April 16, 2024 • 12 mins
When the weather gets warmer, your pets have some serious health concerns, in thi episode, The Dog Professor, Robb Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care Center, addresses the biggest concerns you need to watch for and how to treat them, when one is contracted.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It is The Dog Professor Podcast withthe Dog Professor Rob Luss from the Edgefield
Animal Care Center. Welcome to theshow and yet another episode. By the
way, if you have not checkedus out before and you're finding this podcast,
there are about one hundred and thirtyepisodes already done of the Dog Professor
Podcast and Rob, they are aboutas evergreen as you can get. Yeah,
(00:22):
every once in a while we talkabout specific things for parts times of
the year or holidays or getting readyfor things happening, but those are all
pretty much generic and evergreen for anytime, So check those out. And
today we're going to be talking aboutsomething that's a little seasonal, but it's
seasonal every single year. This issomething that we see and that is some
(00:43):
big things that come up when theweather starts to get warmer. And you
had an incident in the dugout theother night where you found a tick.
Yeah, the ticks are here incentral Ohio this time of year, so
it's going crazy. So usually asthe weather kicks up and the parasites the
external paris, it's like fleas andticks and mosquitos and all that starts to
kick up. Also that those thingsare pretty noticeable for people, so they're
(01:07):
pretty pretty focused on preventing those things. But there's a there's a couple other
things that that occur during this timeof year that we see as as veterinarians
uh in our hospital, a lotthat people don't really give much credence to.
And in fact, it affected oneof my own dogs here the last
couple of weeks ago. And that'sthat occurs. You know, they're they're
(01:32):
outside type germs, organisms, parasites, all in that same class that that
are very much more prevalent during thewarm weather season, and one of them,
which affected my dog a couple ofweeks ago, is Giardia Okay,
beaver fever. Basically is it's it'sthe reason you don't go out and drink
(01:53):
your water out of a puddle,right, okay, because most often that's
that that organism can live in standingwater around your house. It's also can
be contracted in the stool of aninfected animal, and that's very common.
I mean, you know, atour house, we have just about every
(02:14):
type of wildlife out there, pluswe have chickens that range at our house,
so it's very common. So it'snot uncommon that my dog contracted that
right, But it is something that'svery common and a lot of times you
do not know your dog has anythinglike that until they start showing certain symptoms.
So giardia and coccidia are something thatwe diagnose. Coccidia we diagnose quite
(02:38):
a bit for young pups and dogsthat spend a lot of time outside.
Coccidia is basically a protozoan parasite thatcan affect the gastro intestinal track of the
dogs, and giardi is kind ofin that same ballpark affects the gastro intestinal
(02:59):
system, usually causing weight loss,diarrhea, you know, lethargic behavior,
all that. And that's what washappening with my dog is she was losing
weight and looking really skinny, andshe was having some loose stool and all
that. So usually the only waywe can check to see if your dog
has those two issues is by checkingthe stool and our dog. So that's
(03:21):
why a fecal exam's really pretty important, especially this time of year, and
it's why we usually require people bringone in and within at least a year's
time of doing anything with us.If you're going to stay with us with
our boarding, you know, oryou're just coming in for an exam with
your pet, it's important to bringin that fecal sample so we can look
(03:43):
at it and pick out if yourdog's come in contact with any of those
type of parasites over time. Obviouslythey show internal parasites like different types of
worms and those type of things,but the you know, the the protozoan
parasites are another thing that we lookfor in those cases. Coccity is something
that you know, gets passed around. It's it's typically what they call a
(04:09):
host specific protozoon, which means ifa dog is infected with it, that
only other dogs can catch it,or if a deer is infected with it,
only other deer will, well,we'll catch it. So it's that
it's pretty host specific. So ifyour dog's going out there and eating deer
poop or or rabbit poop or somethinglike that, it's not necessarily exactly the
(04:33):
source of the coccity, but somewheredown the line it has occurred. Now
if they ingest those animals and andthat animal is infected, then it's very
possible they can get that that typeof protozoon. So it's not really life
threatening unless it goes on for along long time and affects your dog's intestinal
(04:53):
system, But it's important to ifyou start to see a change in your
dog, the way your dog looks, the way your dog eats, a
change in the consistency of their stool, then those are things to think about
and start getting on top of rightaway. And it's usually just a treatment
of a different medication from your veterinarianand that stuff clears up pretty quick.
(05:15):
But it's also important to pay attention. The easiest way is prevention, obviously
in cases like that. So we'remaking sure we're cleaning up the stool around
the house, make sure there's nostanding water that's left out there, because
there's a lot of waterborne issues thatcan occur if you leave standing water laying
around your house, not just withdogs, but with humans also obviously,
(05:38):
because then you get mosquitoes. Youknow, you get different different types of
diseases from mosquitos and all that stuff. So clean up the area, clean
up the stool, keep it asclean as you can, and you probably
are not going to encounter those issuesif you can do that. One common
issue that's very common this time ofyear that we get calls of out all
(06:00):
the time? Is tapeworm? Okay? Okay? Tapeworm. Tapeworm is transmitted
by fleas, And what fleas dois when a tapeworm lays eggs, basically
the last segment in a tapeworm.A tapeworm is an internal parasite, an
internal segmented parasite that is most common. You'll find it most often in cats
(06:24):
and which we'll explain why here ina minute. But what happens is when
a tapeworm eggsack is shed in theground. Flees basically live off of the
and ingest the tapeworm eggs, whichwhich basically live in the flea's body,
okay, And then when that fleagets swallowed by an animal, those eggs
(06:44):
hatch out inside the animal that swallowedit, and that becomes the new tapeworm
host. And the tapeworm is aworm that lives in the intestinal track of
your dog or your cat and andactually can also be transmitted to people.
It's not really common unless you livein a very downtrodden type area with it
that's not very clean, but itcan be transmitted to people also. But
(07:09):
tapeworm is something that will just livein your pets intestinal system and just grow
and grow and grow and become aproblem and so forth and so on.
So it usually occurs in cats,why because cats groom themselves and they're more
likely to bite and swallow a fleaas they're picking it off their body than
(07:30):
a dog is. But it's notuncommon for dogs to have the issue either.
So how do we see that mostoften or not? The first trigger
that most people see is they'll seethe segments that look like rice of the
tapeworm in their animals stool or underneaththeir animal's tail. Okay, when you
(07:53):
start to see that, then it'sa pretty solid, pretty solid infection that's
going on with the tapeworm at thatpoint time, and it's time to get
medication from your veterinarian to get thattaken care of. But it's not something
life threatening obviously, unless again,if it's left to just kind of go
its own way, then yeah,it becomes a serious problem with stool,
(08:16):
the animal becomes anemic, all kindsof other things that occur in cases like
that with that tapeworm. But it'sreally common this time of year in the
area for obvious reasons, because thefleas start to kick up. So again,
prevention is the key in this case. So you keep the fleas away
from your pets, your chance thatyour pet will contract tapeworms drops drastically.
(08:37):
So flea prevention, tick prevention isobviously key at this time of year,
and we've always talked about that before. The best place to start looking for
that type of stuff is to talkto your veterinarian because not every flea and
tick preventative goes with every animal obviously, so they're all breed age weight specific
(08:58):
in cases like that. Now isthe time to think of that, and
you won't ever have to hear aboutthese three things that we talked about ever
again. Yeah, and you reallyneed to check your dogs if they're out
in any tall grass this time ofyear, because they're everywhere. I remember,
you know, just a year ago, just walking through some tall grass
going to a baseball game in lateApril, early May, and I had
(09:20):
like five on my leg, Yeah, in our area, especially because our
winner was basically non existent, rightand then all this water. Right,
Yeah, it's going to Ticks aregoing to be crazy, and it's not
so much the ones you find now. Now, ticks will not live on
your cat, but your cat makesan excellent bus to get them in the
house, as we have with us. Okay, so they'll be on the
(09:41):
cat for a little bit, thenthey'll drop off to find a regular host,
which usually means you are your dog. But flee and tick prevention obviously
is still very important to have onyour cat. Otherwise your cat just becomes
that sponge for all those parasites becausea lot of people they don't put it
on an indoor cat, right because, well, he doesn't go outside,
he's not going to have that issue. Well, ticks are very resourceful and
(10:03):
you'll find them all the time,especially this time of year. So it's
important to put that wall of preventionup as much as you can with you
with your your pets. Also,spraying treating your yard is a tremendous deal.
Now, most ticks they're hanging outin shadowed areas where your bushes and
your trees and those things are,and a lot of times those areas don't
(10:26):
get addressed. The grass gets addressed, but the trees and bushes in the
dark areas there don't get addressed.And that's actually where most of those ticks
are going to be hanging out,kind of like in your house. When
you're trying to address fleas in thehouse, we spray the carpet, but
we forget about underneath the chairs andthe furniture and everything else, and that's
where most of those bugs hang outtoo. So hit the dark areas.
(10:48):
That's where they like to live.Tackle the environment, tackle the tackle the
pet, and then watch on yourselfand you'll keep those things out of there.
But it's going to be crazy thisyear for bucks. Yeah, we
have a couple of past episodes ofthe Dog Professor podcast that specifically address fleas,
ticks preventative and all that stuff.Check those out if you're interested.
(11:11):
Once again, that is an evergreentype thing. It is there and the
information in there is still very relevantto what's going on in your household.
Now. People are in the areaand they would like to see what's going
on at the Edgefield Animal Care Center. I know you guys are probably already
booking tons of vacations for this summerfor boarding and training and things like that,
and you might as well get somevetwork done in there too. Yeah,
(11:33):
we're always looking looking for new clientsand new members of our family out
there. Edgefield Animal Care Center isbasically a full service pet care facility here
in the central Ohio area, wherea veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming,
training, daycare, all of thosethings, all of those services are available
and you can find out about allof those services, all our particulars on
(11:54):
how to get in contact with us, all the past episodes of the Dog
Professor podcast. You go right toour website. It's Edgefieldanimalcare dot com.
Some great stuff and like once again, if you're just finding the Dog Professor
podcast, push follow right there.Because every time a new one gets posted,
it doesn't matter where you are gettingyour podcasts, you're going to get
(12:15):
a notification that there's a new onefor you to check out.
It is The Dog Professor Podcast withthe Dog Professor Rob Luss from the Edgefield
Animal Care Center. Welcome to theshow and yet another episode. By the
way, if you have not checkedus out before and you're finding this podcast,
there are about one hundred and thirtyepisodes already done of the Dog Professor
Podcast and Rob, they are aboutas evergreen as you can get. Yeah,
(00:22):
every once in a while we talkabout specific things for parts times of
the year or holidays or getting readyfor things happening, but those are all
pretty much generic and evergreen for anytime, So check those out. And
today we're going to be talking aboutsomething that's a little seasonal, but it's
seasonal every single year. This issomething that we see and that is some
(00:43):
big things that come up when theweather starts to get warmer. And you
had an incident in the dugout theother night where you found a tick.
Yeah, the ticks are here incentral Ohio this time of year, so
it's going crazy. So usually asthe weather kicks up and the parasites the
external paris, it's like fleas andticks and mosquitos and all that starts to
kick up. Also that those thingsare pretty noticeable for people, so they're
(01:07):
pretty pretty focused on preventing those things. But there's a there's a couple other
things that that occur during this timeof year that we see as as veterinarians
uh in our hospital, a lotthat people don't really give much credence to.
And in fact, it affected oneof my own dogs here the last
couple of weeks ago. And that'sthat occurs. You know, they're they're
(01:32):
outside type germs, organisms, parasites, all in that same class that that
are very much more prevalent during thewarm weather season, and one of them,
which affected my dog a couple ofweeks ago, is Giardia Okay,
beaver fever. Basically is it's it'sthe reason you don't go out and drink
(01:53):
your water out of a puddle,right, okay, because most often that's
that that organism can live in standingwater around your house. It's also can
be contracted in the stool of aninfected animal, and that's very common.
I mean, you know, atour house, we have just about every
(02:14):
type of wildlife out there, pluswe have chickens that range at our house,
so it's very common. So it'snot uncommon that my dog contracted that
right, But it is something that'svery common and a lot of times you
do not know your dog has anythinglike that until they start showing certain symptoms.
So giardia and coccidia are something thatwe diagnose. Coccidia we diagnose quite
(02:38):
a bit for young pups and dogsthat spend a lot of time outside.
Coccidia is basically a protozoan parasite thatcan affect the gastro intestinal track of the
dogs, and giardi is kind ofin that same ballpark affects the gastro intestinal
(02:59):
system, usually causing weight loss,diarrhea, you know, lethargic behavior,
all that. And that's what washappening with my dog is she was losing
weight and looking really skinny, andshe was having some loose stool and all
that. So usually the only waywe can check to see if your dog
has those two issues is by checkingthe stool and our dog. So that's
(03:21):
why a fecal exam's really pretty important, especially this time of year, and
it's why we usually require people bringone in and within at least a year's
time of doing anything with us.If you're going to stay with us with
our boarding, you know, oryou're just coming in for an exam with
your pet, it's important to bringin that fecal sample so we can look
(03:43):
at it and pick out if yourdog's come in contact with any of those
type of parasites over time. Obviouslythey show internal parasites like different types of
worms and those type of things,but the you know, the the protozoan
parasites are another thing that we lookfor in those cases. Coccity is something
that you know, gets passed around. It's it's typically what they call a
(04:09):
host specific protozoon, which means ifa dog is infected with it, that
only other dogs can catch it,or if a deer is infected with it,
only other deer will, well,we'll catch it. So it's that
it's pretty host specific. So ifyour dog's going out there and eating deer
poop or or rabbit poop or somethinglike that, it's not necessarily exactly the
(04:33):
source of the coccity, but somewheredown the line it has occurred. Now
if they ingest those animals and andthat animal is infected, then it's very
possible they can get that that typeof protozoon. So it's not really life
threatening unless it goes on for along long time and affects your dog's intestinal
(04:53):
system, But it's important to ifyou start to see a change in your
dog, the way your dog looks, the way your dog eats, a
change in the consistency of their stool, then those are things to think about
and start getting on top of rightaway. And it's usually just a treatment
of a different medication from your veterinarianand that stuff clears up pretty quick.
(05:15):
But it's also important to pay attention. The easiest way is prevention, obviously
in cases like that. So we'remaking sure we're cleaning up the stool around
the house, make sure there's nostanding water that's left out there, because
there's a lot of waterborne issues thatcan occur if you leave standing water laying
around your house, not just withdogs, but with humans also obviously,
(05:38):
because then you get mosquitoes. Youknow, you get different different types of
diseases from mosquitos and all that stuff. So clean up the area, clean
up the stool, keep it asclean as you can, and you probably
are not going to encounter those issuesif you can do that. One common
issue that's very common this time ofyear that we get calls of out all
(06:00):
the time? Is tapeworm? Okay? Okay? Tapeworm. Tapeworm is transmitted
by fleas, And what fleas dois when a tapeworm lays eggs, basically
the last segment in a tapeworm.A tapeworm is an internal parasite, an
internal segmented parasite that is most common. You'll find it most often in cats
(06:24):
and which we'll explain why here ina minute. But what happens is when
a tapeworm eggsack is shed in theground. Flees basically live off of the
and ingest the tapeworm eggs, whichwhich basically live in the flea's body,
okay, And then when that fleagets swallowed by an animal, those eggs
(06:44):
hatch out inside the animal that swallowedit, and that becomes the new tapeworm
host. And the tapeworm is aworm that lives in the intestinal track of
your dog or your cat and andactually can also be transmitted to people.
It's not really common unless you livein a very downtrodden type area with it
that's not very clean, but itcan be transmitted to people also. But
(07:09):
tapeworm is something that will just livein your pets intestinal system and just grow
and grow and grow and become aproblem and so forth and so on.
So it usually occurs in cats,why because cats groom themselves and they're more
likely to bite and swallow a fleaas they're picking it off their body than
(07:30):
a dog is. But it's notuncommon for dogs to have the issue either.
So how do we see that mostoften or not? The first trigger
that most people see is they'll seethe segments that look like rice of the
tapeworm in their animals stool or underneaththeir animal's tail. Okay, when you
(07:53):
start to see that, then it'sa pretty solid, pretty solid infection that's
going on with the tapeworm at thatpoint time, and it's time to get
medication from your veterinarian to get thattaken care of. But it's not something
life threatening obviously, unless again,if it's left to just kind of go
its own way, then yeah,it becomes a serious problem with stool,
(08:16):
the animal becomes anemic, all kindsof other things that occur in cases like
that with that tapeworm. But it'sreally common this time of year in the
area for obvious reasons, because thefleas start to kick up. So again,
prevention is the key in this case. So you keep the fleas away
from your pets, your chance thatyour pet will contract tapeworms drops drastically.
(08:37):
So flea prevention, tick prevention isobviously key at this time of year,
and we've always talked about that before. The best place to start looking for
that type of stuff is to talkto your veterinarian because not every flea and
tick preventative goes with every animal obviously, so they're all breed age weight specific
(08:58):
in cases like that. Now isthe time to think of that, and
you won't ever have to hear aboutthese three things that we talked about ever
again. Yeah, and you reallyneed to check your dogs if they're out
in any tall grass this time ofyear, because they're everywhere. I remember,
you know, just a year ago, just walking through some tall grass
going to a baseball game in lateApril, early May, and I had
(09:20):
like five on my leg, Yeah, in our area, especially because our
winner was basically non existent, rightand then all this water. Right,
Yeah, it's going to Ticks aregoing to be crazy, and it's not
so much the ones you find now. Now, ticks will not live on
your cat, but your cat makesan excellent bus to get them in the
house, as we have with us. Okay, so they'll be on the
(09:41):
cat for a little bit, thenthey'll drop off to find a regular host,
which usually means you are your dog. But flee and tick prevention obviously
is still very important to have onyour cat. Otherwise your cat just becomes
that sponge for all those parasites becausea lot of people they don't put it
on an indoor cat, right because, well, he doesn't go outside,
he's not going to have that issue. Well, ticks are very resourceful and
(10:03):
you'll find them all the time,especially this time of year. So it's
important to put that wall of preventionup as much as you can with you
with your your pets. Also,spraying treating your yard is a tremendous deal.
Now, most ticks they're hanging outin shadowed areas where your bushes and
your trees and those things are,and a lot of times those areas don't
(10:26):
get addressed. The grass gets addressed, but the trees and bushes in the
dark areas there don't get addressed.And that's actually where most of those ticks
are going to be hanging out,kind of like in your house. When
you're trying to address fleas in thehouse, we spray the carpet, but
we forget about underneath the chairs andthe furniture and everything else, and that's
where most of those bugs hang outtoo. So hit the dark areas.
(10:48):
That's where they like to live.Tackle the environment, tackle the tackle the
pet, and then watch on yourselfand you'll keep those things out of there.
But it's going to be crazy thisyear for bucks. Yeah, we
have a couple of past episodes ofthe Dog Professor podcast that specifically address fleas,
ticks preventative and all that stuff.Check those out if you're interested.
(11:11):
Once again, that is an evergreentype thing. It is there and the
information in there is still very relevantto what's going on in your household.
Now. People are in the areaand they would like to see what's going
on at the Edgefield Animal Care Center. I know you guys are probably already
booking tons of vacations for this summerfor boarding and training and things like that,
and you might as well get somevetwork done in there too. Yeah,
(11:33):
we're always looking looking for new clientsand new members of our family out
there. Edgefield Animal Care Center isbasically a full service pet care facility here
in the central Ohio area, wherea veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming,
training, daycare, all of thosethings, all of those services are available
and you can find out about allof those services, all our particulars on
(11:54):
how to get in contact with us, all the past episodes of the Dog
Professor podcast. You go right toour website. It's Edgefieldanimalcare dot com.
Some great stuff and like once again, if you're just finding the Dog Professor
podcast, push follow right there.Because every time a new one gets posted,
it doesn't matter where you are gettingyour podcasts, you're going to get
(12:15):
a notification that there's a new onefor you to check out.
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