Santa Cruz Pets - Growing Up in Santa Cruz

Holiday Gift Guide for Dogs

growingupsc — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 13:37:00 +0000

Holiday Gift Guide for Dogs By Natalya Dreszer The holiday season is right around the corner and everyone deserves an extra treat – that’s right, it’s time to think gifts for your furry pet! We sat down with a dog expert at Hazeldog to get the best ideas. Hazeldog is a source of information and tools for dog guardians to help them have fulfilling, fun lives with their dogs run by a CTC certified Dog Trainer. Here is a list of some of their favorite holiday gift ideas for you and your dog. The Kong-Wobbler is a go-to intro food puzzle, it’s a durable and dishwasher-safe treat-dispensing toy. Hazeldog suggests that “every dog could benefit from eating their meals out of food puzzles,” it takes dog guardians an extra 30 seconds to prepare the puzzle and turns a 1-2 minute meal with a regular food bowl to an appropriate outlet for your dog’s energy that can last up to half an hour. Especially in winter when it’s dark out, using food puzzles as mental enrichment to tire your dogs out can help make them feel satisfied with their day. https://www.kongcompany.com/wobbler The West Paw Toppl is great as a busy project and for snacks between meals. It is a more open at the top than the Kong food puzzles, so it’s a good puzzle choice for wet-food options and peanut butter. These come in different sizes and are stackable for an extra challenge, and Hazeldog has a tip: add food and then freeze it to make the puzzle harder for your dog! Using food puzzles for meals and snacks can also keep your dog occupied and entertained without your attention. https://www.westpaw.com/dog-toys/puzzle/toppl-treat-toy The Outward Hound Tail Teaser is a toy for your dog, almost like an oversized cat toy. This option is great to tire out energetic dogs because you don’t need that much space – just a 6×6 foot space in a living room is enough. It’s a great way to tire your dog out when it’s too dark to go anywhere, and it’s super durable. https://outwardhound.com/catalog/product/view/id/169 Dog Nerd Shirt (for dog guardians): Woolf Cultr is a local company based out of Pacifica that makes the cutest shirts! My favorite is the “dog nerd” t-shirt, although there are several fun options. https://woofcultr.com/collections/t-shirts Let Them Sniff Canvas Tote: Another product by Wolf Cultr, the “Let Them Sniff” message can also be a good conversation starter. Even very small dogs are not getting significant physical exercise from a leashed walk, so letting them sniff is a great way to let them use their brains and explore the world with their primary sense. Dogs have about 50 times more olfactory receptors in their noses than humans and once dog guardians realize that sniffing is what dogs want, they can both enjoy walks more, being on the same page. Ruffwear (Front Range). This is a padded harness with front and back clips, and is great because the padding is comfortable for long walks and hikes, great for dogs who are out on the trails a lot. Ruffwear is a “cool” brand, sort of like Patagonia for dogs and the bright colors are fun but not childish, which some dog stuff can be. Why are attachment points on the front of leashes useful? When a dog pulls on a leash attached on the front the physics moves them to the side. This means that there will not be as much force put on the person holding the leash as a leash attached at the back, making it easier for the dog walker. Additionally, a harness causes less choking and pain for a dog than a collar, making the experience more enjoyable for dog guardians and dogs alike! Free Range Chicken Thighs – boiled and cubed. The highest quality most expensive meat that you can find on the market is still going to be cheaper than the fancy dog treats. Baby Food or Squeeze Pouches – Gerber makes some that come in plastic tubs, dogs can eat it straight out of the tub (if you trust your dog not to eat the plastic), or transferred to a food puzzle like the Kong Classic or West Paw Topple. Tip: Freeze it to make it more of a challenge! Note: some dogs will love any flavor, but if your dog isn’t used to eating veggies then the meat options will probably be the most fun for your dog. Remember: avoid chocolate, grapes, spices, anything in the onion family (including garlic). Leftover cardboard boxes from holiday shopping –use boxes as a food puzzle! Make the puzzles harder and harder for your dog, starting with the lid open, then closing it or adding packing paper mixed in with food. Let them shred the box for extra fun! Shredding is normal dog behavior that can be a good thing for your dog to express. Just because you are letting them do it doesn’t mean that they will start wanting to do it more, in fact, by giving them the outlet to do it appropriately it will make it less likely that they will do it at an inappropriate time. Make sure they don’t eat the cardboard (but less dangerous than other materials if they accidentally do eat a little bit.

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All Dogs Go to Heaven (Cats, Snakes, Turtles and Fish too)

growingupsc — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 12:14:51 +0000

All Dogs Go to Heaven (Cats, Snakes, Turtles and Fish too) Blessings at Holy Cross School There is nothing like the blessing of the animals, in honor of the Feast of St. Patrick, at Holy Cross School in Santa Cruz on October 4. Students and parents brought dozens and dozens of pets to be blessed by Bishop Danny Garcia, who reminded the kids that they were stewards of the Earth and animals and it was their duty to help protect both. By Brad Kava. Bishop Danny Garcia gave a serious environmental speech and then had a ball blessing the animals with holy water. Bishop Garcia was installed as Bishop of Monterey in January and seemed to have a ball doing the blessings and spreading holy water. It was a moving lesson for all of them, parents and students said. Pets included fish, dogs, cats, lizards, snakes, turtles and a New Guinea Thorny Devil Walking Stick. By Brad Kava. Ben Cube, 10, with Ace, a 7-month old French Bulldog. By Brad Kava. Cassie Travers gets her New Guinea Thorny Devil Walking Stick blessed. By Brad Kava. Scarlett Zuanich, 6, gets her pet fish Rudolph blessed.

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What’s in my Pet’s Food?: Talking Pets September 2019

growingupsc — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:26:57 +0000

What’s in my Pet’s Food? Talking Pets: September 2019 Dr. Nichole Brooks The pet food industry has gone from zero to sixty in a nanosecond! We went from a few choices on the shelf to a shocking amount of all types of foods, each designed to cater to a particular need. Deciding which food is best for your beloved canine or feline can be overwhelming and the information provided can be confusing. There are some resources available that can help guide us through the mystery of our pets’ food. In my opinion, we all take on huge responsibilities for our pet’s nutrition. We, including myself, feel compelled to control their diets simply because we want them to live forever and feel their best. We often choose our pet foods based on history with a certain brand, food that makes our pet feel better, pet store recommendations, a recommendation from another pet owner, a Netflix show, the pretty package or the price. Beware of how powerful and seductive marketing can be. Many claims are just not important. There are also some new developments in our pet food world that we need to learn about. Things such as grain free, raw, wild, and homemade! AAFCO, the Association of American Feed Control Officials established in 1957, is a voluntary group of local, state and federal agencies that regulate the sale and distribution of animal food and animal medications. This organization provides pet food manufactures the minimal nutritional requirements needed for our dogs and cats. Congress enforces a NO tolerance for any and all feed additives that are known to produce cancer in humans OR animals. The AAFCO guidelines for basic nutrient allowances are published periodically and are updated based on current research. Buddies hanging out at the SCM Pet Fest. Photo Credit: Kristin Vincent Photography All dog and cat food that is based on the AAFCO guidelines is created equally when it comes to the basic nutrition. The primary display panel on a pet food is what most of us read when shopping, it must include who it’s for (dog, cat, guinea pig….) and the net weight, however the manufacture and brand name are optional. The information provided will follow its claims. For example, a diet that states “100% beef only” contains beef and water. If it says “Beef for dogs” then the food is 70% of its weight in beef. If the food claims a term such as “entrée”, “dinner” or “recipe” and uses a word such as beef, then 25% of the products weight is beef. The term “flavor”, such as “beef flavor”, means the food may have less than 3% of its weight in beef and the pet should be able to “recognize” the flavor as beef. If you read the words complete/ balanced/ nutritional/ organic or other information then read the information panel for clarity. It’s our job as pet parents to ensure we are giving our pets what they need. We often do this by interpreting the pet food labels and trying to decipher the nutritional panel located somewhere on the product. It resembles what is on our own packaged foods. It often has an ingredient statement, guaranteed analysis, nutritional adequacy statement and the name of the producer or manufacturer. Ingredients are listed by weight (heaviest first), however, weight and the list can be deceptive. An example is the meat protein in the food. If whole chicken is added to the recipe and it states whole, it includes all the water and fluids. This “whole” chicken is then processed into a dry form or chicken meal. This process reduces the weight significantly. Therefore, at the end of preparing and packaging, the chicken should be listed last as its weight has been altered by cooking and preparing. So, to ensure the most chicken is in your pets’ food, chicken meal (which is the dry form of whole chicken) gives you a much higher weight of chicken in the food than the original whole chicken. And any meal form of carbohydrate or protein is easier to digest. Nutritional panels can also have “split” ingredients. These are the same ingredients that are broken down into different forms so that they can be listed as different weights, making them seem less significant. For example, corn (which is not bad for your pet, I promise!) can be broken down into corn meal, corn flour, whole grain corn, corn gluten, or even corn feed. These all can be listed separately and therefore be listed with a lower weight making the ingredient list appear more appealing to the consumer. So, what is guaranteed analysis?! This is where the pet food must display the minimum protein, fat, fiber and moisture content. This DOES NOT have anything to do with nutrients or AAFCO recommendations. For example, when we measure protein, we are actually measuring nitrogen rather than the protein quality or digestibility. The same goes for fiber, which just measures plant cells, not quality or digestibility. Overall, this information is “FYI” The ingredients listed on the pet food do not reflect ingredient quality, availability or digestibility. Ask the pet food company or your veterinarian to help determine if the ingredient listed is acceptable quality and is digestible. Foods that are designed for varying medical conditions that are not prescribed by your Veterinarian can also be confusing or allude to treating an underlying disease. These include allergy, joint disease diets, urinary diets and others. Consult your Veterinarian before investing in these types of products. Raw foods…….OMG there is so much talk about them!!! Between the mass media, Netflix, Facebook and the general dog park gossip, it would appear raw foods are the new thing! My Mom was at her local garden (which is, of course, all organic and pesticide free) and was seduced by her fellow community gardener to change her dog, Calley, to a raw diet. We discussed Calley’s health and elected to choose a more traditional type of food. The most important part of raw foods to be aware of is foodborne illnesses!! They are the same as in us: salmonella, e-coli, neorickettsia, clostridium, mycotoxins and many more. Our pets can suffer the same consequences from contaminated e-coli and other outbreaks. Even if your pet does not become sick from food poisoning, some pets can become carriers and shed the bacteria and spread it to you or your family! There are marketed raw pet foods that are sold commercially, these often follow AAFCO guidelines and have been treated to eliminate the food borne illnesses. I recently discussed the new epidemic of raw foods with Nutritionist at UC Davis Dr. Fossati. She cautioned me about these types of diets. Far too many times we deprive our pets of their proper nutrition, even when we have the best intentions. The patients referred to her were recommended a commercial well-balanced diet and have improved dramatically. Lastly, don’t fear the recall!! This is our modern way of guaranteeing that the foods we and our pets eat are safe. I applaud the pet food companies who issue these alerts and recall contaminated food. Just as with our own human food, recalls are issued whenever there is contamination. Contamination can occur at the farm, packing plant or in transit. Recalls improve the quality of products we have today. Choosing the right pet food is a very personal choice. We want it to be the best one and we all choose them for different reasons. Hopefully you can use some of these tips to choose the best diet for your pet. Please email me if you have any more questions, would like the references or have another question you would like answered. Bon Appetite to our healthy pets!

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Flea Meds, why are they not working!?!?

growingupsc — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 12:22:42 +0000

Flea Meds, why are they not working!?!? By Dr. Nichole M Brooks, DVM Fish are not the only things biting this summer! Fleas are out there and plaguing our pets. A frequent frustration expressed to me by owners is why the expensive flea medications are not working. The truth is that fleas are incredibly tough to get rid of and can take months to eradicate. Several years ago I treated a young cat with such an intense flea anemia that she needed a blood transfusion. She went on to live a normal healthy life once we got her fleas under control. And just the other day I was looking at my Mom’s 17 year old cat….. Fleas! On my Mother’s cat! Fleas are all around us, as they love the weather as much as we do, and they live naturally in our environment. They can overpopulate and infest our world in a blink of an eye without us even knowing its happening. Fleas are a small wingless insect that feed on the blood of animals. Although there is close to 2,000 species, the most common culprit is Ctencephalids felis, the cat flea. The flea goes through several phases: Eggs, larval, pupal, young adult and adult. An adult female flea can shed 40 to 60 eggs a day which fall to the ground wherever they are. It takes about 1 to 6 days to hatch into the larvae which take cover in cool dark places such as carpet, under furniture, cracks in a floor or other hidden places. The larvae goes through a pupal phase which is near impossible to eradicate and can survive in their cocoon phase for over 150 days! The pupae will become immature adults in about 1 to 2 weeks and then the adults seek out for their first meal on any unsuspecting animal. Flea bites are one of the most common causes for skin allergies in our pets. If a pet has an allergy to fleas it only takes one bite to trigger a massive outbreak of itchy skin. Some pets do not have an allergy and can live with fleas on them without a single sign of itchiness. Often animals with flea allergies present with missing fur, secondary skin infections constant scratching and even tapeworms. So what do we do about this epidemic of fleas? The answer takes work and dedication. Sadly no flea product can guarantee a 100% repellent against fleas. A good quality medicine can be extremely effective at defending our pets from fleas, but we have to do more in the presence of even 1 identified adult flea. If you find 1 you can assume there are hundreds lurking around. You may hear your Veterinarian recommend treating the environment as well as your pet. We often recommend treating the most frequented areas to reduce the amount of exposure, however many of us here have the occasional visit from our local wildlife. We cannot apply flea meds to our visiting squirrel but you can tackle and limit the amount that live in your yard or house. There are several types of flea products available. There are adulticides that kill adult fleas, insect growth regulators that stop young fleas from becoming an adult, insect development inhibitor which stops fleas from forming their outer shell and there a combinations of all these drugs. Treating your yard and your house can be challenging. No one wants to spray harsh toxic chemicals in their home or yard. I don’t either! However, I really don’t want fleas around biting my dog, cat and kids. Treating the house usually means treating the bad spots or the places your pets spend the most time (with or without carpet). Exterminators use a combination of Adulticides and an insect growth regulator, but even these professionals may have to treat a second time around to keep your home free from infestations. There are a variety of flea medicines available today. There are products that are applied to the skin, taken by mouth, or worn full time as a collar. Each flea medicine targets a certain part of the flea life cycle When it comes to choosing the right flea medicine use what has worked for you. All flea medicines as long as they are a good quality product work to the best of their capability. There are so many choices that the decision about which one is complicated. Don’t be persuaded by powerful expensive marketing schemes use what your animal tolerates. If you don’t like the greasy or wet spot ones, try an oral flea med. There is even a collar (when used appropriately) works for 8 months. One tip I will give about flea medicines is that if it says give monthly give it every 30 days, this will ensure that your pet has coverage and there is no issue when some months are shorter and others longer. Overall, fleas are sneaky and elusive and can infiltrate without us knowing. With a little dedication you can eradicate an entire infestation. Ask your Veterinarian for help if you get frustrated with fleas and your animal is itching out of control! We can help! Let’s all work together to make our pets healthier and happier so we can all worry less!! Tips for Effective Flea Control Treat every pet in the household every month (or as prescribed, some flea medications last 3 to 8 Months) Make sure it is applied /given correctly. Treat fleas all year round Thoroughly vacuum areas frequented by your pets Empty your Vacuum bag (flea eggs can hatch inside the bag ) Wash pet bedding in very hot water Treat environment as needed eggs can be in the environment for months Dr. Nichole M Brooks, DVM is a vet at Del Mar Pet Hospital.

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She Catches Fish to Save Them: Santa Cruz has its First Fish Veterinarian

growingupsc — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 02:09:22 +0000

She Catches Fish to Save Them: Santa Cruz has its First Fish Veterinarian By Susan Landry If you’ve ever wondered about that quirky clownfish car driving around town, you’ll be even more fascinated by the woman inside it. Dr. Jessie Sanders is the first of her kind – a fully trained veterinarian who focuses her practice exclusively on pet fish. The Soquel-based clinic treats more than 30,000 different species of fish. “If it swims, we’ll see it,” Sanders says, though much of her client base consists of koi and goldfish. Sanders pioneered her field shortly after graduating veterinary school, when she realized the dearth of care available to aquatic animals. “The amount of pet fish in this country and here in this area are completely underserved,” she said. Now, Sanders is doing everything she can to change this. Her fully mobile clinic travels to homes from Ventura all the way to Roseville, spanning 22 counties across the West Coast. “I have to be able to catch my patients, so I travel with a lot of nets,” she laughs. On site, Sanders provides everything from surgeries, to vaccines, to simple diagnostics and even cancer treatments. Recently, she is keeping busy treating an especially pervasive outbreak of koi herpes virus. Don’t worry though, it’s nothing like the human kind. Even when treating her smallest patients, like beta and goldfish, Sanders takes extreme care to prevent discomfort. Often, she employs numbing creams and even low dose fish tranquilizers to minimize pain or potentially harmful movements by the fish. “These are essentially muscular, slippery torpedoes, so I don’t want them to hurt themselves while I’m trying to give them an exam,” she says. Sanders’s dedication to caring for fish extends far beyond the operating tank. She’s even penned a children’s book series, Boo & Bubbles, to help explain to kids and parents all the basics of caring for your new pet fish, and how to maintain a healthy tank. Sanders is constantly doing outreach, updating her website, blog and Youtube channel with information, care tips, and even live videos of surgical procedures to help get the word out. “A lot of people just don’t know there’s a fish doctor out there that you can call,” she says. While certain crowds might not understand the value of fish care, Sanders doesn’t give them much thought. “Those people aren’t our clients,” she says. “The people we work with form attachments to these animals, they become a part of their family.” Sanders began developing her love for fish during her time as a marine biology major at the University of Rhode Island, where she volunteered at Mystic Aquarium’s fish and invertebrate department. “I loved every single second that I was working with those things and always wanted to learn more about them,” she recalled. Shortly after her time at URI, Sanders went on to veterinary school at Tufts University, where she earned her DVM. In the six years since starting her own practice, Sanders began nothing short of an aquatic revolution. She went from not a single client in her first two months, to helping hundreds of fish every year, and creating an online platform that reaches thousands more. Throughout it all, her motto stayed the same: “We value fish just as much as you would any other pet. We’re here as a resource to anyone who wants to make sure their pet receives the best care, and we’ll help you out any way we can,” she says. For more information on Dr. Sanders and her practice, visit www.cafishvet.com.

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Preventing Dog Bites in Children

growingupsc — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:37:12 +0000

Preventing Dog Bites in Children How do we keep dogs and children safe together? By Dr. Gabrielle Ravina According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 800,000 people require medical attention for dog bites each year. Of those victims, children are bitten at a rate almost twice that of adults. For this reason, as both a veterinarian and a mother, I often cringe at those “cute” photos and videos on social media, depicting young children hobnobbing with dogs. While I hate to be a “Debbie Downer,” these photos too often depict children in potentially compromised positions, and in the eyes of a trained professional, are bites waiting to happen. You might think to yourself “But my dog would never bite my child! My dog is safe, and my child is so gentle with Fluffy.” Others may think “I would never leave my child unsupervised with a dog.” You may be surprised then to learn children under t 7 are most likely to be bitten by the family pet or dogs they know, most often occur under the direct supervision of a parent or grandparent, and are often triggered by positive interactions initiated by the child, such as reaching, hugging, kissing or petting. “How can this be?” you might ask. Well, to answer that question, we must ask why dogs show aggression to children in the first place. Why do dogs bite children? Family dogs most commonly bite young children in the context of resource guarding (e.g. sleeping areas, toys, food, etc.), or pain, as well as if they are stressed, scared or have been startled. Children sound, move and interact differently than adults. From a dog’s perspective, normal child behavior, loud and unpredictable it may sometimes be, can feel scary. Children can often, through no fault of their own, behave inappropriately around a dog, pulling a tail, tugging on an ear, attempting to sit on them, hugging them (fun fact: most dogs don’t enjoy being hugged), or disturbing them when they are sleeping. While many dogs will tolerate these interactions, no dog, I don’t care what the breed or history, is 100% safe around a child. Given a perfect storm of circumstances, the nicest dog in the world is going to act, well, “like a dog,” and will bite if all other signals they give us are being ignored. What can we do to prevent dog bites? I frequently hear parents say a dog bit “without warning.” In reality, dogs speak dog [body] language, and people speak people language. Dogs will almost always exhibit warning signs before biting, but parents and guardians need to know what to look for. Recognizing the signs, and intervening early, is an important key to prevention. While we can all recognize growling as a warning sign, three other common and easy to see canine stress signals are: lip smacking outside of the context of eating food, yawning outside of the context of waking up, and showing a half-moon or “whale” eye, where you see the whites at the outer edges of a dog’s eyes. Additional, perhaps more subtle signs of stress can include avoidance behaviors (turning away or moving away from a child), wagging a stiff tail, lowering the head, and stiff or tense body language in general (“I feel relaxed and good” canine body language is loose and wiggly). It’s also important to note that dogs may actually lick at a child as a sign of displacement stress. While this looks adorable to the uneducated observer, it can actually indicate conflict and a wish for the child to go away. Watching for inappropriate human behavior is another important key to prevention. Young children in particular may not make safe decisions in regards to their behavior around dogs. Intervene if you see your child attempt to pet, lie on, or otherwise disturb a sleeping dog, corner or crawl under furniture to get to a dog, attempt to take a toy away from a dog, or disturb a dog when it’s eating. Hugging, kissing, tugging on tails or ears, lifting or pulling at jowels, are also all behaviors that risk instigating a bite. Does that mean people with infants or toddlers or young children shouldn’t have pets? Absolutely not! Growing up with a dog has countless wonderful benefits for children. Dogs teach empathy and responsibility, encourage physical activity, and are source of love, loyalty, comfort and affection, just to name a few examples! However, the safety and well being of both our children and our dogs should always be our top priority, and that requires an understanding of both dog behavior and risk factors for bites, so that unsafe interactions can be interrupted or ideally avoided entirely. Dr. Gabrielle Ravina’s, (DVM, CHPV) solo practice is Peaceful Paws Veterinary Hospice, and is dedicated to in-home end of life care. Prior to starting her business in 2015, she worked in both emergency and general practice in both Santa Cruz and Los Gatos since 1998.

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Parasites Punching this Summer: Talking Pets June 2019

growingupsc — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 23:31:28 +0000

Parasites Punching this Summer: Talking Pets June 2019 By Dr. Nichole Brooks Those creepy, crawly blood sucking parasites are popping up everywhere! Its tick season around here and everyone needs to be ready. What is a tick? Ticks are considered an arthropod ectoparasite and are an arachnid. They are related to spiders, mites and even scorpions. They feed exclusively on the blood of the animal they land on. On the central coast of California the type of ticks most often identified are the American dog tick (dermacentor variabilis), the Brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus), and the Western Blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus). In brief, the tick has a relatively short life cycle. Adult ticks feed on animals, they lay their eggs in fall, then the eggs hatch into larva, larva feeds on small mammals, larva molts into a nymph, nymph feeds on dogs and spreads infections, nymph molts into an adult tick and feeds on animals again. So, besides the creepiness and the idea of ticks sucking blood, why worry? When I ask this question, most people respond with Lyme disease, which is true. Ticks carry all sorts of contagious diseases and cause several serious illnesses. Fortunately, many of these diseases we do not see here in Aptos. However, with animals being transported across the country and often internationally we are starting to see pockets of tick borne diseases that are new to California so we should all take the extra step and understand what ticks are capable of and how to prevent them from latching on. Aside from ticks being super gross, why keep them off of us? Its true Lyme is one of many tick borne diseases, but ticks transmit bacteria, rickettsial diseases, fungus, protozoa and possibly viruses. They can also cause a systemic reaction triggering debilitating paralysis, toxicosis, hypersensitivity and anemia. The diseases often identified from tick exposure include the rickessial diseases: Anaplasmosis and erhlichiosis, Lyme disease, tick paralysis, babeisiosis, “Rocky Mountain Spotted fever”, tularemia and many more according to the CDC and most will affect our pets. The most commonly publicized tick transmitted disease is Lyme disease. Lyme disease is carried and transmitted by the tick species Ixodes. Lyme is caused by a spirochete bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi that is spread by a tick bite, not the tick itself. This bacteria mostly affects dogs and very rarely cats. It causes arthritis pain in the joints due to the bacteria infiltrating into connective tissue, muscles, and lymph nodes. It also can cause a fever, kidney disease, heart problems and neurologic disease. The tick must be partially engorged (filled half way up with blood) for 24 to 48 hours to transmit Lyme disease to your dog. Most veterinary clinics offer a blood test to screen for the Lyme bacteria. Early diagnosis and treatment can ward off the unwanted side effects of Lyme disease. Anaplasmosis is another tick disease commonly diagnosed in California and has been identified in Santa Cruz County. It is most often an illness that is “subclinical” or has no symptoms. However, this disease has been reported to cause fever, depression, listlessness, and red eyes. Other reported symptoms are related to the musculoskeletal system, causing lameness. The symptoms occur about 1 to 2 weeks after the tick bite. This illness is also easy to diagnose with a blood test and easy to treat if caught early. In my opinion the scariest of tick borne illnesses is TICK PARALYSIS!! This has been reported in people too! When the tick bites it injects a toxin into the body that it has attached. The poison that is injected into its host is a neurotoxin called holocylotoxin. In short, this neurotoxin interferes with the release of acetylcholine which stops nerves from working and causes a progressive flaccid paralysis, essentially paralyzing the victim. Not all ticks carry the toxin and research suggests that the toxin may be in varying potencies so prediction and demographics can be complicated. How do you remove a tick? It’s a commonly asked question and can be more complicated than it needs to be. If you search on line “how to remove a tick?” There are many, many responses and videos all dictating how this process should be done. To keep this conversation short, when the tick is removed make sure it is dead. If not sure if it is alive or dead it can be simply soaked in a zip lock bag contained with either water or rubbing alcohol. No matter how you decide to remove a tick off your pet one piece of advice is: Do not dig into your pet’s skin to get the head or other parts of the tick out. I can assure you that if you have removed most of the tick…….it is dead. Ticks can’t survive without their head and once decapitated they can no longer bite. Your pet has an amazing immune system to dispose of this foreign tissue. A simple warm compress and some topical antibiotic ointment is quite enough to help your pet with secondary infections from the wound. What damage or disease transmission inflicted has already been done, the tick can no longer spread disease or cause your pet any harm. Digging at a tick site only causes inflammation and infection. I just want to reiterate that again, if the tick is dead it cannot continue to harm your pet. If the bite site becomes infected seek help from your veterinarian to provide treatment and set up time to screen for the contagious diseases spread by tick bites. Tick prevention for our household pets is fairly easy. Many products include tick prevention with their flea prevention. We have made topical, oral and collars for tick prevention. Check the label of your flea medicine to ensure its full coverage for ticks. Check to make sure it covers ALL kinds of ticks and how long tick prevention persists. Some tick prevention products may last 30 days while others continue to be effective for up to 60 days. Some medicines only protect from 1 kind of tick and some do NOT have any tick prevention at all. Talk to your Veterinarian or a veterinary nurse, they can help you decide what kind of prevention is most appropriate for your pets. Ticks are problem for everyone, humans and animals. If we keep ticks off our pets, then we can better protect them, ourselves and our families. Remember that tick diseases, even though publicized and many with life altering side effects, if diagnosed early can be cured. Due to the long term and short term side effects of these diseases, we all recommend screening for the most common diseases every year. And remember don’t go after your pets skin for the left over tick parts!

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