Although winter temperatures can drop to unpleasant lows here in Kent, parasites can still make a meal out of your four-legged friend. From fleas and ticks, to heartworms and intestinal worms, these parasites are capable of transmitting disease year-round, despite low temperatures. 

If you’ve been considering skipping a dose or two of your pet’s parasite prevention during the winter, our Memorial Animal Hospital team will convince you of preventives’ year-round importance. Learn five reasons why you won’t want to skip a single dose.

#1: Parasites can cause serious or lifelong disease in pets

While fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes seem like no more than simple nuisances, these tiny pests can carry pathogens that can cause your pet serious or lifelong illness. Letting a single parasite slip through your pet’s defenses can result in such complications as:

  • Flea bite dermatitis — Pets can be hypersensitive to flea saliva, so a handful of flea bites can trigger an intensely itchy allergic reaction. Plus, flea infestations are notoriously difficult to eradicate from the environment, so you could be battling fleas for months.
  • Lyme disease — Lyme disease can cause several health issues in your pet, including lameness, fatigue, inappetence, and potentially kidney disease. Infection can be lifelong and may flare up if your furry pal becomes ill or stressed.
  • Heartworm disease — Mosquito-borne heartworms may take months to reach adulthood once they are inside your pet’s body, but these parasites begin causing irreversible damage to your pet’s vascular system immediately. While treatment is available for dogs, it is costly and harsh. No treatment is available for cats, and sudden death can result.
  • Intestinal parasite infections — Roundworms, whipworms, hookworms, and tapeworms can cause intestinal disease with varying severity. While tapeworm infections generally do not cause serious illness, a severe hookworm infection can result in death.

#2: Your pet can pass some parasites to you

The thought of creepy, crawly bugs lurking within your pet’s fur or body is enough to send chills down your spine, but spotting those pests crawling around on your own skin is much worse. If your furry pal has internal or external parasites, they can pass some to you, potentially causing you illness. Fleas can transmit murine typhus, cat scratch disease, and tapeworms, while ticks can pass on the same diseases, such as Lyme disease, to your pet and to you. Additionally, you can contract many intestinal parasites that infect your pet, so caution and good hygiene are critical for preventing infection.

#3: Parasites that infect pets are highly adaptable

Parasites are exceptionally hardy and can adapt to survive in unfavorable conditions, such as Ohio winters. While ticks and mosquitoes are generally thought of as summertime pests, these parasites can survive cold temperatures by hunkering down in vegetative debris or finding their way into sheds, garages, and homes. Intestinal parasite eggs, such as roundworms, can linger in the environment for months until conditions become ideal. 

As soon as the temperature rises above freezing, parasites can become active, seeking out their next meal. When the temperature drops, parasites can fall dormant again until the next warm spell. Year-round parasite prevention provides a consistent shield against both active and dormant parasites.

#4: Year-round parasite prevention for your pet saves you money

Treating your pet’s parasitic infection is often more expensive and challenging than preventing one. For example, a handful of adult fleas who hop aboard your pet can reproduce inside your home, creating a population explosion. The adult fleas you see on your pet, yourself, or your carpet are only 5% of the total flea population, with the other 95% comprising eggs, larvae, and pupae. The immature stages, particularly the pupal stage, are exceptionally hardy, and exterminating a flea infestation from your home can take a minimum of three months. The costs for flea prevention for every pet in your home, paired with a long-lasting environmental treatment, can quickly add up. Factor in treating a flea-allergic pet, and the cost of a flea infestation can be high.

Heartworm disease is another condition that costs a great deal to treat. For less than the cost of a monthly restaurant meal, you can defend your pet against heartworm disease. However, skipping a single parasite preventive dose can result in an invoice for several thousand dollars for our Memorial Animal Hospital team to diagnose, stage, and treat heartworm disease. In addition, if your pet develops heartworm disease, they will suffer irreparable circulatory system damage. If you do not administer year-round parasite preventives to your pet, you risk spending much more money on their treatment, which is not worth your pet’s health and safety.

#5: Parasite prevention is a cinch to administer to your pet

Numerous preventive options, such as topical treatments, oral medications, injections, and collars, make year-round parasite prevention convenient and easy to administer. Whether your pet is impossible to pill or does an upside-down wiggle on the carpet as soon as you apply topical prevention, our team can find the ideal preventive for them.

No matter your pet’s lifestyle, a parasite preventive is available to suit their needs. Shop our online pharmacy, or discuss options with our Memorial Animal Hospital team.