I debated writing about this now since it’s an ongoing situation with a very unclear outcome, but that’s medicine. We also don’t have a lot of camelid content on the blog, and there’s an infectious disease component to this case, so figured it was worthwhile.
Mickey (photo right) is an older male alpaca, part of
Another emerging infectious disease issue for the Ontario dog population appears to be lungworms. As you’d probably guess, lungworms are parasites that live in (or near) the lungs. A variety of different types of lungworms exist, but most concerns around here relate to two.
In Canada, both the fox lungworm (Crenosoma vulpis) and
Echinococcus multilocularis is causing increasing concern in Ontario lately (amongst the few people who are aware of it, at least) as there’s evidence that it may have become established in the province. This parasite is a tapeworm harboured by canids (including both domestic dogs and wild ones like coyotes and foxes), and can cause serious
I had a question the other day about roundworms in feral cats. Specifically, how do you deworm a group of cats that you don’t handle and may not be able to catch? There are a few possible approaches, from trapping and treating (oral or topical) to trying to get a dewormer into them via food.
The latest Worms & Germs infosheet, all about Lyme disease and ticks, is now available on the Resources – Pets page. Although it’s getting colder and occasionally snowy up in Ontario, there are lots of parts of North America where ticks are active all year round. It’s particularly important for any "snowbirds" who may
An article by Dr. Ann Britton of British Columbia’s Animal Health Centre (AHC) on the blog site healthywildlife.ca is another reminder of the perils of raccoon poop. Over a 2 year period, 17 raccoons were submitted to the AHC for necropsy, and 12 (71%) of them were infected with Baylisascaris procyonis, the
The latest Worms & Germs infosheets are all about some common and not-so-common members of a particular group of parasites: tapeworms. There are a number of different groups and species of tapeworms that can infect pets, people, and other domestic animals, and sorting through which is which can be tricky, so we created a Tapeworms
I grew up with cats, and they were all indoor/outdoor. I never really thought about it since that was just the way things were done. Yet, as much as he’d like to convince us otherwise, our current cat Finnegan is an indoor cat. There are a lot of reasons for this.
One reason for keeping
While this morning’s -7C temperature and snow don’t exactly make me think about sandboxes or wandering around barefoot, warmer weather will presumably occur someday and the risk of outdoor exposure to parasites will start up again.
Since nothing says summer like hookworms, here’s a new info sheet all about hookworms, including information on cutaneous
The new puppy, now named Merlin, is keeping things busy around here. (Note to self: avoid getting a new puppy during miserable weather. Standing in pouring, driving rain at 4 AM is not fun. Okay, enough whining.)
Yesterday, I wrote about the new puppy’s deworming plan. One thing I forgot to mention
