Can My Pet Get Lyme Disease from Ticks?

There are some illnesses that, thank goodness, humans and their pets don't share. Imagine how difficult it would be, for example, to explain to your boss that you'd caught distemper from your puppy. However, there are diseases that your pets and you can share, and one of them is the insidious ailment known as Lyme disease. But with a keen eye and the judicious application of the proper pet meds, you can keep both yourself and your pets safe from this multispecies menace.

Among humans, Lyme disease is the most common insect-borne disease in the United States; pet infections are also high. The illness is caused by bacteria that like to hitch rides in the bloodstreams of ticks, jumping ship whenever the tick starts feeding on a host animal. Due either to wise application of technology or pure luck, most flea remedies are also effective for ticks, including the popular, easy-to-use topical treatments. Frontline flea control products are the ones most often prescribed by veterinarians, followed closely by Advantage flea control brands.

Know the enemy

Lyme disease is caused by a spirochete (coiled) bacteria that is transmitted by tick-bite. Three species are known to carry the bacterium, but it's almost always transmitted by the Deer (a.k.a. Black-Legged) tick. Some people call these ticks "seed ticks" because they're so tiny -- smaller than a sesame seed, even into adulthood. In most cases, it's the even smaller immature ticks, the poppy-seed sized nymphs, who transmit Lyme disease (which was named, by the way, after the town where it was first described: Lyme, Connecticut). Lyme disease has been reported in every state of the Union; in some states, especially in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, up to 50 percent of Deer ticks carry the disease-causing spirochete.

Lyme disease can strike seemingly without warning, and a matter of hours. In actuality, it takes several days to get established. The Lyme disease bacterium enters the bloodstream, sets up housekeeping in various tissues, and causes inflammatory reactions. In humans, the result is a red rash surrounding the bite called erythema migrans; painful joints; muscle aches; low-grade fever; and flu-like symptoms that just won't go away. Similar symptoms appear in dogs and cats, and can go from mild to crippling within two or three days. Eventually, one or two joints may swell to arthritic proportions.

What you can do about Lyme disease

With Lyme disease, as with so many other things, the best medicine is preventative. Be sure that you maintain a program of regular flea-and-tick control with an effective topical treatment like Frontline or Advantage, and be sure to check your pet thoroughly on any day that he or she has been outside. Remove any ticks you see on your pet, using tweezers (they make special tick tweezers, believe it or not, but any will do). Ticks that have not yet engorged themselves will not have transmitted the disease yet.

Unfortunately, preventative treatment doesn't always work, and the actual disease symptoms appear. If caught early enough, Lyme disease responds well to the tetracycline family of antibiotics. If left untreated, antibiotics are much less effective and must be administered in massive doses via IV. Recovery can take weeks or even months, and some long-term effects may not be felt for years. These include headaches, cardiac problems, and, in humans, mental disorders. Mental issues may also plague pets, though until they learn to speak, this will be hard to determine. After all, how do you diagnose short-term memory loss in a dog?

Published with permission (FCDMInc)