‘Tis the season when we are spending more time talking about ticks during our exams. Ticks are arachnids and survive by feeding on the blood of animals and people. As they only can crawl (thank goodness; no jumping or flying), they typically grab onto passerby’s for a friendly pick-up and transportation to their next location or a handy blood meal.
We see ticks become active and ‘questing’ for hosts when it becomes over 4 degrees Celsius. Important to remember if you think tick season is only the summer months. With warmer chinooks in Calgary, we’ve had ticks come in on pets even in February. Some species of ticks like moist leaves on the ground and others like longer, dried grasses so it’s variable as to where our pets can scoop up an 8-legged friend on their travels.
Everyone thinks about Lyme Disease when we think about ticks. And for good reason, the tick species that carry Lyme disease is present throughout Canada, including Alberta. Other ticks species that Alberta hosts can carry other disease such as Rocky Mountain Spotted fever.
Whatever your reason for not wanting your pet to get ticks, a solid way to prevent them is by giving your pet a monthly preventative medication. By giving our pets monthly tick meds, such as Credelio, any tick that might take a bite will nearly immediately die and therefore not be able to transmit any potential disease to the pet or be brought home and be able to find a human host. The handy things about these meds are that they also are used to control skin mites, fleas and lice which make them an easy decision to add-in to your pet’s health routine.
A few awesome resources if you want to know more about ticks: