"Caring for pets and the people who love them"

For the past decades, the staff at Lakeland Veterinary Hospital has recommended all dogs living in the lakes area be on heartworm prevention six months a year, starting June 1st and ending November 1st. Heartworm disease is spread by mosquitoes and six months of treatment will prevent infection in Minnesota (as long as your dog does not travel out of the state during winter). The heartworm prevention we recommend also kills intestinal parasites.

Several years ago, we switched to a more accurate technique to screen dogs for intestinal parasites (called fecal centrifugation). This method allows us to find parasite infections that we were previously missing. We have seen some surprising trends:

1) Ten percent of dog samples processed during the winter had intestinal parasite infections! The most common parasite was the roundworm, which can infect people, especially children. Most of these dogs have no obvious clinical signs.

2) We are also seeing hookworms and whipworms. Hookworms can infect people, too. Whipworms can be difficult to treat since they require specific medications to kill them.

3) We are finding more winter intestinal parasite infections than we expected.

There are several reasons we are seeing these changes. First of all we are finding infections that we previously missed. Secondly, by stopping deworming for 6 months yearly, we are giving the parasites a chance to establish infections in your pets. And finally, roundworm and hookworm eggs can survive in frozen feces. During the winter many dogs will eat frozen feces (dog, deer, cat, rabbit, etc.). As we get into the first part of the thaw, dogs will also find and eat rodents that are tunneling through the snow.

To keep your pet and your family safe from parasites in the lakes area, we need to deworm your dog throughout the year. The easiest way to do this is to give deworming medication year round. These medications are safe and effective. We now recommend products that kill whipworms. We are giving these medications not just for heartworms (which are a problem in the summer) but also for the intestinal parasites that infect one out of ten dogs during the winter.

The best care we can offer is to prevent diseases before they have a chance to cause problems. We have safe and effective drugs that can easily kill these parasites. There is no reason why a dog should have a preventable infection. Not only are we protecting your pet, we are also protecting your family from exposure to potentially dangerous parasite infections.

For more information, visit www.capcvet.org.

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