Lyme Disease Awareness Month

Lyme disease is an infection than can affect both dogs and cats all over the country. Caused by ticks (usually the deer tick and American dog tick in the Ridgefield area), this disease can cause lameness and even kidney failure if left untreated. This is why it’s so important to protect your pet with a preventative and to have them tested annually. If your pet tests positive, we can administer treatment—ideally before any clinical symptoms are seen.

Quarry Ridge Animal Hospital has a number of tick prevention products available in house. These include monthly topicals, such as Frontline, Advantix/Advantage, and Vectra. Topicals are designed to sit in the oil glands or on the hair shaft and are applied between the shoulder blades. We also offer spray products, including Vetri-Repel, Avon Skin-So-Soft, and Frontline. For cats, we offer Preventic, Seresto, and Breakaway collars. And if you or your pet isn’t a fan of the topical or spray preventatives, consider Nexgard, the first chewable monthly flea and tick control tablet.

In addition to using a preventative product for Lyme, we recommend that you have your pet screened for tick borne diseases at least once a year. In addition to Lyme, some of the most prevalent diseases in our area include Anaplasma and Ehrlichia Canis. Our screening test is a color change test that screens for tick borne diseases and even heartworm disease. If a test comes back positive, we typically recommend following up with a titer, which gives an actual number that can be tracked to ensure successful treatment.

Contact Quarry Ridge Animal Hospital today at (203) 438-8878 to schedule an appointment, so we can determine which preventative product is best for your pet.