I love the cute little inch worms crawling around on leaves in the summer. I even had a toy one to ride when I was a kid! These are NOT the type of worms we are referring to when we talk about worms and your pet. We mean internal parasites that eat nutrients from your pets’ intestines, stealing food from them!
There are many different species of internal parasites, but all have the same goal in mind (though they don’t really have a brain like us…) which is to use their host (your pet) as a source of food and shelter. Internal worms are usually introduced to the pets’ intestines by means of ingesting a worm egg. These are microscopic and the pet is totally unaware of eating it. Higher risk meals would include poop, dead carcasses or contaminated meats, usually from hunting wildlife. Once they ingest the egg, it is able to hatch and become a baby worm called a larva. Sometimes the larva is ingested directly and the egg stage is skipped. The larva will grow to become an adult and be able to reproduce more worm eggs. Many eggs are shed into the environment for other unsuspecting animals to eat through the feces of the infected pet. It takes most worms only a few weeks from egg to adulthood!
Testing for worms is done by examining your pet’s feces for worm eggs. If worm eggs are found, you have a diagnosis of intestinal worms. If worm eggs are not found, if could mean-there are no worms, there is an all male or all female worm population and they cannot reproduce alone or the worms are too young to be able to produce eggs.
Dewormers will kill the adult stage worms and older larval stages but not the eggs or younger larval stages. This is why regular deworming is recommended for pets that hunt or eat poop and why more than one deworming may be needed if there is a known worm burden present.
Dr. Alex Kirkham
Canine Demodecosis is a skin disease caused by Demodex canis, a skin mite that lives in the hair folliclues of dogs. These mites are normally found on the skin of dogs in very low numbers but Demodecosis or demodectic mange will occur when the mites numbers overpopulate. This will cause hair loss, itchiness, redness to the skin and sometimes secondary bacterial skin infections.
If your cat or dog has allergies you have probably heard us discuss flea prevention at one of their visits to NVH. We often recommend flea prevention to rule out flea allergies as a cause of skin allergies in dogs and cats. This is because it can often be difficult to differentiate environmental allergies from either food allergies or flea allergies. One of the ways we do this is to have the pet on regular and effective flea prevention. Another tip that can help us determine if the allergy is due to fleas is of course the finding of live fleas on the dog or cat. This is not always reliable because even a single flea bite can cause a hypersensitivity reaction that can last for weeks and the flea could be long gone by the time we examine the pet. Also cats are very good at grooming and often eat the fleas before we get to see them. In fact many times we don’t actually see the live fleas. “Flea dirt” is another indicator that fleas are present if we don’t see the live fleas. Flea dirt is the fleas poop found on the animal and it is mostly composed of dried blood. It has the appearance of cracked pepper on the fur.
