed out. 

We're excited to have grown our newsletter list to over 100 subscribers! Everyone on our list got a copy of our Weekly Treatment Tracker and we've heard great feedback on it. Thank you so much to everyone that's joined us so far. If you'd like to join here's the link: Subscribe Now!

In the background we've been working on the nitty-gritty details to set up our business for the growth we have planned in the future.