Protect Your Pet from Fleas, Ticks and Mosquitoes

While we may not be taking our dogs out on the adventures that they are used to during these difficult times, it is still extremely important to have your pet on a flea, tick and heartworm preventive and to have them tested for prior exposure to heartworm or other tick-bourne diseases.

Unfortunately for our pets, both ticks and mosquitoes can carry potentially fatal diseases that can be passed on. Ticks for example, can carry Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, or anaplasmosis; mosquitoes can carry heartworms and fleas can carry tapeworms

When do we test for heartworm and tick-bourne diseases?
We begin testing for heartworm and tick-bourne diseases after April 15th. To understand why we test in the spring, it is important to know a bit about the heartworm life cycle, which can be seen below.

There are some wonderful products available for our pets to make sure that these diseases aren't transferred from said insect to your pet.

We have both chewable and topical medications to help control insects on your pet. The topicals we carry produce what is called a "hot-foot" effect. When a tick, flea or mosquito touches your pet's skin, it causes a burning sensation on the bottom of the insect's feet causing them to hop off of your pet and not even have a chance to feed. This medication is then distributed through their body and kills them. The chewables work by traveling through your pet's bloodstream and when an insect feeds, it is automatically ingesting this medication causing them to die. Both products work exceptionally well at controlling fleas and ticks. With regards to heartworm, transferred by mosquitoes, you do need a different medication.

Blood testing is strongly encouraged yearly for tick-borne diseases and mandatory for heartworm prevention. Many tick-borne diseases can be treated with a short course of antibiotics if detected early. Commonly symptoms of tick-borne diseases appear vague and often go unnoticed for long periods of time. Often many pet owners don't know their dog is suffering from a debilitating tick disease until it is too late.

Here at Snelgrove Vet, we offer our clients a broad spectrum test called the 4DX. This test requires a small blood sample from your dog, which is then checked for the heartworm antigen as well as any antibodies to one of the five tick-borne diseases. We are especially concerned about the presence of lyme disease at this time, as there has been a surge in black-legged tick activity over the past few years. These are the ticks we are seeing most often, and they are the vectors of transmission for lyme disease, which can infect not only your pets, but also yourself and can become a very serious disease.

Long-term exposure to ticks that may be attached to the body for a period of 12-24 hours may be enough time to transmit the bacteria that cause Anaplasmosis in humans. If left untreated, these bacteria may spread from people to people, causing headaches, chills and fever. 

A tick that carries the Lyme disease bacteria is capable of carrying the other related infections including Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, and Anaplasmosis, as all are spread by bacteria that the tick ingests and passes on from a victim to other humans.  These ticks can remain active all year round. 

Lyme Disease is transmitted to pets by the bite of an infected backlegged tick. This is not an ideal scenario for your pet and indeed for yourself, as this bacterial infection can be passed along to humans as well, causing headaches, fever, rashes and fatigue.

Symptoms of progressive tick-borne diseases can include but are not limited to: