Tick Diseases

A couple of winters ago, my 5 year old malamute Emma became extremely lethargic. Off to the vet for a blood test. Her white blood cell count was elevated, but not extremely so. The vet thought she was fighting some sort of infection and put her on Baytril. Two days later, Emma stopped wanting to move. She acted as if she was 90 years old; every joint in her body seemed to hurt. When she did get up to move she shuffled and couldn’t lift her head. The only way I could get her to eat was to bring the food to her and put her nose in it. I called the vet – it was around New Year’s and their advice was aches and pains because of her body fighting off infection. Give her an aspirin. I did, she got worse.

Though it was January in IL, I had brought Em up to WI the beginning of November – specifically the Scuppernong Trail in Kettle Moraine. We had finished a WPDX leg in Kettle Moraine a year or so earlier and I knew it was loaded with ticks. But this was November, after several hard frosts. I had Frontline on my dogs but it had been applied about 5 – 6 weeks previously. I also used an herbal tick repellent several times that day. When on a break, I had let my dogs lie down in a sandy area in the parking lot, under some trees and bushes. After seeing the ticks crawling around, I got them out of there. Despite combing and brushing and blowing, both of them ended up with engorged ticks on them that I pulled off days later.

Once bitten by a tick that carries Lymes there is a window where you can treat the dog and no further symptoms will develop. The problem is, how do you know your dog was bitten by a tick with Lyme’s? The answer, you don’t. Dogs don’t often get the rash or the bull’s eye that humans will. Many times, the only symptoms that your dogs has Lyme’s is when the fever, lethargy and joint pain show up approximately two months later, but sometimes as long as 5 – 6 months after the tick bite. Many times Lyme’s can stay hidden in the body until something is done to upset the immune system, and then it manifests. Some dogs will never get it and just carry it. Boogie was bitten and tested negative. Did he miss getting bitten by the right tick or is his immune system just better than Emma’s? In the two months before Emma’s symptoms manifested, I knew there was something ‘off’. But she jogged with me, sled and hiked, just with a little less enthusiasm and endurance. I thought she was aging early.

Tick diseases are hard to diagnose because they can mimic so many other diseases. Loss of appetite, fever, vomiting, lethargy, diarrhea, lightening of nose, nose bleeds, chronic ear and skin infections, enlarged lymph nodes. More progressed, hemorrhaging, enlarged spleen or liver, elevated liver or kidney values and failure, protein in urine. The list goes on. Sometimes the best way to diagnose is to give the recommended treatment for tick disease and see if there’s improvement. If there is, then tick disease is the most likely culprit.

Luckily, most tick diseases if caught on time are very easily treatable with tetracyclines – most specifically doxycycline. The Merck Manual suggests treating dogs with 5 mg/kg of doxycycline for 3 weeks but recent research shows we haven’t been treating tick disease correctly. To prevent re-infection the minimum dose of doxy is 10 mg/kg for 6 – 8 weeks. Doxycycline is cheap and relatively easy on the dog’s system. Em was on doxy for 8 weeks. Within 2 doses, she started to show improvement. However, the damage to her joints was done. It took over a year of massage, chiropractics, hydrotherapy, enzymatic therapy and acupuncture to bring her almost back to what she was before Lyme’s. Luckily, she didn’t have kidney or liver involvement.

There is more tick disease out there than Lyme’s. There’s Erlichiosis, Babesiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Before venturing out with your mal, check your local resources to find how endemic tick disease is in your area. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the lower section of Kettle Moraine has ticks that carry Lyme’s. I haven’t checked a CDC map in a while, but last I checked ticks hadn’t quite made it over the border from WI into northern IL. I do know that recently Lyme’s was diagnosed in dogs that could only have gotten it from southern Cook County, South of Chicago in IL. With the strange weather we’ve been getting, tick population and disease is on the rise and is currently at an all time high and ticks don’t recognize state lines.

The best way to control ticks is to use a product like Frontline on your dogs. I don’t like chemicals, and usually the less used is better to me. However, seeing the devastating effects of tick disease first hand, I consider Frontline to be the lessor of two evils. There are other products out there but I consider Frontline to be the safest and most effective. Frontline is not a deterrent but works as a paralyzing agent on the tick, dropping it off within 24 hours. Most tick disease is transmitted between 24 and 48 hours after the tick imbeds itself. But nothing is 100% effective. There are several other things I do to protect my malamutes as well as myself from tick bites. In a known tick infested area, I also spray them with a topical herbal tick deterrent. I feed them garlic and they get a diet high in vitamin B. When I’m hiking through tick infested woods, I let them swim – the water many times will float the ticks off. I bring combs and brushes with me and periodically brush their coats. When I get home I use a high-powered dog dryer on them, going through their fur. Not only will this blow off many ticks, but you will be able to see right down to their skin. However, many tick nymphs, also able to spread disease, are so tiny they can barely be seen by the naked eye. This is where Frontline comes in.

I also do not recommend the Lyme vaccine. There is a reason it was stopped being used on humans and now they’re seeing it in dogs. The Lyme vaccine can actually cause an immune induced Lyme disease where you get all the symptoms, but because it’s caused by the immune system and not the bacteria, there is no cure. If caught early, doxy is cheap and effective, and I would rather put my dogs on a course of it than give them the Lyme vaccine.

If you have a problem with ticks in your yard, there are several ways to control them besides using harmful chemicals that will kill beneficial insects as well. You can remove excess brush and leaves, areas where mice would live. Spraying low hanging bushes and branches with a mild dish soap solution has been found to be effective. Certain species of Nematodes have been found to be very effective against ticks. Nematodes are a live insect, too small to be seen by the naked eye, that attack tick larvae, and are available through on-line garden centers.

All of the above serve as precautions for humans too, with the exception of Frontline. DEET is the recommended tick deterrent for humans. DEET is NOT recommended for our pets – it is far too poisonous. I’ve seen first hand how DEET melts plastic and would only use it on myself in high-risk areas.

Emma has made a slow and long recovery. The arthritic effects of Lyme’s have been devastating, and aged her earlier than needed. I can no longer weight pull her (not that she was ever that good anyway) but she finished her WTD this season and we hope to complete that elusive last WPDX leg this spring. Someday we will find a way to control the tick population. Until then, it’s best to be fully aware of the real threat ticks represent to our pets and ourselves.