can puppies get heartworms from mother

Okay, let's see if I can maybe clear up where some of the confusion came from here.

No..puppies can NOT get actual heartworms from their mother. If any DVM told you they could, one of 3 things happened:

1. They were talking about hookworms and roundworms (which live in the GI tract, not the heart), and you just misunderstood.

2. They slept through pretty much all of our parasitology courses in veterinary school.

3. They gave you an incomplete answer, which I'm about to explain below.

Dogs get heartworms from one source and one source only..and that is from the bite of a mosquito which happens to be harboring the infective stage of the heartworm larvae, which they picked up from another dog.and then it underwent the transformation in the mosquito's body that is necessary before it is able to infect another dog.

Adult heartworms make 'babies' called microfilaria..which circulate in the blood, merely waiting for a mosquito to pick them up so they can progress to the next part of their life cycle. Those 'baby' heartworms (microfilaria) can NOT grow into adult heartworms unless they go through a mosquito FIRST. You can even inject them from one dog into another via a blood transfusion, and they CANNOT grow into adult heartworms in the receiving dog..period. All they can do is swim around in the blood, waiting until they are picked up by a mosquito. They can do this for up to about 2 years before they just die.