Health & Medical

A tick on your dog is not, in itself, an emergency, and the panic it causes is usually aimed at the wrong target. The tick is only a courier. What matters is whether it delivered anything while it was feeding, and that question does not get answered by staring at the bin you flicked it into. Pull the tick off properly, then start paying attention to the dog for the next few weeks.

Lyme disease, and why most infected dogs never look ill

Lyme, or borreliosis, is caused by Borrelia bacteria carried by Ixodes ticks, the small dark ones found in long grass, woodland edges, heather and deer country. In areas where the tick is common, a surprisingly large proportion of dogs will test positive for exposure at some point, and the great majority of them never become unwell. That single fact is behind most of the confusion owners run into after a screening test.

When Lyme does cause disease in a dog, the classic picture is a shifting lameness. One foreleg is sore for a couple of days, it settles, and then a week later a different leg is bad. Add a fever, a dog who is flat and off their food, swollen joints and enlarged lymph nodes and you have a case worth treating, usually with a course of doxycycline. The rarer and much more serious form is Lyme nephritis, a kidney condition with protein loss that can come on quickly; Labradors and Golden Retrievers appear over-represented. And no, dogs do not get the bullseye rash. That is a human sign, and waiting to see one on your dog is time wasted.

Anaplasma, Ehrlichia and Babesia

Anaplasma travels in the same Ixodes ticks as Lyme, so co-infection happens. It tends to hit harder and faster: fever, lethargy, joint pain, sometimes a drop in platelets that shows as bruising, nosebleeds or pinpoint red spots on the gums and belly.

Ehrlichia is mostly carried by the brown dog tick and is a bigger deal around the Mediterranean, in Africa and across warmer parts of the Americas. There is often an acute phase of fever and lethargy that seems to resolve, followed months or even years later by a chronic phase with weight loss, bleeding, eye problems and bone marrow suppression. It is a genuinely nasty long game.

Babesia is different again, a protozoal parasite rather than a bacterium, and it destroys red blood cells. Pale or yellow gums, dark urine, weakness and collapse are the signs to know, and some strains move fast enough to be life-threatening within a day or two. If your dog is pale and flat, that is an emergency call, not a morning-surgery booking.

The attachment window, and taking a tick off properly

Ticks do not transmit infection the instant they bite. For Lyme the bacteria generally need something in the region of a day or two of attachment before transmission becomes likely, while some other organisms can move across faster. That gap is the whole argument for running your hands over your dog after every walk in tick country: ears, under the collar, armpits, groin, between the toes, around the eyelids. A tick found and removed the same evening is a far smaller worry than one that has been quietly feeding since Sunday.

Remove it with a proper tick hook or fine-tipped tweezers, gripping right down at the skin rather than the swollen body. Hooks are twisted, tweezers are pulled steadily straight out. Never squeeze the body, never burn it, and never smother it in oil, petroleum jelly or alcohol, because a distressed tick regurgitates and that is precisely what you are trying to avoid. Clean the area afterwards. A small firm bump can persist for a week or two and is usually just local irritation. Then write the date on the calendar, because if your dog is unwell six weeks later that note is worth more to your vet than anything else you can offer.

Cats, test results and holiday souvenirs

Cats pick up ticks readily but appear far more resistant to Lyme, and clinical cases are rarely diagnosed. The urgent point about cats is the other direction entirely: many spot-on tick products for dogs contain permethrin, which is severely toxic to cats and can kill them. Never share a dog product with the cat, and check with your vet before treating a dog who sleeps curled up against one.

The in-clinic SNAP-style screening tests detect antibodies, which means they tell you a dog has been exposed, not that the dog is ill. A positive result in a healthy dog usually leads to a urine check for protein and a plan to monitor rather than an automatic prescription. Equally, a negative test soon after a bite proves little, because antibodies take weeks to appear.

Finally, mention travel. Dogs come home from Spain, Portugal, Greece and the south of France carrying ticks and infections that a local vet might not otherwise have on the list. Say where you have been, even if it was months ago.