How to protect your dog from ticks???

For many dog lovers, spring and summer are the busiest months of the year. During one season, a dog can become infected several times from an ixodid tick bite.

A positive outcome of the disease in 9 out of 10 cases will depend on how quickly the owner responds to the symptoms and the dog receives emergency veterinary care.

What to do if your dog is bitten by a tick

Some diseases do not develop immediately, but are chronic in nature.
For example, piroplasmosis, anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. Their symptoms may appear after some time, when it is too late to treat the dog. Therefore, you need to remove ticks from your skin immediately after a walk. What to do if your dog is bitten by a tick:

Using special tweezers, remove the tick from the skin, being careful not to damage it. Ideally, the parasite should be removed by a veterinarian. But if you can’t urgently take your dog to the clinic, you’ll have to master this art yourself. Below we will give detailed instructions on how to do this correctly.
Submit the tick to a laboratory for analysis to ensure that it is not a carrier of dangerous infections. The parasite must be placed in a clean and sealed plastic bag. It is better to find out the addresses of the clinics in advance: not every veterinary laboratory does such an analysis.
Monitor your dog’s well-being closely for 2–3 weeks.

Find a veterinarian

Most often, ticks “settle” in secluded places: on the face, in the armpits, on the stomach and in the genital area. A newly attached tick looks like a small black spider. When the parasite drinks blood, it looks like a large black-brown pea. Take a good look at the potential mite - it could be a mole or papilloma.

Dogs at risk include:

with short hair - Chihuahuas, Rottweilers
with a thin undercoat - Yorkshire terriers
hunting dogs that spend a lot of time in the forest

It is also not easy to spot ticks in thick fur, so owners of huskies, Samoyeds, Spitz dogs and other owners of luxurious fur coats must use anti-tick medications. But the presence of such treatment in no way frees you from daily inspection.

What you should never do:

Lubricate the tick with oil
in the hope that it will suffocate. In fact, the parasite will only dig deeper into the skin and inject saliva containing harmful microorganisms into the animal’s body.
Douse the tick with alcohol
, kerosene or vodka. Yes, these remedies will help kill the parasite - it will literally “tear it apart.” But at the same time, harmful substances from his digestive system will get onto the dog’s skin.
Squeeze the parasite
with your hands, pull it out with your nails, or use tweezers. If you damage the body or leave the head of the tick in the wound, your dog may become infected.

List of diseases caused by forest (ixodid) ticks

Let us immediately note that the following list of diseases caused by forest (ixodid) ticks is valid only for the territories of our country and neighboring countries. The further south or milder the climate, the wider the list of tick-borne pathologies. In addition, globalization is gradually leading to an expansion of the range of many infections. Some diseases are starting to appear in places where they have never been diagnosed before.

Piroplasmosis (babesiosis)

Perhaps the most famous disease among “dog people”. Piroplasmosis (babesiosis) is a “standard” blood-parasitic disease transmitted by the bites of parasitic ixodid ticks. It was first described by Italian scientists as “swamp fever.”

Interesting! The pathogen lives and reproduces in the body only of sexually mature and adult parasites, while bites of larval stages are not dangerous to animals.

When infected, the following symptoms develop:

The animal becomes lethargic, refuses food, but thirst remains or even intensifies. The general body temperature rises significantly (during the acute course of the disease).
The appearance of blood in the urine (hematuria) is characteristic; in the chronic course, the development of proteinuria (protein in the urine) is also characteristic.
For the acute course, the appearance of intermittent fever is typical; in the chronic form of the disease, it is rare. But in the latter case, the animal gradually develops cachexia (extreme exhaustion).
It is interesting that piroplasms (i.e. the pathogen) are not even dangerous in themselves. Death occurs against the background of severe intoxication, which develops as a result of poisoning of the dog’s body with waste products of parasites.

Borreliosis (Lyme disease)

We have already mentioned it above. Every breeder must remember that borreliosis (Lyme disease) is one of the most common diseases transmitted by tick bites. Studies by parasitologists prove that in the Russian Federation every thirtieth blood-sucking ixodid tick carries this pathology.

Infection is accompanied by the development of the following symptoms:

This is one of those diseases that are asymptomatic. According to research by veterinarians, the number of “quiet” pets can reach 20% of the total population. They are lifelong carriers and spreaders of the disease .
The first sign is considered to be a severe, sudden fever.
Various and severe joint lesions, including purulent arthritis, arthrosis, polyarthritis and other pathologies.
In sick animals, all subcutaneous lymph nodes often become inflamed.

Important! Borreliosis is an insidious pathology: even if the animal seems to have been cured, after some time the pathology may appear again. Sometimes this takes several weeks, in other cases it takes several years.

Bartonellosis

A slightly less well-known, but no less dangerous pathology. Bartonellosis can be transmitted not only through tick bites, but also through fleas, lice, and other blood-sucking insects. In addition, the disease can be transmitted from cats to dogs during fights between them (through scratches from the cat's claws).

The infection is quite dangerous for people with weakened immune systems (children, the elderly, HIV-infected people, and patients undergoing chemotherapy).

Characterized by the development of the following symptoms:

Damage to the mucous membranes of the eyes and oral cavity of animals.
Sick pets develop rhinitis, sinusitis, conjunctivitis and other pathologies.
Inflammation and a sharp increase in the size of all subcutaneous lymph nodes.
One of the accompanying symptoms is profuse diarrhea, vomiting, as well as gradually developing exhaustion.
Bartonellosis often leads to severe pathologies of the cardiac system (up to endocarditis) and bones (osteopathy, osteomalacia, etc.).

Ehrlichiosis

Like all previous infections, ehrlichiosis is transmitted through tick bites. The disease belongs to the category of systemic, i.e. The pathogen affects many systems and organs of the dog, and therefore has a severe course, and the possibility of death cannot be ruled out.

Accompanied by the development of the following symptoms:

A sharp increase in general body temperature. The animal becomes lethargic and refuses food, but thirst remains at the same level.
Fever of intermittent type, purulent rhinitis and conjunctivitis often develop, accompanied by corresponding discharge from the eyes and nasal passages.
In approximately 30% of cases, neurological disorders develop, including paralysis, seizures and convulsions. As a rule, the animals die in this case.

In chronic and latent forms, sick animals often develop anemia, because the functioning of the red bone marrow is disrupted.

Hepatozoonosis

Let us immediately note that hepatozoonosis is a disease that is extremely uncharacteristic for our country and the CIS countries, since cases of its detection are reported mainly in warmer countries. But, as we mentioned above, theoretically it can gradually penetrate into our region.

In such cases, owners and veterinarians should pay attention to the following clinical signs:

Suddenly an intermittent fever develops. At peaks, the dog’s general body temperature “flies up” very high, and antibiotics have no effect.
Purulent rhinitis and conjunctivitis develop.
In about a third of cases, the dog’s lacrimal gland secretion is disrupted, which is why the eyes first become cloudy, and then almost guaranteed to develop cataracts (or, in the “mildest” cases, keratitis).
Another “trouble” is generalized myositis, that is, muscle inflammation. In severe cases, all muscle tissue in the body is affected, causing the animal to experience unbearable pain from any movement.

How to remove a tick from a dog

Removing a tick from a dog at home is difficult, but possible. To do this you will need a special twister. The plastic instrument does not compress the body of the parasite and thereby prevents its saliva from entering the animal’s blood. With its help, you can remove the entire tick, including the head. You need to do it like this:

Select the twister according to the size of the tick. Usually these tools are sold in sets - larger and smaller.
Spread the fur as far apart as possible.
Secure the tick in the twister slot so that it supports the parasite.
Lift the tool slightly and turn it 2-3 turns, as if you want to unscrew the parasite from the dog’s body.
When the tick falls off, disinfect the wound.

Wear gloves and wash your hands before and immediately after the procedure - ticks are also dangerous for humans.

What is Lyme disease

Borreliosis, or Lyme disease, is a rarer disease. This disease has a long incubation period, it can be several months. Clinical symptoms are rarely evident, occurring in approximately ten percent of infected dogs. Most often, borreliosis occurs in a chronic form.

Main symptoms of borreliosis

Lameness. The dog's joints swell, muscle pain appears, lameness may appear during an exacerbation and then go away
Skin rash
Erosion

A well-known disease transmitted by a tick bite to a person, tick-borne encephalitis, is safe for dogs.

Dog after a tick bite: symptoms of disease

For 2 to 3 weeks after you remove the tick from your dog, monitor your dog closely for changes in behavior. The first symptoms may appear within a week, but sometimes the disease lurks for 15–20 days.

Nadezhda Martyanova veterinarian
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For piroplasmosis, the incubation period lasts seven days. Therefore, after a bite, you need to monitor the animal and if even slight lethargy appears, immediately consult a doctor, take a clinical blood test and do a test for infection. In any case, I advise you not to panic or self-medicate under any circumstances.

Alarming symptoms may also include:

weakness in hind limbs
refusal to eat
diarrhea
yellowness and pallor of mucous membranes
shortness of breath or rapid breathing
temperature rise to 40–42 degrees
dark, brown, orange urine
pain when moving, arthritis

If you notice at least some of the symptoms, you should see a veterinarian. The longer a dog goes without veterinary care, the worse the prognosis.

More about piroplasmosis

Piroplasmosis is a disease caused by a parasite of the genus Babesia; infection occurs when this parasite enters the bloodstream with the saliva of ticks. It is not dangerous for humans. Once in the blood, Babesia destroys red blood cells, parasitizing them. If treatment is not provided in time, the outcome of the disease is fatal in almost one hundred percent of cases, and the disease itself will be extremely difficult. It would be appropriate to say that there are rare cases where dogs healed themselves, but this mainly applies to the chronic form of the disease.

The severity of symptoms after a bite will depend on the number of parasites in the tick's saliva. Therefore, when removing ticks, it is highly not recommended to squeeze them or pour them with sunflower oil, because then more saliva will get into the blood. The incubation period after a bite from an infected tick is up to ten days.

Primary symptoms of piroplasmosis

Noticing the first signs of the disease is not so easy.

Weakness and low activity
Decreased appetite
Heavy breathing and shortness of breath

As you can see, the symptoms are not specific, they can be attributed to a wide range of different diseases. Even if you have previously removed a tick from a dog with your own hands, an examination is still necessary to confirm the diagnosis.

For diagnosis, a smear is taken for piroplasmosis and the presence of Babesia in the blood is determined microscopically. In the early stages, treatment of piroplasmosis is much faster and easier - it is enough to destroy the parasite in the blood. In later stages, the dog’s body is severely poisoned by hemoglobin breakdown products, and additional treatment of intoxication is required, which sometimes takes a long time.

Piroplasmosis has two forms: acute and chronic. In the acute form, additional symptoms appear after the incubation period.

Heat. Reaches 41 degrees, the dog is lethargic, usually just lies and does not react to anything, complete apathy
Urine changes color. Associated with the breakdown of hemoglobin, toxins are eliminated by the kidneys, and the urine becomes dark brown in color.

At this stage of the disease, intensive therapy and mandatory droppers are required to treat intoxication.

Sign up for a tick bite diagnosis

Effective tick repellents for dogs

Unfortunately, there is no vaccine against diseases that a tick can infect a dog with. And you can protect your pet only with the help of special means that repel or paralyze parasites.

The most effective medications, says veterinarian Daria Tarasova, are isoxazolines in tablet form: Bravecto, Simparica, NexgarD. But for them to work, it is important to meet several conditions:

Check the expiration date of the drug.
Read the instructions carefully.
Calculate the required amount of the drug based on the dog's weight.
Do not divide the dose under any circumstances: the pet must eat the required number of tablets only as a whole.

Daria Tarasova veterinarian
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Collars are not very effective for large and fluffy dogs, since the active substance may not reach the rear parts of the body. In addition, the owners themselves very often violate the instructions for use: they put on the collar only before going outside. Or they leave it dangling around the neck without tightening it so that it adheres to the skin. Drops on the withers may be ineffective for the same reasons.

“Simparica”, “NexgarD”, “Bravecto” - anti-tick tablets for dogs

The active ingredient in such tablets blocks the tick's nervous system. Even if he bites an animal, he will not have time to transmit harmful microorganisms to it. Over time, the parasite will dry out and fall off on its own - provided that there is a sufficient concentration of the active substance in the dog's blood.

Pros:

In addition to ixodid ticks, it fights fleas, ear mites, subcutaneous mites and scabies.
Dogs readily eat these tablets as a treat. They can be mixed with food or given by hand.
Suitable for pregnant and lactating dogs.
Suitable for breeds with gene mutations.

Minuses:

Do not divide or break tablets. Therefore, be sure to choose a dosage that is appropriate for your dog’s weight.
As with any medicine, there is a risk of allergic reactions and intestinal upset.

"Simparica"	"Nexgard"	"Bravecto"
Active substance	Saloraner	Afoxolaner	Fluralaner
Dog weight	From 1.3 kg	From 2 kg	From 2 kg
Validity	12 weeks	1 month	12 weeks

“Simparika” should be chosen for small puppies weighing from 1.3 kg. “NexgarD” is suitable for those who want to “treat” their dog from all parasites at once: the drug is an anthelmintic, so with one tablet you treat the dog against ticks, fleas, and helminths. “Bravecto” is for those who like to give one tablet and forget about treatment for 4 months.

Anti-tick collar

A collar is a good choice as long as the dog can wear it all the time. It contains acaricidal preparations, which are gradually distributed over the surface of the skin and coat. The most famous brands are Foresto, Kiltix and Bars.

Pros:

One collar is enough for the whole season, for example, “Foresto” is designed for 8 months.
Suitable for dogs with sensitive digestion.
There are collars that also protect against fleas and helminths.
Allergic reactions, according to manufacturers, occur extremely rarely.

Minuses:

It does not act instantly - maximum effectiveness occurs within 24 hours.
The tick collar must be worn continuously.
Collars are not suitable for puppies under 7 weeks of age.

Drops on the withers against ticks

There are several mechanisms for how spot-on drops work on the withers:

The drug is absorbed into the skin, enters the blood, and then is excreted along with sweat.
The drug does not enter the blood, but is distributed over the skin. For example, Bars operates on this principle.

The effect of the drops also varies: some create the sensation of “burning legs” on the tick, and it falls off. Others poison it after the bite.

Pros:

Suitable for pets with a weak gastrointestinal tract.

Minuses:

The treatment needs to be done frequently: the drops last for up to three weeks.
Some drugs are not waterproof and stop working after the first rain or wash.
If your pet licks drops of ticks, he may be poisoned. Therefore, it is important to apply the drops correctly: on the withers, in a place inaccessible to the dog.

What about folk remedies?

The effectiveness of folk remedies has not been proven. And some of them even put the dog’s life at risk. For example, garlic is dangerous for both ticks and pets. Natural repellents like wormwood tincture and tar soap can only be used as an addition to standard treatment - this is an indirect measure to prevent and repel ticks.

Important tips if your dog is bitten by a tick

Even if you left part of a tick in the wound, do not panic. He can no longer inject saliva. But inflammation may begin, so it is better to contact a veterinarian so that he can remove the remains of the parasite.
A tick can sit on a dog’s fur for 2–3 hours before it attaches itself to the skin. This is why inspections after every walk are so important.
Even if the tick you tested turned out to be infectious, this does not mean that the dog will definitely get sick. In some animals, the immune system copes with infection on its own.
Ticks are talked about a lot in the summer, but they become active from the end of March. And they don’t disappear until the first frost. During this period, treatment should be constant: write down the dates when the tablets were given, the collar was put on for the first time, check the timing of all medications.
Some diseases are dangerous for both dogs and people. For example, borreliosis. Therefore, treating your pet is important for the health of your entire family.

Prevention

100% protection against such diseases still does not exist, and immunity to such infections is not formed. Even the vaccines known today do not protect the dog from infection, but simply alleviate the course of the disease. However, in some cases, this factor very often helps the dog survive.

But what can still be done to protect your pet as much as possible from mortal danger?

Scheduled vaccination should be carried out no later than 2 months before the start of the tick season.
Do not walk your dog in areas that are likely to be densely populated by ticks.
Purchase an anti-parasitic collar in advance, put it on your dog and do not remove it until the expiration date.
Bathe your dog with anti-parasitic shampoo.
Never ignore scheduled treatment with protective drops.
Before going outdoors or walking in potentially dangerous areas, treat your dog with a spray.