It’s happening—peak tick season is coming up, and while year-round prevention is always important, it is especially crucial around this time of the year to keep your best friend protected from all those nasty ticks.
What exactly do ticks do to your pet? First off, ticks are blood-sucking parasites that feed off warm-blooded animals, and they have a proclivity for dogs. To protect your pet from ticks, it’s important to understand their ways.
Ticks are usually found in wooded, grassy areas and cling onto the edges of leaves, grass, and twigs—this helps them hop onto potential hosts (your pet) when they pass by. Once a tick successfully lands on a host, it will snake its way to a warm, dark crevice to attack and then feed. These locales include ears, armpits, belly folds, and other related areas. Ticks attach to hosts with their head and jaw, meaning they burrow slightly beneath the skin.
The thing that is so dangerous about ticks isn’t just their blood-sucking ways—there are many dangerous tick-borne diseases that can cause illness and even death to hosts. Plus, some of these diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can affect humans, too. Lyme disease is a common ailment associated with ticks, and its symptoms include:
- Fever
- Lethargy
- Loss of appetite
- Joint pain
It’s always a good idea to constantly check your pets for ticks on a daily basis. This can be done while you are playing with your best friend or grooming them. However, the best defense against these pests is always prevention.
At [HOSPITAL NAME], we have a variety of products for dogs and cats, which will help rid your pet of these nuisances. While there are a lot of different options, we will happily walk you through each product to determine which one best fits your best friend.
Tick season is coming up sooner rather than later, therefore we highly encourage you to schedule an appointment with us today by calling 999-9999-9999 or scheduling online [link]. Together we can help your pets stay happy and healthy by keeping them tick free!