At the latest, when the first flowers bloom and spring awakens, they are also active again: the ticks. Therefore, tick protection is already important for your dog in the first days of spring. In Germany, especially the common wood buck, the alluvial forest tick, and the brown dog tick lurk in the tall grass and undergrowth on their popular victims, the dogs. A tick bite in dogs can transmit dangerous diseases such as TBE virus borreliosis, babesiosis, or ehrlichiosis anaplasmosis. The right tick protection, watchful eyes, and tools for emergencies will bring your dog and you safely through the ticking time. Read here about how you can protect your four-legged companion!
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Ticks and tick bites in dogs: how does the tick get on the dog?
As soon as it gets warm outside, the ticking time feared by dog owners begins. However, the ticks do not follow the calendar – they only need a pleasant outside temperature of about 7 °C to become active. If you live with your dog in a consistently warm area or go on holiday there, you have “tick time” all year round!
Ticks (Ixodida) belong to the class of arachnids and to the subclass of mites that feed parasitically on the blood and lymphatic fluid of their hosts. You can recognize them by a triangular flattened body with eight clearly visible longer legs and a small head with mouth tools. In terms of color, they vary between dark brown and reddish-brown, some tick species have a grain on the back or a so-called shield (“shield ticks”), and other species are shieldless (“leather ticks”).
If you take a closer look at a tick, you can clearly see its mouth tool, which is pincer-shaped at the end of the head. Hidden between these “pliers” is the actual piercing tool, with which the tick eats its blood meal and at the same time holds on to the victim. Correctly, the so-called “tick bites” actually tick bites.
The tick goes through several stages before it is fully grown: it first lays eggs outside the body of its host (e.g. in the dog bed), from which larvae then hatch. These develop into nymphs and in the end, they become adults, adult ticks.
In all three stages, the tick is an active parasite that bites dogs, humans and other animals in order to be able to develop. To detect the larvae or nymphs on the dog, it takes more than just good eyes, because these are just small dots on the skin of our four-legged friends. An adult tick, on the other hand, is relatively easy to spot with a little experience with the naked eye, provided that your dog’s fur allows a problem-free review.
If the tick has soaked up its blood meal, it cannot be overlooked with its gray, bulging body. Female soaked ticks reach the size of up to 3 cm.
Preferred places for ticks are forest edges, meadows, clearings, and parks. There they sit on high blades of grass, on low-hanging branches, and in bushes and stretch out their front legs equipped with special sensory organs for passing victims. Due to smell (sweat), vibration, and altered CO2 content of the air (breath), they are alerted and immediately fall on the potential victim. Certain species of ticks are active “hunters” and look for their victims.
Our dogs are particularly affected by the tick plague because they like to browse the tick area. But also humans and other animals such as cats, hedgehogs, birds, mice, rats, sheep, and much more.m. belong to the prey scheme of ticks. However, ticks are usually specialized in certain hosts, which they prefer to all others. This can be explained by the fact that ticks have developed a sophisticated anesthetic adapted to the immune system of their particular host.
Once fallen on the dog, the tick chooses a suitable place to sting. With preference they are thin-skinned and well-supplied areas such as the head, lumbar region, ears, and abdomen.
Our fear of these no-bloodsuckers is justified because tick bites in dogs and humans transmit more pathogens than any other type of parasite. There are around 900 tick species worldwide, of which only about 20 are native to Germany. However, dogs in this country have to do with three species of ticks: the woodblock, the alluvial forest tick, and the brown dog tick.
What happens with a tick bite?
After the tick has chosen a suitable place on the dog’s body, it scratches the skin with its mouth tool and pierces the resulting wound with its proboscis. There it sucks in the accumulating lymphatic, cell fluid, and blood. Shield ticks have a long proboscis with barbs with which they “bite” at their host. In this process, the tick immediately secretes a secretion with different active ingredients.
The secretion contains the following active ingredients:
An anesthetic to leave the suction process undetected.
An anti-inflammatory to block the host’s immune system.
An anticoagulant to prevent wound closure and ensure blood flow.
Ticks that do not have a long proboscis with barbs release a kind of adhesive substance with which they stick to the dog’s body.
In the tick, bodies can live with certain pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and other parasites that inhabit the tick as an intermediate host. The tick became infected with these roommates during one of their previous food intake from a sick victim. During their blood meal, the tick releases undigested blood residues from its intestines into the dog’s wound. Here, the mentioned pathogens change their host and can now lead to dangerous diseases in the organism of your dog.
A blood meal of an adult male tick lasts a few days and is relatively small since the male-only needs the blood for his diet while waiting for a female. Adult females, on the other hand, can suck at the puncture site for up to several weeks because they need more blood for egg production.
The risk of infection of the dog with the pathogens from the tick is given after about three hours. The tick needs this time to spit out the undigested remnants of its blood meal, including the pathogens, from its intestinal tract into the wound of the host. With every hour that the tick sucks on the dog’s blood, the risk of infection increases. Therefore, remove the tick immediately as soon as you have spotted it on your dog! Read on here.
Tick species and diseases on the rise: What to fear with the tick bite?
Pathogens that the ticks can transmit to your dog with their saliva are to be taken very seriously, as they cause dog diseases, which are among the serious canine diseases. For dogs in Central Europe, the most dangerous are the wood buck, the alluvial forest tick and the brown dog tick. The latter loves it warm and dry and she loves dogs.
The brown dog tick and its pathogens
For a long time, the brown dog tick was considered “only” native to the Mediterranean. And the specimens introduced into Germany were considered unviable. This assessment has proven to be wrong in recent years. The brown dog tick is on the rise due to global warming and the high number of introduced dogs and assimilated in many places in Germany and Switzerland.
The brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus) is continuously reddish-brown, about 1-3 mm small, fully soaked females reach the size of up to 1.2 cm.
The entire cycle from larva (about 0.5 mm) to nymph (about 1 mm) to adult ticks takes place on the dog’s body. The ground and dog berths serve as egg laying. The dog ticks are very mobile and wander through the living rooms of their hosts to “hibernate” there. They survive up to a year without a blood meal.
The dog tick can transmit canine ehrlichiosis (Ehrlichia canis), anaplasmosis (Canine cyclic thrombocytopenia) and babesiosis of the species Babesia canis vogeli. All three belong to the dreaded dog diseases and now occur throughout Europe at different levels of spread.
Ehrlichiosis – also known as “tick fever” and “Mediterranean disease” of dogs – is a disease with bacteria of the Rickettsia type. They attack white blood cells (leukocytes) in the dog’s organism and block the immune system, which cannot attack them. The symptoms of ehrlichiosis are very diverse, they begin with a so-called acute phase, which in two to four weeks passes into a subclinical, asymptomatic (silent) stage and then into a symptom-strong chronic stage.
Pay attention to the following symptoms of the acute phase (up to three weeks incubation period after tick bite):
Fever and fever flare-ups
Vomit
Fatigue
Swelling of the lymph nodes
Rare muscle twitching
Shortness of breath/heavy breathing
Since ehrlichiosis has a silent stage, it is not always detected in time and tends to pass into a chronic disease. Babesiosis of the species Babesia canis vogeli is relatively mild and is still rarely found in Central Europe, but is widespread as a cross-infection with ehrlichiosis in the Mediterranean, France, North Africa and South America. For babesiosis see under Alluvial Forest Tick.
Anaplasmosis has so far been counted as ehrlichiosis. However, recent research has shown that this disease is bacterial pathogens of the Anaplasma type. The symptoms are similar to ehrlichiosis.
Sometimes the dogs show no visible symptoms except fatigue. The Anaplasma bacteria attack special white blood cells: the granulocytes. The disease is exacerbated by cross-infections with babesiosis and ehrlichiosis.
There are no vaccines for all three diseases. Prophylaxis is carried out exclusively by tick repellents.
The common woodbuck and its pathogens
The common woodbuck (Ixodes ricinus) is slightly larger than the brown dog tick and transmits pathogens of Lyme disease, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and anaplasmosis.
While dogs very rarely develop TBE, Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in dogs in our latitudes.
Lyme disease is caused by the bacteria of the genus Borrelia, the incubation period is between two weeks and five months. Symptoms of Lyme disease are nonspecific at the initial stage and gradually worsen.
Pay special attention to:
Recurrent fever, lack of appetite and fatigue (early stage)
Joint pain and joint inflammation
Muscle
Lameness on front and rear legs
Heart problems
The leading symptom is the so-called “wandering redness”, a red yard around the puncture site, but this is rarely perceived in the dense coat of the dog (or with dark skin pigmentation).
In severe cases, neurological damage may remain, or the disease takes a chronic course. In some cases, it ends fatally for the dog.
Although there is a Lyme disease vaccine, it covers only a few of the possible Borrelia bacterial strains. It is considered insufficient and requires additional tick prophylaxis anyway.
The alluvial forest tick and its pathogens
The alluvial forest tick (Dermacentor reticulatus) is slightly larger than the woodbuck, and can be easily distinguished by the whitish marbled back shield with a red-orange outer edge. It transmits the causative agent of babesiosis, Babesia canis canis, which lives in red blood cells (erythrocytes) and destroys them. The first sign of this disease is therefore anemia (anemia). Babesiosis was originally a “Mediterranean disease”, but the pathogens are already native to Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. The pathogen is considered to be particularly pathogenic. Babesiosis is also known as “dog malaria”. If left untreated, it leads to the death of the dog.
The symptoms are initially non-specific:
High fever or fever flare-ups
General fatigue and weakness
Pale-yellowish mucous membranes
Red- to green-brown urine
Renal failure
Digestive and circulatory disorders
Oedema
Disorders of the central nervous system
Hint
The advice content cannot replace a visit to the veterinarian. This information should not be used as the sole basis for health-related decisions. In case of diseases of animals and use of drugs, a veterinarian should be consulted. Dr. Fressnapf’s veterinary team will be happy to help you quickly, easily and above all stress-free during an online visit.
When the misfortune happened: tick pliers, tick hooks, tick sling
It is difficult for a dog owner to keep his four-legged darling from stroming in the undergrowth, on meadows and under bushes, especially since these places are the natural territory of the dog and mean great joie de vivre for him. Therefore, in addition to precaution, a thorough aftercare after each walk, especially in the months of March to October, is necessary.
Aftercare includes the thorough scanning of the dog’s fur for parasites. It is best to brush your dog out completely and then fry him with a white, slightly damp towel. Keep an eye out for crawling brown to reddish-brown tiny specimens or already sucked specimens on the head, abdomen, groin, ears and do not forget the spaces between the toes. If you have discovered a tick that has already been sucked in, then use special tools for the professional removal of the parasite. Remove the tick immediately. In the specialized trade many different tick tools are offered such as .B tick pliers or tick sling. Experts recommend the tick hook, which comes in two sizes. With it, you can remove the tick effectively and painlessly even on sensitive parts of the dog’s body.
Holidays with the dog – tick protection abroad
If you want to travel abroad with your dog, you should protect your four-legged friend from parasites and pathogens that are common there. In this interview, Prof. von Samson-Himmelstjerna explains what these are and how you can protect your dog from them.
Symptoms after a tick bite in the dog:
Bouts of fever
Vomit
Anorexia
Exhaustion
Weight loss
As alarming symptoms are added:
Yellow to bloody urine
Movement disorders (ataxias) and changing symptoms of lameness
Aching legs
Bleeding and edema
With these symptoms, you should immediately consult a veterinarian with your four-legged friend.
