Prevent or avoid ticks on pet skin
More about Ticks
Ticks are ectoparasites, living by feeding on the blood of mammals, birds, sometimes reptiles, and amphibians.
What do ticks look like?
Ticks are small blood-sucking bugs. They can range in size from small as a pin’s head to as large as a pencil eraser. Ticks have eight legs. They’re arachnids, which means they are related to spiders.
The different kinds of ticks can range in color from shades of brown to reddish-brown and black.
As they take in more blood, ticks grow. At their largest, ticks can be about the size of a marble.
After a tick has been feeding on its host for several days, they become engorged and fell off their host. Females are larger and suck their full-body full of blood showing a huge difference in size, with the smaller male ticks with a harder body.
What is the danger of ticks?
Ticks can cause different diseases in your pet, so-called blood born diseases as the tick sucks blood from its host and “spits” blood parasites back into the bloodstream as well as anti-blood clotting proteins. The disease that most people are familiar with is called Lyme disease. Lyme disease can cause arthritis and swelling of your dog’s joints, resulting in painful lameness. Besides Lyme disease (caused by Borrelia Burgdorferi) ticks are also host to Ehrlichia, Babesia, Anaplasma, Bartonella, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever (Rickettsiae), and others, not all of these diseases are noticed in the UAE.
Ticks riding on their host into your house or car can become a source of infection for you or your family as they are not as species-specific and do adhere to humans as well. Besides the above-mentioned blood born infections, ticks can also cause allergies to the proteins supporting ticks to suck blood from their host. The most common tick in the UAE is Ixodes Ricinus, so-called after the Ricinus beans it so much resembles.
Learn how to prevent and avoid ticks. Contact us or call our clinic at 04 340 8601 for parasite treatment or skin infection remedies.
Created by Rafael Recto, Jico Pangilinan, and Camila Sousa
