Tick Bites on Dogs - How You Can Protect Your Four-Legged Companion

As soon as it starts to get warm outside the much dreaded tick season breaks out. But ticks do not need a calendar – they just need a pleasant outside temperature of approx. 7°C to become active. If you live with your dog in a continuously warm area, or are on vacation together, then it is “tick season” all year round!

Ticks (Ixodidae) 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 recognise them by their triangular flattened body with eight easily visibly longer legs and a small mouth with mouth-parts. Colour-wise they shimmer in dark brown to red brown, some tick species have a grain on their back or a so called shield (hard-bodied ticks), other species have no exoskeleton (Argasidae).

If you look closely at a tick you can clearly see its mouth-parts, which are shaped pincer-like at the end of the head. The actual piercing tool lies hidden between these “pincers”, which the tick uses for its bloody meal while also holding on to the victim. To put it correctly, the so-called “tick bites” are actually ticks piercing through the skin.

Ticks go through numerous stages before they are fully grown: first they lay eggs outside the body of their victims (e.g. on the dog bed), from which larvae hatch. These develop into nymphs which eventually become adult, fully grown ticks.

The tick is an active parasite during all three stages that bites dogs, humans and other animals so as to develop further. You need more than just good eyes to discover the larvae or nymphs on the dog as they just appear as little dots on the skin. On the other hand, an adult tick can be seen relatively well just with the eyes with a bit of experience, providing your dog’s coat allows for easy viewing.

Once the tick is satiated with its bloody meal, it cannot be overlooked with its grey, bulging body. Female ticks which are full reach up to 3 cm in size.

Preferred locations of ticks are edges of woods and forests, meadows, clearings and parks. Here they sit on high grass stalks, low-hanging branches and in bushes, and reach out their forelegs which are equipped with special sensory organs to find passing victims. They are alerted through odour (sweat), vibrations, and changing CO2 content of the air (breath) and let themselves fall on the potential victim immediately. Certain tick species are active “hunters” and look for victims themselves.

Our dogs are especially affected by the tick plague because they like so much to rummage through tick territory. But, also humans and other animals like cats, hedgehogs, birds, mice, rats, sheep and many more are all prey for ticks. However, generally ticks are specialised for specific victims. that they prefer above all. This can be explained by the fact that ticks have developed sophisticated anaesthetics that are tailored to the immune system of their specific host.

Once it has landed on a dog the tick looks for a suitable spot to bite. Preferred are thin-skinned areas which are well supplied with blood like the head, lumbar region, ears and stomach.

Our fear of these little bloodsuckers is justified, because tick bites in dogs and humans transmit more pathogens than any other type of parasite, although mosquitoes are far ahead! Globally there are around 900 species of tick, of which only around 20 are native to Germany. However, over here dogs have to mainly deal with three tick species: the wood tick, the alluvial forest tick and the brown dog tick.

Certain pathogens like bacteria, viruses and other parasites can live in the bodies of ticks, using the tick as an intermediate host. The tick has infected itself with these co-habitants during a previous feeding from a sick victim. During its bloody meal, the tick releases undigested blood residues from its intestine into the dog’s wound. Thus the named pathogens change their host and can now lead to dangerous illnesses in the organism of the dog.

A blood meal of an adult male tick takes a few days and is relatively small as the male only needs the blood for its own feeding while waiting for a female. However, adult females can suck on the bite site for up to several weeks as they need more blood to produce eggs.

The risk of the dog being infected with pathogens is a given after approx. three hours. The tick needs this time to disgorge the undigested remains of its blood meal together with the pathogens from its intestinal tract into the wound of the host. The danger of infection increases with every hour the tick sucks the dog’s blood. So it is very important to remove the tick immediately as soon as you have seen it on the dog! Find out more about that here.

As ehrlichiosis has a silent stage it is not always recognised and tends to become a chronic illness. Babesiosis, from the species Babesia canis vogeli, runs a relatively mild course and is still rare in Central Europe, but is widespread as a cross infection with ehrlichiosis in the Mediterranean, France, North Africa and South America. See alluvial forest tick for information on babesiosis.

Anaplasmosis was counted as ehrlichiosis until recently. However, latest research has shown that the bacterial pathogens concerned with this disease are of the Anaplasma type. The symptoms are similar to ehrlichiosis.

At times the dogs do not show any visible symptoms apart from exhaustion. The Anaplasma bacteria attack special white blood cells – the granulocytes. The sickness worsens through cross-infections with babesiosis and ehrlichiosis.

There are no vaccinations for all three illnesses, prophylaxis is done exclusively via tick repellents.

The main symptom is a kind of reddish rash around the puncture site but this is seldom noticed in the dog’s thick coat (or with dark skin pigmentation).

In severe cases, neurological damage may remain, or the disease may take a chronic course. In some cases it ends fatally for the dog.

A borreliosis vaccination does exist but it only covers a few of the possible Borrelia bacterial strains. It is not considered sufficient and requires an additional tick prophylaxis anyway.

If you notice these symptoms, take your four-legged friend to a vet immediately.