By Dr. Becker.... Beware Recommendations to Give Your Pet Year-Round Chemical Pest Preventives Unfortunately, as useful as the CAPC’s maps are, the Council (whose sponsors are veterinary drug manufacturers) insists on recommending year-round chemical preventives for both dogs and cats. This is the case regardless of where an animal lives, when tick season starts and ends, whether a given disease is prevalent in a given species (cats and heartworm, for example), and in apparent ignorance of the fact that ticks have developed resistance to pesticides thanks to decades of overuse. I routinely see dog patients that have been receiving monthly doses of pesticides for years, yet they still test positive for tick-borne illness. Clearly, these preventives aren’t as foolproof as their manufacturers would lead us to believe. They may reduce the number of ticks that attach to your dog, but those that do latch on can still transmit disease. Another reason tick-borne diseases are on the rise is that insects other than ticks – specifically mosquitoes -- have been found to transmit some of these potentially lethal infections.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 12:58:46 +0000
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