What intestinal parasites are we looking at, especially when we talk about looking through a fecal test?
The biggest, most common ones we're looking at are hookworms, roundworms, tapeworms, whipworms, coccidia, and giardia. Those are the most common that we look at. I know there's a lot. Don't watch Monsters Inside Me if you don't want to know more about parasites, but there are many, many out there. Other internal parasites that we often look and test for is heartworms.
Dr. Leigh Samanowitz (Dr. Sam)
The University Animal Clinic
How do you get rid of them?
That's a big question we hear about. Most internal parasites, both heartworms and intestinal parasites, is something that you can prevent. There are two types of prevention: injectable and oral. ProHeart is our injectable of choice. It's one shot once a year and it's amazing at preventing both internal parasites, intestinal and heartworms. Then, there's oral prevention. There's a bunch of different products on the market and they all work great when they're prescribed by your veterinarian. These are going to work against both internal parasites as a deworming once a month and against heartworms. The biggest thing is it is every 30 days, the oral ones, that is the lifespan of the microfilaria, which is what we're killing.
What are microfilaria?
They're the little microscopic worms that are in the blood from heartworms. There's a whole other video we can do on that. If you want to know more about those, leave a comment below and I can do another video. But I have done one in the past. If you search pretty far down there, you can find it about heartworms because they are fascinating and there's a whole lot of information about them.
What about external parasites?
Because these are also super important. Things like fleas, ticks, mites, those are really important. We see them a lot here in Florida, especially fleas. They run rampant here in our warm climate. We don't have a winter that kills them, so they are all year round. And the same for internal parasites, I might add, for heartworms. We want you to treat and prevent all year round because we do see them all the time, our mosquitoes.
But how do you prevent them?
Very similarly, oral flea and tick prevention is what we have right now on the market. There'll be futures of injectables, I'm sure, coming soon, but right now it's an oral prevention once a month and that is going to prevent your fleas and ticks. Talk to your veterinarian. There are certain conditions like seizures that we don't want to use these for, so make sure that you talk to your veterinarian about prescribing these, but we love them in Florida as an oral. Topicals can be really difficult. There's a lot of stipulations like user error if we don't apply them properly, if we bathe before or after incorrectly. We can have them be less efficacious versus oral, to an oral treat. Most dogs like it. It's very easy and it lasts the whole 30 days at the same efficacy, which is amazing.
If you're worried about parasites, it's always better to find out sooner than later. Bring your pet in, we can look for fleas, and then we often will recommend treatment if we don't see them, they can be a little sneaky. Heartworms is a very easy test. We only need three drops of blood and we can find out if your pet has heartworms. If you've missed a dose, it may not show up positive for up to six months. Again, that's that deep dive on heartworms that we can do, but just know that we may test now, we may repeat it six months from your missed dose of prevention.
Another big question we always get asked is, is ringworm a parasite?
Actually, ringworms are not a parasite. Ringworms aren't worms. It's kind of a name that they've gotten because of that circular patch that they develop, but actually ringworm is a fungal infection. And so we actually test for that with a fungal culture and treat with antifungal medications.
Early detection and diagnosis in parasites, this is so important. The sooner, especially with things like heartworms, the less damage we can have to the heart. Same with intestinal parasites, the less damage we can have to the intestine. So the sooner we can treat, the better and super important to catch those early.
If you have more questions about flea, tick, heartworm, please leave those in the comments below. Please give us a call. If you want to schedule an appointment to have your pet tested for heartworms, to have us check for fleas, dermatitis, all of those things that go along with it, especially here in Florida, the allergy capital of the world. Let us know. We are here for you.
If you have any other questions, please give us a call at (941) 253-5218. You can also email us at staff@uacvet.com and we will get back to you as soon as we are able. Don't forget to follow us on social media: Facebook and Instagram