parasites – Page 2 – Green Acres Kennel Shop Blog

Pet Health and Wellness – External Parasites – Ticks and Fleas

<Updated 28MAY17>

This post is based on an episode of The Woof Meow Show which aired on May 3rd, 2014. Don Hanson and Kate Dutra talk with Dr. Dave Cloutier from the Veazie Veterinary Clinic about ticks and fleas and how to safely and effectively protect your pet from these parasites and the diseases they carry. You can listen to the show by <clicking here>. You can listen to a more recent show on this topic by <clicking here>.

If you are concerned that your pet may have any type of parasite, please see your veterinarian rather than trying to treat your pet on your own. Your veterinarian is trained to help choose the safest and most effective treatments for your pets and consider how the treatment of one pet may affect other people in your home as well as other pets. Products used to kill fleas and ticks are pesticides and can be toxic your pets and even to you and your family. People inappropriately using a product for treating fleas on their pets is the number one reason the National Animal Control Center receives calls.

Fleas and ticks are both external parasites that can affect our dogs, our cats and even us. In talking with many pet parents, it seems they believe fleas and ticks are only a “summer problem”. However, they are a potential problem any time it is warm enough for our pets to have “muddy paws.” Since most of our pets live indoors the vast majority of the time, fleas have the potential to be an issue 365 days per year.

Ticks live outdoors and once the ground is frozen they become dormant for the winter. As soon as the ground thaws ticks wake up, crawl up vegetation and wait for a victim to come by. They do not jump onto their victim; they wait until an animal brushes against them. The tick then begins crawling on the body, usually up towards the head, with a goal of biting and attaching to the animal so they can get a blood meal. When the ticks bite, they inject a numbing agent so the bite does not sting, they then inject an anti-coagulant so the bite bleeds as they lap up their meal. Ticks also regurgitate when eating, so whatever is in the ticks stomach often transfers to the bite and then into the victim’s bloodstream. After feeding, the tick will detach itself, fall off and look for a place to lay their eggs.

Ticks can carry several bacteria that cause diseases in animals and humans. Among these are Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease), Ehrlichia, Anaplasma, Babezia and others. While many animals and people can fight off these infections, some cannot. The first three of these are included as part of the test when your pet is checked for heartworm. The Deer Tick is the primary vector for transmitting Lyme disease, but they are very tiny and hard to find on our pets or on ourselves. Fortunately, Deer Ticks are not prevalent everywhere. If you avoid areas where they live you may not need a tick preventative for your pet. For example, Dr. Cloutier indicated he does not use a tick preventative on his dog because he typically finds one tick or less on his dog per year. He does choose to use a preventative, however, when visiting family in Connecticut because he sees more ticks in one short visit there than he does the rest of the year in Maine. Whether or not your pet will acquire ticks depends on where they go and how they move through vegetation in any given area. Dr. Cloutier has clients with multiple dogs that often find ticks on one dog but none of the others.

There are ways you can minimize the chance of picking up ticks, therefore minimizing the chance of obtaining a tick-borne disease. At home, keep your yard mowed and fence off any areas where you let vegetation grow wild. While hiking, avoid areas with a high tick concentration and stay on the trail. Whether hiking or at home check your pets, and yourself, for ticks daily.

The tick obtains the organism that causes Lyme disease from the White-Footed Mouse. The tick then feeds on the deer, which becomes another vector for the disease. However, you must have a White-Footed Mouse to start the cycle and they typically stay within 30 minutes of large bodies of water. If you stay away from large bodies of water, you will be less at-risk for Lyme disease.

Lyme disease rarely affects cats, but it is possible. Because cats are such fastidious groomers, they often groom the tick off before it has had its blood meal and a chance to infect them.

When choosing a tick preventative, you need to balance the toxicity of the preventative along with its efficiency in killing ticks. In dogs, the preventatives often use two chemicals: one to kill the tick and the other to keep the tick crawling. Normally, ticks do not move much, which is why it is hard to deliver enough of the chemical to kill them. The second chemical is safe on dogs but is very unsafe for cats. Cat’s systems cannot clear this toxic chemical from their body. This is why it is absolutely essential to talk with your veterinarian when selecting tick preventatives for your pets.

Fleas are the other concern when it comes to external parasites. When topical products like FrontLine came out in the late 80s, everyone was excited about how effective it was at preventing fleas on pets. In Europe, it was originally labeled as being effective for three months. Currently, FrontLine only seems to be effective for about two weeks because the fleas have developed a resistance to the chemical.

Dr. Cloutier prefers to use a flea preventive that uses a growth inhibitor instead of a toxic pesticide. These products don’t kill the flea, but prevent them from reproducing. This product is administered to our dogs as an edible tablet they eat and for our cats is injected. When a flea feeds upon their blood, the flea consumes the growth inhibitor. The growth inhibitor prevents the flea from developing their endoskeleton and their eggs won’t hatch.

Some people worry about the growth inhibitor products because they are a chemical. Also, they are not just applied to our pet externally; they ingest the product or it is injected into them. The growth inhibitor prevents the flea from making chitin, a derivative of glucose. Mammals do not make chitin or have chitin in their systems; therefore, they are not affected by this chemical.

Fleas and ticks are very different creatures so, in some ways, it makes no sense to use the same product on both. Ticks live 99% of their life outside in the wild. They get on our pet for a couple of hours, drop off, and then go live in the external environment. The bulk of their life-cycle occurs in the wilderness which gives us very little opportunity to kill them. Fleas, on the other hand, love living in our homes and on our pets. Most of their life-cycle occurs on our pets.

It’s important to remember that most of the products we use to control fleas and ticks on our pets are toxic pesticides. They not only kill the fleas and ticks, but also have the potential to make our pets ill or even kill them if they are not used properly. Some of these products are only available from a veterinarian. Some can be ordered on-line or purchased in pet stores, as well as grocery stores and convenience stores. Too many people assume that since these products can be purchased so easily, they 1) must be effective and 2) must be safe for all applications. Unfortunately, neither is true.

A small number of these products, the growth inhibitors, are considered drugs. This means they must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. These drugs are approved for use on a healthy animal, in a specific application, on a specific species, and at a specific dose per weight. This is also assuming it is the only product you are using. None of the other products are drugs, but are pesticides. This means that they are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). When evaluating a pesticide, the EPA’s primary focus is on protecting the environment from chemicals. Typically these products are not tested as stringently as drugs, nor are they tested when used with other chemical products.

Evaluating which products will be the safest and most effective with your unique family of pets is something that your veterinarian is better equipped to do than anyone else. Your veterinarian knows your pet’s health history and, if you inform them, information about others in your home as well as environmental factors that need to be considered when selecting these products. For these reasons, we recommend that everyone talk to their veterinarian before using these products.

Many people choose to make decisions regarding flea and tick preventatives without their veterinarians input. This is why the number one call to the National Animal Poison Control Center is about reactions to flea products. The number of pets that become sick, or even die due to inappropriate use of flea and tick products in the US is alarmingly high. It is not because these products are bad, but because people use the product differently than intended. Either they don’t read the instructions, use too much of the product, use the product on an inappropriate species or use the product with another product that has a cumulative toxic effect. Many people are unaware that some of the products designed for use on dogs are very toxic to cats – at any dose.

The key things to remember are: fleas and tick are here to stay, they can be a big problem and can affect both humans as well as our pets, and the best source of information you have for helping you decide what products are best for your pet, and for you, is your veterinarian.

Recommended Resources

Articles on Don’s Blog (http://www.words-woofs-meows.com)

Ticks! & New Products to Keep Them Away – http://blog.greenacreskennel.com/2017/05/28/ticks-new-products-to-keep-them-away/

Pet Health and Wellness – Internal Parasites – Worms – http://blog.greenacreskennel.com/2014/04/24/pet-health-and-wellness-internal-parasites-worms/

Podcasts from The Woof Meow Show (http://www.woofmeowshow.com)

Worms, Fleas, and Ticks, Oh My!-Parasites & Your Pets with Dr. Dave Cloutier – Veazie Veterinary Clinic – http://traffic.libsyn.com/woofmeowshow/WoofMeowShow2016-04-23-Worms_Fleas_Ticks_Oh_My-Parasites_and_Your_Pets_Dave_Cloutier.mp3

Ick! A Tick! -with Dr. Dave Cloutier from Veazie Veterinary Clinic – http://traffic.libsyn.com/woofmeowshow/WoofMeowShow-2015-06-13-Ick_Ticks_w_Dr_Dave_Cloutier.mp3

External Parasites – Ticks and Fleas with Dr. Dave Cloutier from the Veazie Veterinary Clinic – http://traffic.libsyn.com/woofmeowshow/WoofMeowShow-2014-05-03-External_ParasitesFleas-Ticks-w_Dave_Cloutier.mp3

Internal Parasites – Worms with Dr. Dave Cloutier from the Veazie Veterinary Clinic – http://traffic.libsyn.com/woofmeowshow/WoofMeowShow-2014-04-26-Internal_ParasitesWorms-w_Dave_Cloutier.mp3

Pet Health and Wellness – Internal Parasites – Worms

This page is based on an episode of The Woof Meow Show which aired on April 26th, 2014. Don Hanson and Kate Dutra talk with Dr. Dave Cloutier from the Veazie Veterinary Clinic about hookworms, whipworms, roundworms, tapeworms and the scariest of all the internal parasites; heartworm. We discuss the importance of protecting your pet and your family from these parasites and the safest and most effective means of accomplishing this protection. You can listen to the show by <clicking here>. You can listen to a more recent show on this topic by <clicking here>.

If you are concerned that your pet may have any type of internal parasite, please see your veterinarian rather than trying to treat your pet on your own. Your veterinarian is trained to help choose the safest and most effective treatments for your pet and will take care to consider how the treatment of one pet may affect people in your home as well as other pets and other species. The number one reason the National Animal Poison Control Center receives calls is because people have inappropriately used a product for treating fleas on their pet.

Internal parasites that affect our pets may pose a significant problem for our four legged friends and can also be contagious to humans. There are two main types of parasites; those that live in the GI tract and those that live in other parts of the body. When considering worms in the intestinal tracts of dogs and cats, we are usually referring to the following types; hook worms, round worms, whip worms, and tape worms. The other worm we will be discussing is the heartworm, which migrates through the body and into the heart.

While both dogs and cats may host the whipworm parasite, feline whipworms are uncommon in North America. Whipworms are typically contracted through the ingestion of contaminated matter (soil, food, water, feces and animal flesh) and can survive in the environment from months to years. Whipworms may cause significant damage to the intestinal tract resulting in bowel inflammation and bloody diarrhea, or it can also be asymptomatic. It is often associated with dehydration, anemia and weight loss in dogs.

Hookworms are very small and barely visible to the naked eye. They typically attach to the small intestine and feed on blood and tissue fluids from the host animal. The primary concern for hookworms is the development of anemia and weight loss. As with whipworms, hookworms are more prevalent in our canine companions and often result in more damage to our pet’s GI tract.

More commonly known but less harmful internal parasites are the tapeworms and roundworms. Tapeworms are the size of a grain of rice and are often spotted under our pet’s tail, near the anus or in their fecal matter. Several segments can come out together, in which case they look more like a piece of linguine with horizontal lines running through it. Our pets can get tapeworms two different ways; from ingesting prey that has tapeworms, such as a mouse, or from ingesting fleas, which carry the tapeworm egg. If our pet has fleas and they groom or bite at themselves, they may inadvertently ingest the fleas thus becoming infected with tapeworms. While it is rare for humans to get tapeworms, as it requires the ingestion of a flea, it does sometimes occur, primarily in children.

To continue with the food analogies, roundworms look similar to a piece of spaghetti. Tapeworms and roundworms don’t usually cause a lot of weight loss unless your pet is very infected; butt scooting may be a sign if your pet’s anus is irritated by tapeworms. The primary concern for roundworms is the possibility of stunting growth in puppies as the roundworms eat the partially digested food in the intestinal tract. Humans can contract roundworms if the eggs are inadvertently swallowed. Once an animal has a round worm in their body, some of the worms will move from the intestinal tract into muscle tissue where they remain dormant and inactive until the hormone levels change during pregnancy. The newly awakened worms may then transfer into the offspring through the placenta before they are even born or via the mammary glands during nursing.

All of these worms produce microscopic eggs that are shed in your pet’s feces in the litterbox or in your yard. Even if you cleanup after your pet religiously, there will still be some of these eggs in the environment in incredibly large numbers. Roundworms can shed up to 1,000,000 eggs per gram of feces. The FDA estimates that the average dog excretes 0.75lbs of feces per day. That’s 340 grams which means your dog may shed as many as 340 million roundworm eggs per day!

The fact is, in most cases if you took a shovel full of dirt from anywhere in your yard and analyzed it, you would find eggs for these parasitic worms. In almost all cases puppies and kittens are born with worms, which is why they are routinely wormed when you first get them.

Dr. Cloutier recommends that puppies be wormed at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 16 weeks of age to make sure that the worms are “wiped out” and so that your yard does not become contaminated with worm eggs. While no one intentionally ingests worm eggs, if you are playing in the yard, pick up a ball that lands in the grass, and then pickup and eat or drink something, there is an excellent chance you will ingest some worm eggs.

Statistics indicate that 1 in 7 people in the US will show an exposure to roundworms if they are tested. In poorer countries it is estimated that 50% of the population would test positive for roundworms. Since round worms can migrate through the body, they can also cause severe liver damage, blindness and other life threatening problems.

Intestinal worms in our pets are very easy to prevent, if we do it faithfully. A simple once a month treatment can prevent against all types of worms. Why do we need to do this every month? Because our dogs are outside every day, walking barefoot on the ground and picking up things on the ground with their mouth. They’re not only in our backyard, but we take them other places as well; the dog park, Bangor Forest, hiking trails and many other areas where other people take their dogs. All of those places carry parasites in the soil, and more so if some of the dogs that visit there are not on a monthly worm preventative. If you cat is an indoor only cat and you have no other pets, you may want to talk to your veterinarian and see if they believe a monthly worm preventative is necessary.

Heartworm falls into the category of worms that exist outside of the GI tract and is a scary internal parasite. Heartworm can be transmitted across species, including but not limited to dogs, cats and humans. It is transmitted via a mosquito that has become infected when they bit wildlife or a pet that is already infected. An infected mosquito typically deposits about four microfilariae (worm larva) when they bite. Statistically one of those four worms will make it to the heart of our pet where it will grow to be an adult worm, growing to about a foot long and living in the right side of our pet’s heart. The migration to the heart and development into adult heartworms typically takes about six months.

If your pet’s heart has both male and female worms, they will start to reproduce, which then means they can infect mosquitoes that bite them and then those mosquitoes can go on and infect other animals. As the worm population grows it can cause problems in the heart and pulmonary arteries; killing the worms to get rid of them is not a simple matter because of where they are located. The dead worms will pass into our pet’s lungs where they can cause additional problems. While heartworm is usually treatable, it can take several months.

We are seeing more and more heartworm in Maine. In certain areas of the southern United States it is estimated that fifty percent of all animals not on a preventative have heartworm. We currently don’t have that high of an incidence in Maine because many pet parents do use a preventative but also because our climate limits the amount of time mosquitoes are active. However, as well-meaning people and rescue groups bring more dogs up from the South, we bring some dogs into Maine with heartworm.

If no dogs in a neighborhood are carrying heartworm, the percentage of mosquitoes in that community carrying heartworm will be less than 1%. However, if there is a dog that is positive for heartworm in your neighbor’s yard, research suggests that 60% of the mosquitoes in that yard will be carrying heartworm and just a couple houses away, 20% to 30% of the mosquitoes will be carrying heartworm. This is very much a community problem.

If you are adopting a pet from the South, you want to make sure that they are tested for heartworm before they are transported to Maine and again after they have been in Maine for 6 months, and then annually. This is necessary, because there is a period of time where a dog can test negative for heartworm but still have it.

Treating heartworm is a serious issue. It requires a very toxic, arsenic type compound, and your pet needs to be in otherwise good health before being treated. It takes a couple of months to treat and then you must keep your dog quiet for a month during the treatment. It is much easier to prevent heartworm than treat it, so why not just use a preventative?

Heartworm can be prevented by a monthly treatment for both dogs and cats, often with the same treatment you give them for intestinal worms. In Maine, it was typically recommended that a heartworm treatment be given monthly for six months. However, some of the heartworms have become resistant to the preventatives, so manufacturers have had to change their labels to read “Use for six months after the last possible exposure” which effectively means, to be most effective we should be using a heartworm preventative 12 months out of the year even in our cold, frigid state. The heartworm preventatives are very safe, very effective and easy to do. One is even listed as safe for pregnant and lactating animals which suggests a very high degree of safety.

Even indoor cats require protection from heartworm. There is a certain species of mosquito that prefers to get into our homes and also tends to bite cats and carry heartworm. There was a year at the Veazie Veterinary Clinic, probably about ten years ago, where they actually saw more indoor cats test positive for heartworm than dogs.

It should be noted that in the South, in the Mississippi River Valley, there is a type of heartworm that is completely resistant to the heartworm preventatives. Fortunately, it has not moved beyond that area yet.

Although not common, heartworm can be transmitted to people. Since humans are not natural hosts for the heartworm, the heartworm do not fully develop to the full size worms as they do in our pets, but they can pass to the lung and are sometimes mistaken for lung cancer.

Recommended Resources

Articles on Don’s Blog (http://www.words-woofs-meows.com)

Pet Health and Wellness – External Parasites – Ticks and Fleas – http://blog.greenacreskennel.com/2014/05/03/pet-health-and-wellness-external-parasites-ticks-and-fleas/

Podcasts from The Woof Meow Show (http://www.woofmeowshow.com)

Ick! A Tick! -with Dr. Dave Cloutier from Veazie Veterinary Clinic – http://traffic.libsyn.com/woofmeowshow/WoofMeowShow-2015-06-13-Ick_Ticks_w_Dr_Dave_Cloutier.mp3