Baby Boomers Guide to Dog Ticks
Since dog ticks do not usually harm people, they can be seen as an almost harmless nuisance. Fortunately, in the case of humans, by and large it usually is. The same can’t be said for dogs, and lack of awareness of what dog ticks or tick-borne diseases (TBD) can do to your pet can have disastrous consequences.
The first sign of a problem is a number of symptoms such as a general lack of health, unexplained feverish spells, lethargy, and lack of appetite and in extended cases: anorexia. You sense that something is wrong but you and your Vet may be unaware that it is TBD and thus are treating the symptoms of a syndrome rather than the underlying disease. When such symptoms present yourself, always be on the lookout for TBD as a possible culprit.
Called ‘ehrlichiosis’ in veterinarian science, TBD has an extensive number of bacterium that are borne by different types of ticks. As some ticks are more common in some places than others, particular types of TBDs are prevalent in different parts of the country. The most common is Ehrlichia canis and German Shepherds are known to be prone to the disease. In most TBDs, including E. Canis, the basic area of attack is the bone marrow of the dog that is of central importance to the immune system. As a consequence, the immune system of the dog is compromised and your pet gets sick easily, and sometimes this leads to an undiagnosed case and thus the Vet treats each and every illness separately without understanding that they are all related.
The transmission of TBD is generally the same. People are often prone to believing that cleaner environments compared to farms or dumps means that TBD won’t be a problem. However that’s not the case. Ticks latch themselves on to the dog’s skin; near the ear, under the legs, neck and shoulder. It penetrates the skin with pincers which also keeps it in place. Bacteria are transmitted through these pincers that feed and mate through the host’s (your pet’s) blood. If you find a tick on your dog, take a pair of tweezers to the tick’s head and remove it completely as you do not want it to become even more embedded into your beloved dog’s body. Ticks are really dangerous to your dog as they can not only transmit bacteria but can also sometimes cause temporary paralysis while secreting chemicals; a condition called ‘tick paralysis’.
Aside from E. Canis, other types of TBD are Ehrlichia ewingii, Anaplasma platys, Neorickettsia risticii, Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Each type varies in the type of tick that bears the disease, the regions where they are more prevalent, the severity of the problems they cause and the manner they infect and sicken the dog. Invariably, if left untreated and on entering the chronic stage of a TBD, dogs usually die with organ failure or another disease that doesn’t respond to medicine, giving it the awful recognition as “quiet dog killer”.
After being briefly introduced to TBDs, some precautions can be made to avoid this dreadful problem. One of the first things is to keep your dog as clean as possible while closely observing its skin for any strange lumps, which can be an indication that a tick has latched onto your pet. Also be on the lookout for any repeated sicknesses, loss of appetite and the other symptoms noted in the above mentioned Article One. Also, keep your pet’s environment clean; it may not prevent ticks but it may lesson infestation.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So please use monthly dog and flea preventative measures and let your Vet check out any suspicious symptoms your pet may be exhibiting.
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