Veterinary: Our auxiliaries, if conducted in the woods, at the base of the bushes and in the areas near the waterways can contract Lyme disease, a bacterial infection caused by ticks that affects the joints and the nervous system, if not treated promptly.
Hunting dogs that are mostly brought into the woods can get Lyme disease. The latter is a bacterial infection that mainly affects the skin, joints, nervous system and internal organs of humans and animals. This pathology takes its name from the homonymous American town of Lyme (Connecticut, United States), where the epidemic of this disease spread in 1975, with the manifestation of a mysterious increase in arthritis cases, especially in children.
Arthritis appeared with skin rashes on the chest, abdomen, back and buttocks, which extended to a variable size between 10 and 50 cm, followed by headache and joint pain.
The cause of Lyme disease is a spiral-shaped bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, named in honor of its discoverer Burgdorfer, which affects ticks, which perform the function of "healthy carrier" of this disease. Ticks contract the infection from wood rats, but also other wild animals, such as hares, foxes, ungulates and birds, can occasionally host the bacterium and participate in its spread in the forest.
Precisely for this reason, the places most at risk of contagion of Lyme disease are the wooded areas and rich in deer, since the latter represent the ideal habitat for ticks carrying the disease. In our country, the disease is endemic to the Karst, Trentino and Liguria.
Ticks, in particular of the genus Ixodes, the most widespread in the Alpine environment, suck the blood of infected animals, collect the spirochete and with subsequent bites can transmit it to new hosts. Their bite is not painful and in some cases goes unnoticed. Once attached to the skin, they "work" like a pump, continuously sucking and rejecting the blood, contaminating an enormous quantity in a short time. After this phase, the ticks die and drop to the ground.
Woods, clearings, the base of bushes and areas near waterways are the places where you can find Lyme disease ticks, which prefer a temperate climate with high humidity. The period in which ticks bite most frequently is between spring and late autumn, although there have been cases of contagion during the winter.
If our four-legged friend is bitten by ticks, they must be removed immediately to avoid the risk of contracting the infection. The best tool to remove them is tweezers with which the tick is grasped, twisting it close to the skin and pulling it off with a light traction, without tearing.
The most usual and distinctive sign of the presence of the tick is a redness of the skin caused by the bite, which slowly tends to expand. This wound, with the characteristic “target” shape and with the name of erythema migrans, appears after a period of 4-60 days from the bite. In some cases, although rarely, the infection manifests itself with joint pain or nervous system disorders, which are difficult to decipher when dealing with a dog.
If the bacterium is completely transmitted, it can spread to any part of the body affecting the joints (arthritis), the nervous system (meningitis, neuritis of the cranial nerves, motor difficulties and loss of sensation, to the limbs) and other internal organs ( heart, eye, liver, kidneys with disorders of various degrees).
If action is not taken promptly, the infection becomes chronic causing permanent damage, after a period of years from the inoculation of the bacterium.
There is currently no vaccine against the disease, so the best prevention is to take some precautions to avoid tick bites, such as carefully checking the dog's entire body when returning from a hunting trip in the woods.
The only effective therapy involves the administration of common antibiotics, which must be prescribed by the veterinarian and taken in the doses, with the methods and times required by the infection. Starting therapy promptly, after the first symptoms appear, is the guarantee of complete and definitive recovery.