Summer is a good time when you can go out with the dog to nature and walk with it for a long time. However, the warm season is fraught with some serious dangers to the health of your pet. These dangers lurk in the thick grass. Their name is ixodid ticks.
Of course, this is not a reason to stay at home with the dog all summer and deprive her of walks in nature. You just need to remember this danger and clearly know what to do if a dog is bitten by a tick. Why is such a danger posed by ticks, because there are a lot of blood-sucking insects (fleas, for example)? We have heard a lot about tick-borne encephalitis and tick-borne borreliosis, but these diseases affect people, they are not terrible for dogs. Ticks bring dogs other troubles - they are carriers of a terrible infectious disease - pyroplasmosis (babesiosis).
First of all, you need to preventively protect the dog from a tick bite. To do this, in the warm season (since the periods of the most tick activity are the end of spring and the beginning of autumn), the dog’s hair should be regularly treated with a special acaricidal preparation that repels ticks. Unfortunately, humanity has not yet come up with any other preventive measures - there is no serum or vaccine. Acaricidal drugs also do not give a 100% guarantee against infection with pyroplasmosis. These drugs work well on fleas, mites, and other parasites, but mites have greater survivability. Veterinarians advise applying the acaricidal preparation in the form of drops on the withers of the animal every 3-4 weeks, and spray a dog with an acaricidal spray before each walk. It is important that both the drops and the spray contain the same active substance, since different substances, entering into interaction with each other, can become toxic and cause poisoning or an allergic reaction. About the choice of this or that acaricidal preparation it is necessary to consult with the veterinarian.
After a walk, you need to carefully examine your pet. If a dog is bitten by a tick, it will immediately become clear when you feel the body of the animal, as it sticks to the skin. Especially insects love those areas of the body where it is easy to get to the blood vessels: head, areas behind the ears, abdomen, elbow bend. Suppose you find that a dog is bitten by a tick. What to do?
First of all, you need to remove it from the dog’s body. To do this, plant oil is dripped onto the tick, then they grab it with tweezers by the body closer to the head and begin to unscrew it in different directions, just as they remove the cork from the bottle. It is important not to crush the tick and not pull out one body, leaving your head in the skin of the dog, because then suppuration and, in some cases, an abscess form at the site of the bite. But even if you safely removed the tick, you need to treat the bite site with an antiseptic. If, nevertheless, the head of the insect comes off and is further in the body of the animal, you need to show the dog to the veterinarian and tell him that the dog was bitten by a tick.
After the pest has been safely removed, you need to observe the health of the pet for several days. If after some time after the dog was bitten by a tick, you observe her loss of appetite, fever, lethargy, weakening of her hind legs, diarrhea and vomiting, you need to go to the veterinarian without any delay, and, perhaps, call him to house.
But do not make a terrible diagnosis yourself. If a dog is bitten by a tick, this does not mean that it caught pyroplasmosis. Disease carriers are only about 10% of ticks. But neglect this is not worth it. It is important to have a blood test done on the first day, as you will notice that something is wrong with your pet. For analysis of pyroplasmosis, blood in a dog is taken from the ear, since a large amount of pyroplasm accumulates in the peripheral vessels. The diagnosis of pyroplasmosis is established only in the case of laboratory diagnosis of a blood test. Any other examination, even in the presence of classical symptoms (high fever, dark urine and ectericity) does not fully confirm the disease.
The treatment of pyroplasmosis is the more effective the sooner treatment is started. A neglected illness often ends fatally for a dog.