Bayside Animal Hospital

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INSECTS: OUR PET'S ENEMY!

1. FLEAS: Fleas can spread blood parasites and tapeworms, and most of all they just make our pets plain uncomfortable and itchy.

If you do not have a flea problem and want something to PREVENT fleas from infesting your pets and your home this spring, we recommend "Frontline® Topspot™" or "Revolution®". Both products come as a topical liquid that you apply between the shoulder blades, both last for one month, and both do not wash off if your pet swims. Revolution kills fleas, ticks, ear mites, some skin mites, intestinal worms, AND heartworms. We particularly recommend Revolution in cats, who can be difficult to give a heartworm pill. Frontline only kills flees and ticks, but may be more effective at killing ticks than Revolution. We recommend Frontline in dogs, who are more likely to get ticks and who are perfectly willing to take their monthly heartworm pill in addition to their flea and tick medication.

2. TICKS: Ticks carry serious diseases like Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and the relatively new disease called Ehrlichia, which has been on the rise on the Eastern Shore lately. These diseases are particularly scary because ticks can give them to humans, too. The best method to prevent tick-borne diseases is tick control. Once again, we recommend Frontline There is a vaccine against Lyme disease available for dogs, and we recommend this vaccine for any dog that spends lots of time outside.

3. MOSQUITOES: As most dog owners know by now, mosquitoes carry deadly heartworms. As always, be sure to keep your dog on heartworm preventative year-round and have its blood tested once yearly for heartworms. Even if you are certain you have given the pills religiously every month your pet may have spit the pill out when you weren’t looking or may have had an upset stomach and not absorbed the medication properly. The longer heartworms are present in the heart, the more damage they can do; yearly testing will alert us to heartworm disease while we can still treat it successfully.

4. FLIES: Flies can be very annoying to outdoor pets. They bite at the pet’s ears until they are raw and bloody. This condition is called “fly strike”. We recommend that you apply an insect repellant gel to the ears to prevent fly strike if your pet spends a lot of time outside, especially if it is penned up or tied where it cannot escape the flies. One of the worst things that can happen to your pet is when flies get into an open wound and lay eggs (which turn into maggots). You can prevent this awful problem from happening by keeping your pet inside if it has any open wounds or sores.