Ticks and Fleas

Fleas
Fleas are parasites that live on the skin of your pet and feed off your pet dog or cat’s blood. They are brown in colour and can be seen jumping or crawling around your pet’s body. Cats and dogs have their own species of fleas but cat fleas will also live on and bite dogs.

The lifecycle of fleas
Fleas lay eggs in your home which hatch into larvae and feed on skin debris, the faeces of adult fleas and organic matter. The larvae then turn into pupae from which adult flea hatch. Fleas wait for signs of a host being available, such as your cat or dog, by detecting vibrations and movement before infesting the host. They will also bite humans and can cause some people to develop allergies.

Effects of fleas on your pet
Fleas can cause intense irritation on the skin of your pet and some pets will develop an allergy to the flea saliva resulting in scabs forming on their skin. Furthermore, hair loss can occur by your pet being so itchy it bites and scratches itself. The skin can then become infected.

How to treat fleas?
Prevention is always better than waiting until your pet has an infestation of fleas. This is accomplished by routinely applying a flea treatment and spraying your house and pet’s bedding with an appropriate spray to kill any eggs or larvae. Discuss preventative treatments with your vet.
If you do need to treat for fleas then again, an appropriate spray or drops applied to your pet’s skin in combination with treating the house with a good anti flea spray will break the lifecycle and stop the re-infection.

Ticks
Ticks look like small flat or round, pea sized, greyish parasites with legs. They attach onto your pets skin to suck blood and then eventually drop off. The most common types are hedgehogs and sheep ticks. A multitude of ticks on a pet’s body can cause anaemia but more commonly only one or two are found at a time.

How to treat ticks?
You can treat an infection of ticks using a suitable product as guided by your vet. They can also be removed by you with the aid of a “tick remover” which helps remove them safely without leaving mouth parts behind on the skin.

Diseases caused by ticks
Ticks can carry diseases which can affect dogs such as Lyme’s Disease in the UK and Babesiosis and Erhlichiosis which can be caught in Europe if you are travelling with your dog. Lyme’s Disease leads to fever, aching joints and muscles, weakness, and swelling around the tick bite.