Dog Disease Symptom
What are the symptoms of lyme disease in dogs?
How soon do the symptoms start appearing? Is it treatable? And what other diseases can dogs get from ticks? Symptoms of those?
Do you realize what you just asked takes about a full week of lectures in a college Infectious Disease course?
As someone who has taken such a course, I’ll try to summarize:
In a lab, Lyme disease symptoms can take 2 to 5 months to appear after exposure. The most common symptoms are lameness, loss of appetite and fever. In some dogs, Lyme can affect the heart and cause heart failure, or the central nervous system and cause uncoordination or weakness. And in a few rare cases, Lyme disease can cause a fatal kidney inflammation and shutdown (Lyme-associated nephritis).
Symptoms of Lyme are vague. A dog can get any, all, or some of them. And once Lyme disease causes problems, it can be difficult to cure completely (that’s why human physicians commonly prescribe medication after tick bites – you can cure Lyme if treated right away.) Once a dog is sick, the symptoms often do get much better with antibiotics. But sometimes the disease just hides and the dog relapses later. Or the dog may be perfectly healthy the rest of it’s life – there’s no guarantee.
But not all dogs who test positive for Lyme will get sick, either. Your vet will guide you in the proper course of testing and treatment. The best thing for you to do is prevention:
1) Keep your dog on a tick preventative (Frontline Plus kills ticks; Advantix, Vectra 3D, or the Preventic collar repel and kil ticks) all year round (there is some stage of some species of tick active all year round).
2) Avoid tick habitats as much as possible. Mow your grass, and walk your dog on a leash where he stays on the sidewalk.
3) If he’s been in the woods or fields, check your dog for ticks daily. Remove any you find. (If you like, take it to the vet for identification. Only certain species carry certain diseases. The vet can also send it to a lab to see if the tick had Lyme, or he can test your dog – and repeat the test in 30 days if appropriate).
4) If you live in a Lyme-endemic area (like the Northeast or Great Lakes US), and your pet is commonly exposed to woods or fields, consider getting him vaccinated against Lyme disease.
Some other diseases that are commonly carried by ticks include:
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Ehrlichia canis
Anaplasma phagocytophilum (also used to be called Ehrlichia equi)
Anaplasma platys
Babesia
These diseases have varried symptoms. Most can cause fever (but that is not always seen). Some cause vascultis (which you see as a spotty rash and/or warm edema or swelling). Some cause lameness like Lyme. Some cause hemolytic anemia (you’d see signs of blood loss like weakness or pale gums or sometimes you might notice pink urine or a yellow tint to gums, eyes and/or skin). Some cause decreased platelets (you might see bruising, a spotty rash or unusual bleeding).
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