Another vet question

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

Got up this morning with the dogs and noticed a bump on Taffy's right leg while petting her. It was a brown dog tick half full of blood. Dang I hate them things!! I checked her all over and thats all I could find. I thought I better check Tucker my puppy and sure enough he hand one that had just attached to his chest but was not full of blood. I called the vet again and they had me come right in. For my older dog he said to start giving her Simparica. For Tucker he said all we could do was use a tick spray. They are both on Revolution also.

Now back tracking a bit. I had noticed for a few months Taffy had on her chest what appeared to be a blood blister. Never really got any bigger but I was aware of it. A couple of days back I was brushing and combing her and it broke open. I got the clippers out and shaved her hair all around it and put betadine solution on it. I have been watching and cleaning it until today thinking she was going into the vet next week, I would ask about it then. It keeps filling back up with blood. Well I got to ask him today. He said he did not know what it was but keep doing what you are doing and if it don't clear up in a few days we will have to cut it out. I attached a picture of her. Has anyone seen anything like this? I thought it might have been a tick bite but he did not think so. 

[Sue R]

I wonder if you could have an abnormality in a small capillary? I'm sure the vet will be able to diagnose and, hopefully, easily deal with this. 

Best wishes!

[GentleLake]

Could be a small foreign body or a growth. If it doesn't clear up removing it and possibly having it tested to see if it's malignant is probably the best thing.

As for tick treatments, I haven't used many of them but have had great success with Seresto collars.

Wishing you the best.

[urge to herd]

I've had great success for both fleas & ticks w/Simparica. With the Revolution you're double dosing them, I'd re-check w/the vet to make sure it's appropriate.

RE: ticks. The ticks have to bite in order to get the Simparica into their little arachnid blood system. Then they kind of dehydrate and mostly fall off the dog. At least that's been my experience. So you'll wind up with tiny, flat black things that have even tinier legs sticking out here and there on the floor or the dogs bedding. They are smaller than a sesame seed. THAT takes a little getting used to. I've got light-colored carpet & linoleum, so they're easy to see. Every now and then I'd pull one off if I found it before it actually dropped off by itself, but mostly they've dropped off Gibbs. 

Ruth & Gibbs

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

8 minutes ago, urge to herd said:

I've had great success for both fleas & ticks w/Simparica. With the Revolution you're double dosing them, I'd re-check w/the vet to make sure it's appropriate.

RE: ticks. The ticks have to bite in order to get the Simparica into their little arachnid blood system. Then they kind of dehydrate and mostly fall off the dog. At least that's been my experience. So you'll wind up with tiny, flat black things that have even tinier legs sticking out here and there on the floor or the dogs bedding. They are smaller than a sesame seed. THAT takes a little getting used to. I've got light-colored carpet & linoleum, so they're easy to see. Every now and then I'd pull one off if I found it before it actually dropped off by itself, but mostly they've dropped off Gibbs. 

Ruth & Gibbs

The vet said revolution and simparica are ok together just make sure you wait a week between the doses. Revolution is a good heart worm preventive which I have to have also.  Revolution seems to kill ticks the same way except it only targets one variety of tick I believe. I have seen so far the American dog tick and the brown dog tick around my home. He said that Simparica is much more effective and kills 5 different kinds of ticks.

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

2 hours ago, Sue R said:

I wonder if you could have an abnormality in a small capillary? I'm sure the vet will be able to diagnose and, hopefully, easily deal with this. 

Best wishes!

Sue.......when I was looking for ideas on what it might be I ran across what you are saying some were. It did show a picture and it seemed to look like my picture. 

[GentleLake]

24 minutes ago, NW_MONTANA_BC said:

...heart worm preventive which I have to have also...

I was surprised when I read that so went back to take a look at the parasite map I liked to a couple days ago. Was surprised to see MT at a higher incidence rate than many of the Mid-Atlantic states, then discovered that you can click on the state and get prevalence by county.

It looks like there's actually no information at all for most of the counties in MT, but there are 2 at supposedly high risk, while most with data are at low risk. I wonder if that's skewing the profile for the state.

I'm an a low incidence state and a low incidence county. Several vets have told me that the HW cases they've seen are dogs being imported from southern states where incidence is high. It's actually very few local dogs.

You also have to consider the temperatures that are necessary for HW to develop. Where I live I've tracked temps this summer. If it dips down to 57F, HW can't develop in the mosquitoes. It wasn't till the end of July that it was consistently warm enough for HW to develop here, yet the vets still try to sell me preventative. When I start questioning it, they admit that it's an extremely low risk here, and at that it may be only for a month or 2 at most.

This is a long winded way if asking if you've really explored just how much of a problem HW is where you live. I know for a fact there are a whole lot of ppl using way more heart worm preventative overall than is actually necessary. I'd absolutely use it if there were a high risk, but I'm not willing to have my dogs ingest toxins for something so rare where I live.

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

GentleLake.... I lived in Kalispell, MT for 22 years and what your stating is absolutely true. I never had to have my dogs on HW meds. I live in Clare County, Michigan now and its considered a high risk area. 1 out of every 4 dogs has the potential to get it here according to the link you posted. But it does seem a bit confusing to me. 

[GentleLake]

My bad. I just assumed from your handle that you live in MT.

Looking at the map, Clare County, MI is one of the ones with no data, but is surrounded by counties that are either medium or low risk with none of the surrounding counties showing anything close to a 25% positive rate, so curious why you'd think it's high risk. The highest adjacent county is showing a 2.33% rate.

You must have other info than what's available on that site.

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

I see data on Clare County, Michigan? 25% rate if I am reading it correctly.

https://www.capcvet.org/maps/#2018/all/heartworm-canine/dog/united-states/michigan/1249-clare-county/

[Rush Fan]

Well I'm glad I read through these responses. My vet recommends Nexguard, which seems very effective for fleas and ticks, but requires a prescription and costs a little over $20 per monthly dose. As soon as my current supply is exhausted I'm going to order some Simparica which looks to be a bit less costly. 

[urge to herd]

I've been using Simparica for Gibbs for maybe a year? And am pleased with the results.

Ruth & Gibbs

[GentleLake]

11 hours ago, NW_MONTANA_BC said:

I see data on Clare County, Michigan? 25% rate if I am reading it correctly.

Hmmm. Yes, that's very different from what I was looking at last night. Maybe in my flood addled state (we had flash flooding here yesterday and were on high alert for evacuation) I'd pulled up a different year or something.

So good catch. And yeah, I'd probably be giving HW preventative in that case too, unless the vets were telling me it was from a big influx of southern imports.

[Rush Fan]

12 hours ago, urge to herd said:

I've been using Simparica for Gibbs for maybe a year? And am pleased with the results.

Ruth & Gibbs

Thanks, that's great to know! It looks like Chewy.com sells 6 packs for $71. Is that about what you pay for yours? (I'm looking the 22-44 lbs dosages).

[urge to herd]

Are those 6 single doses? I'm paying $39 for 3 doses from the vet. So will be checking into Chewy!

If you haven't read my description of what happens to the ticks, check it out.

Ruth & Gibbs

[NW_MONTANA_BC]

I paid $16.50 for one dose. I hope its cheaper if you buy 6 or 12 at a time. There Simparica web site has and offer if you by 12 you get $35.00 of credits. I guess towards your next purchase. 

https://www.zoetispetcare.com/rewards/offers/simparica

[GentleLake]

For anyone who's interested in reducing the amount of heartworm preventative you give your dogs, here's a good article to go along with the heartworm incidence maps I posted earlier (it actually links to those same maps). Not only does it recommend administering HW preventatives at 6 week intervals instead of 4,  it also shows maps that help you calculate what month you should begin treatment and when you can discontinue it rather than giving it year round. It also explains how to determine by temperatures when heartworm can and can't develop in your area.

https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2016/08/28/heartworm-disease-dogs.aspx?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=facebookpets_ranart&utm_campaign=20180830_heartworm-disease-dogs