VIP Animal Care

It has been a very warm winter and spring and we are already seeing flees, ticks and mosquitoes!

Spring is here & with the warmer weather comes mosquitoes, fleas and ticks.  Now is the time to test your pet for heartworm disease and start on a monthly prevention program.  Read below to learn more about the dangers of heartworm disease, fleas and ticks.  Call the office to schedule an appointment or use our walk-in clinics to heartworm test your dog.  Additionally, if you purchase heartworm prevention for your dog, we will give you $10 off a 12 month supply! Other promotional rebates are also available on heartworm, flea, tick and mosquito products to give you even more savings!

As some of you may know, we are experiencing a shortage in our supply of interceptor and sentinal from Novartis.  But we are carrying another heartworm product that has been around for years called Heartguard. We also have a topical product that protects against fleas, ticks and mosquitos called Vectra.

Heartworms

Heartworms are the most life-threatening canine worms, for they reside in the dog’s heart and pulmonary arteries, causing heart failure and eventually death.

Adult worms are 10 to 30 cm in length and about 1 mm in diameter.

How Heartworms are Transmitted

Heartworms are transmitted by mosquitos. When an infected mosquito bites a dog, it passes him the worms’ larvae that start to migrate until they reach their final site (heart and pulmonary arteries) in about 3-4 months; here they grow to maturity (macrofilariae) within a further 3 months and start producing larvae (microfilariae) which can survive for about 2 years in the bloodstream.

When a mosquito bites an infected dog, it picks up these larvae and can transmit the infection to other dogs.

Disease

Over time, the presence of the adult worms in heart and pulmonary arteries causes an inflammation and thickening of the walls of the blood vessels which leads to an increase in blood pressure and in the cardiac effort to push the blood in these vessels. As a consequence, the dog may develop heart failure, which can eventually lead to his death. Clinical symptoms usually appear only when the disease has reached a very severe stage (usually 3 to 5 years from infection). First signs consist of sporadic coughing and tiredness; as time passes, cough becomes chronic and is accompanied by difficult respiration, particularly during and after exercise, mild anemia and unthriftiness. In advanced cases, the dog may collapse after even light physical exertion. Most dogs eventually develop congestive heart failure.

Treating Heartworm Infection

Treatment of heartworm infection is a long and risky process. Dying heartworms as well as their larvae may determine shock and embolism. During therapy, dogs have to be strictly controlled for side effects, and their activity restricted for a few weeks. Moreover, in advanced cases, health will not be restored even after effective treatment.

For all these reasons it is now clear why prevention is so important.

Heartworm Prevention

In contrast to therapy, heartworm prevention is safe, easy and effective. Before prophylactic treatment is started, dogs should be tested for heartworm infection; those found to be infected have to be treated against adults and microfilariae, before a prevention program is started. Preventatives are usually administered monthly, starting within 1 month from the beginning of the mosquito season (or the exposure to a possible infection, e.g. during travelling to heartworm countries), until 1 month after the end of exposure.

Some preventatives are also effective against all other common dog worms thus ensuring a complete protection of your pet.

Fleas

There are over 2000 species of flea in the world. Thankfully, only the cat flea and the dog flea (Ctenocephalides felis, Ctenocephalides canis) are important to dogs and cats. Despite the name, cat fleas infest dogs just as much as they infest cats.

The problem is that fleas breed in stupendous numbers. Female fleas can lay from 20 to 50 eggs a day and up to 2000 eggs during their lifetime, which immediately fall off the animal, all around your home.

This is why, even today with very effective products to treat adult fleas, it may become necessary to practice Integrated Flea control where a combination of an Insect Growth Regulator, an adulticide and environmental cleaning (vacuum etc) are being used to tackle the problem from all sides.

The degree to which you need to control fleas will vary from person to person, and from pet to pet.

Where do fleas come from?

You might think that a pet kept entirely indoors would be at no risk of catching fleas. But don’t forget that it only takes a visit from one untreated animal to trigger an infestation in your home, so even housebound pets may require flea control.

Pets that routinely go outdoors will likely come into contact with fleas from time to time, and require regular treatment.

Finally, some pets are allergic to relatively small numbers of fleas, and may need particularly stringent flea control.

Discuss the most appropriate level of flea control with your veterinarian surgeon. Before you do, though, it is important that you have a basic understanding about fleas.

Please read on by clicking the link below.

The Flea Life Cycle

Ticks

Ticks are obligate blood-sucking ectoparasites. They are efficient carriers (vectors) of several types of disease agents such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae and protozoans. They are members of the same phylum (Arthropoda) as insects, but are in a different class named Arachnida.

There are two important families of ticks recognized, the Ixodidae (Hard Ticks) and Argasidae (Soft Ticks).

The family Ixodidae is the largest and economically most important family with more than 600 species. The most important species of hard ticks as parasites of companion animals are:

• Ixodes ricinus (Sheep Tick, Castor Bean Tick). The most common tick in Northern Europe and an important vector of both animal and human disease.
• Ixodes scapularis (Deer Tick; Blacklegged Tick, Ixodes dammini )
• Ixodes hexagonus (Hedgehog Tick)
• Dermacentor variabilis (American Dog Tick)
• Dermacentor reticulatus (Marsh Tick or Cow tick)
• Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Brown Dog Tick)
• Amblyomma americanum (Lone Star Tick)

Habitat and Host Seeking

Many hard ticks seek hosts by an interesting behavior called “questing”, whereby they climb blades of grass and in a typical posture with the forelegs outstretched wait for a passing host.

Certain biochemicals such as carbon dioxide as well as heat and movement serve as stimuli for questing behavior.

Subsequently, these ticks climb on to a potential host which brushes against their extended front legs.

Hard ticks occur in brushy, wooded, or weedy areas containing potential hosts and do not jump or fly, but wait on vegetation for a host to brush against them. They are sensitive to desiccation and are therefore usually found in areas providing protection from high temperatures, low humidities, and constant breezes.

Information found at http://www.ah.novartis.com/cab/en/dog.shtml