Photo by Cynthya Porter
Willow, owned by Richard Shield, looks doleful as she visits the vet for her puppy vaccines. Veterinary technician Michele Melbostad and Veterinarian Ken Chaffin at Companion Animal Care are advising owners like Shield to consider Lyme disease vaccines due to the area’s uncommon rate of infection. |
There is danger lurking in the grass, even in downtown Winona, even as the nights turn frigid, but unsuspecting residents probably never dreamed it is there.
Deer ticks. The kind that carry Lyme disease. They live in the woods, and it’s too cold for them anyway, right?
Wrong. And it’s a dangerous misconception to have.
For city-dwellers deer ticks have long seemed like a nonissue as long as pets and people are not romping in the woods and grasslands of rural Winona.
That may be true for large metropolitan areas with miles of concrete separating them from wildlife. But such is not the case in Winona where an encroaching deer and deer mouse population is channeling infected ticks right downtown.
Just ask Veterinarian Ken Chaffin at Companion Animal Care who saw between 20 and 30 cases a month of Lyme infected dogs over the summer, city dogs whose farthest venture was to the lawn outside to do their business.
Or just ask this reporter, whose own city-dwelling dog is at home suffering greatly with Lyme disease after his owner bought into all those misconceptions and skipped the vaccine and preventative treatments as unnecessary.
It’s a common story, Chaffin said, and one he even bought into a few years ago when Lyme disease was primarily thought to be for hunting dogs, hunters, and other outdoor enthusiasts.
“I didn’t always recommend the vaccine for city dogs,” Chaffin said, “but then I started to see more and more dogs coming in who live right in town, bichons and poodles who never go in the woods. Now I recommend it for all of them.” Chaffin, a dog owner himself, didn’t think the vaccine was necessary for his own pet, but a stream of infected city dogs and their bewildered owners taught him otherwise.
Perhaps because of climate, the Mississippi River Valley is a hotbed for Lyme disease cases in both people and pets. A Minnesota map that shows a black dot for each confirmed case is solid black from a region just south of the Twin Cities through the Winona area, Chaffin said, and it’s the misconceptions that keep the black dots coming.
The first is that Lyme disease is rare in people and pets because few deer ticks actually carry the bacteria. That may be true for the U.S. population as a whole, but in this region it is anything but.
The second is that deer ticks only live in the woods on deer. The fact is they can live anywhere on any mammal, often carried by mice and other creatures that make their way into populated areas.
The third is that people will notice the tick on them. But at the size of the head of a pin, they are very seldom spotted, especially on pets.
Humans do have the frequently seen telltale sign of a bulls eye rash where they were bitten, but not always. Dogs sometimes just seem a little sick for a few days, with the real trouble starting weeks or months later.
One of the greatest misconceptions is that ticks go dormant by mid-fall for the winter. The fact is, Chaffin said, that he advises people to continue tick prevention well into December. “If the temperature is above 35 degrees, they are mobile,” he said. And mobile means looking for a host, even if the temperature rises for just a few days.
For reasons unknown to science, cats appear to be immune to the bacteria that creates Lyme disease, though they can be bitten by ticks.
But for people and dogs, the effects of the bacteria, if left untreated, can be devastating.
Shortly after being bitten, a person may show a bulls eye rash and have flu-like symptoms that include fever, chills, headache, muscle and joint pain and fatigue.
But left unchecked, within days or weeks those symptoms can evolve to facial paralysis, irregular heart beat, weakness or numbness and pain. Untreated over the course of weeks or months, arthritis, nervous system problems and persistent weakness and fatigue can plague victims, with the effects long-lasting even after treatment is sought.
But for dogs, untreated Lyme disease can be a death sentence.
Early symptoms can be deceiving, Chaffin said, as a dog might appear mildly stiff, sore or unwell but not sick enough to cause considerable worry. Sometimes they exhibit pain in one leg, then a different leg the next day, a hallmark of the inflammation Lyme disease is causing in their joints.
Sometimes the dog becomes acutely sick right away, other times they seem to bounce back and then gradually get sick over the ensuing weeks and months. Ultimately, they will often stop eating, experience increasing pain with movement and eventually go into kidney failure and die.
Once diagnosed, antibiotics are a highly effective treatment for people and dogs alike, particularly in cases where infection is caught early.
For disease that has lingered undetected in people, longer courses of antibiotics may reverse the symptoms. For dogs with infections not detected early, the prognosis is not good. Permanent arthritis can be a complication for dogs of any age with advanced Lyme disease, and dogs already in renal failure face the darkest prognosis of all.
For people, a vaccine that was on the market a few years ago was pulled off after lackluster effectiveness was reported.
But the dog vaccine has 90% effectiveness, Chaffin said, and even dogs falling in the 10% margin of failure for the vaccine face greatly reduced symptoms easy to treat.
Other tick prevention methods can be marginally successful, but are best paired with the vaccine for the best results.
Though misinformation about Lyme disease keeps some dogs from getting vaccinated, the cost of the vaccine will not. A yearly dose is under $20, pocket change compared to the money spent treating a dog afflicted with the disease and the misery of watching it suffer.
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