Dr. Lucas Kandefer says today we are going to be talking about intestinal parasites and different parasites our do pets pick up and carry often throughout their whole lives.
Dr. Kandefer says when we talk about de-worming a lot of people think it is something with our kittens and puppies when we first get them. He says we know they are born with worms, and we try and knock those numbers down first thing because they are all going to be suffering from those if we don’t make sure we deal with them well early on. The problem with that is that they all end up getting those worms because they get passed down from their mother so when we talk about it all pets will have them in their body their entire lives and the mothers may be compromised when they are pregnant and that’s how they spread and it come back out when that happens so all pets have potential to start producing those worms anytime in their life.
Dr. Kandefer says the thing we run into a lot of the times is that people don’t continue with the de-worming medication. They think, I’ll look at the pet’s stool and I don’t see any worms so it’s not a problem. Dr. Kandefer says the biggest issue is that all the worms we are trying to manage, they produce microscopic eggs so you won’t see any signs of that outside of sometimes you will see GI problems with your pets, sometimes not.
The biggest issue is some are contagious to people. Dr. Kandefer says round worms are one that we deal with really often and that is something that children are unfortunately the biggest people that will run into this problem. He says cats will defecate in a sand box and kids will pick it up from that and just using poor hygiene.
Dr. Kandefer says outside of that, we do see hook worms and that’s an issue where your dog may use the backyard as they typically do, and when you or your kids are walking around with your bare feet, you can pick those up through your skin so using a good deworming can make the difference
The last one Dr. Kandefer talks about is Heartworm, He says in the past it wasn’t something we dealt with on a regular basis; it was more of a southern disease and now we are seeing more and more often in this are we are having a lot of pets that are dealing with this. Heartworm is carried by mosquitoes. He says we used to see in the area maybe three to five per year and now we are seeing three to five per clinic and that number is only going up. Dr. Kanderfer says it is very difficult to treat, very expensive to treat and can have devasting effects. Prevention is very important to keep your pets safe.
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