Parasites

What is eating your pet? Sometimes it is easy, you can see the ticks and the fleas. Perhaps you notice worms in your pets stool,but even with these few examples we can break it down into many more sub-catagories.

Worms are parasites that inhabit a particular area of the body. While there are some that tell you where they live like the heart-worm (transmitted by mosquitoes) or the lung-worms that live inside the lung tissue. There are many others like pinworms, roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms, Whipworms, and more that live in the intestines.

  Hookworm   Tapeworm  Roundworm

 Whipworm  Pinworm 

Fleas carry tape-worms so if your pet has fleas chances are it will have tapeworms as well. The list is long but the relationships between what is eating your pet on the outside can be directly related to what is eating it on the inside. Knowing what to look for on an external examination often gives us a clearer picture of what is going on inside. You can control the flea population with medications designed to kill fleas and keep them at bay. You can give your pet de-wormer to help control the internal parasites but first you have to know which ones to treat. Unless you see the worm first hand the only way to know what to treat for is to send in a fecal sample or to do a blood test to determine what maybe going on.

Ticks carry disease as well, the brown dog tick carries Ehrlichia and the deer tick carries Lyme disease. Ticks are hard to treat when they get dug in, but staying on top of it will help. There are collars and medications to help control tick populations. Check your pets regularly between their toes, in their ears, under their arms and legs around their necks and everywhere in between. We test for Ehrlichia annually when we test for heart-worm, caught early it is easy treat. 

Heart-worm is a serious disease as heart-worms mature they cause the heart  to pump harder and harder, this in turn causes your pet to have hypertension and heart failure which is often fatal. Heart-worm is treatable, but more importantly it is preventable. Making sure your pet is on preventative heart-worm medication monthly is an important step. Having them tested annually for heart-worm takes only a few minutes and it could save their life, just a few drops of blood is all we need to make sure your pet is heart-worm free and healthy.

Liver flukes, these ones can be tricky they cause liver failure and are most often acquired when your pets eat things they should not. Here in Hawaii we see it most often in cats that eat geckos. Diagnosing liver flukes can be a challenge, our experience staff will try and determine what is going on and get your pet back on the road to wellness quickly.

While this is certainly not all of the parasites that can take up residence on or in your pet they are the most common. Talk to one of our experienced staff for more information about parasite control.