Lyme Disease Awareness Month

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month, and, as I’ve written about and will continue to write about, experts predict more Lyme in people and dogs in 2017. But, there is good news for dogs:  There are more options for preventing and detecting Lyme (as well as other nasty tick diseases) for dogs than there are for people.

In people, testing isn’t the most effective (and, doctors rarely even think about tick disease). We should always inspect ourselves and our children for ticks. And to prevent ticks in the first place, we’re limited to wearing long sleeves and pants and using insecticides.

For dogs, we can use a preventive product recommended by a veterinary professional (ideally one with a quicker kill), and, where there is endemic Lyme, consider the Lyme vaccine. Of course, we can also easily (not not always effectively with all that fur) check our dogs for ticks.

Also for dogs, there’s the IDEXX 4DX Snap test, which tests for Lyme exposure (in clinically and sub-clinically infected dogs), exposure to Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Anaplasma platys (tick diseases), detection of antibodies to Ehrlichia canis or Ehrlichia ewingii (more tick disease), and canine heartworm (spread by mosquitoes).

With the options available to us, why not do all we can to protect our dogs from Lyme?