If you live in the Northeast of America and own a dog, there is a 50 to 75% your pet has Lyme disease. The figure is closer to 75% in endemic areas of Massachusetts. If your dog has enlarged lymph nodes, fever and or general lameness you should probably get your best friend checked by a vet. If he doesn’t have those symptoms, there is probably still a good chance he has Lyme disease because of all dogs infected in these parts of the USA, only about 10% of these will ever fall sick due to the disease. That is the dilemma of Lyme disease. In most cases, it will not cause sickness, and therefore treatment is not necessary. Vats are therefore faced with the dilemma of treating or not treating dogs that have this common non-active form of Lyme disease. Lyme disease is transmitted to dogs and human beings through the black-legged tick which transmits the spirochete bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. If you are a dog owner read on to understand Lyme disease better and how to handle it.
The Facts about Lyme disease in dogs
Lyme disease is a tick-borne disease. It is caused by the spirochete bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted by the nymph and adult stage black-legged tick known scientifically as Ixodes scapularis. It usually takes about 48 hours before a dog can be infected with Lyme disease from a tick once it has latched onto the dog. From this, it can take from between 2 to 4 months for the disease to manifest itself in the dog. This is when you can expect the symptoms to start showing and therefore clinical sickness to have set in. Lyme disease can, however, be successfully treated with antibiotics in many cases.
How to prevent lime disease
Prevention of Lyme disease in dogs can be done by way of vaccines against the disease. This, however, must be done in consultation with your Vet. There are two schools of thought on using vaccines as a way of preventing Lyme disease. One looks at the negative effects of a previously discontinued vaccine that was used in humans had. In this case, when humans who had already contracted Lyme disease were vaccinated, their symptoms were worse. This leads to this school of thought going against the use of the vaccine. This, however, has not been proven in dogs. The other school of thought sees vaccinating against this disease as a viable option to prevent this disease in dogs. To prevent complications, it is advisable to have the dog tested for Lyme disease before vaccinating.
The second way to prevent Lyme disease is to regularly check your dog for ticks and have them removed or remove them yourself. Because it takes a black-legged tick a minimum of 48 hours before it can transmit Lyme disease to a dog, regularly checking your dog for ticks and removing them can prevent the disease being transmitted to your dog. This is particularly true for dogs that have been to wooded areas or stay in more woody areas where the black-legged tick is found in higher concentrations.
There are also topical parasiticides that can be used on dogs to help prevent Lyme disease. You can ask your local pet store to recommend one. Just make sure that you follow instructions closely, and you do not bath your dog or let it swim within 24 hours of applying the parasiticide.
What do I do if my dog tests positive for Lyme disease?
If you find yourself in the unfortunate position that your dog has Lyme disease, what do you do? Let’s take two scenarios. First one, your dog was not sick, but you took him for tests, and these came out positive. There are no clinical symptoms as yet, so what do you do now? Fortunately, you can request your Vet for a further test to see if the disease is active or if it is recent. Depending on your Vet’s school of thinking and your preference, you can decide whether to treat the recent disease so that it does not progress to becoming active. Your other option would be to monitor the dog for any symptoms and only then proceed with treatment. In the case that the disease is already active, but there are still no symptoms, you would then have to decide whether to treat the disease or just leave it as is.
If your dog has been sickly and tests positive for Lyme disease, the Vet can give the dog a course of antibiotics. This is usually very effective in dogs. Common antibiotics, Doxycycline or Amoxicillin, are usually used for this. If your dog is sickly due to Lyme disease, you must get it treated as leaving this may lead to kidney disease and other complications which will lead to death.
In endemic areas like New England, it is recommended that you take your dog for Lyme disease screening once a year. By doing this, you make sure that when Lyme disease is detected in your dog, you can look out for the symptoms or if you are very cautious you can get the disease treated in the early stages.
Conclusion
Sometimes pet owners see large ticks on their dogs and dismiss the possibility that this could be a black-legged tick as black-legged ticks are small. Adult black-legged ticks may be quite big especially when they are engorged. In winter periods black-legged ticks are still active. It is only when snow falls that they won’t be active. They are known to be active at freezing temperatures. Even in times of snow, they can become active if there are a couple of warm days between snow spells so always be alert to their presence.
While Lyme disease also occurs in humans, your dog cannot pass Lyme disease onto you and neither can you pass Lyme disease onto your dog.
Lyme disease can be fatal if not managed properly. So make sure you get your dog tested if you live in a high-risk area and consult your Vet when in any doubt.
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