Chats with the Chatfields

Ep 41p: Pet parasites unleashed! Learn how to protect your furry friends!

Dr. Jen the vet and Dr. Jason Chatfield Season 1 Episode 41

Welcome to "Chats with the Chatfields," where we explore the latest topics in veterinary medicine and animal care. In this episode, our hosts sit down with veterinarian and member of the Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC), Dr. Craig Prior, to discuss the importance of parasite prevention in pets.

During the episode, Dr. Prior explains the role of the CAPC in promoting awareness of the dangers of pet parasites, including fleas, ticks, heartworms, and intestinal worms. He highlights the importance of regular parasite screening and preventive treatments, and provides practical advice for pet owners on how to keep their furry friends safe from these dangerous pests.

Dr. Prior also emphasizes the importance of working closely with a trusted veterinarian to develop a personalized parasite prevention plan for each pet.

The episode provides valuable insights and expert advice on protecting pets from parasites, including tips on outdoor safety, travel precautions, and preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases.

If you're a pet owner or just interested in learning more about parasite prevention and the important work of the CAPC, this episode of "Chats with the Chatfields" is a must-listen!

More on CAPC: https://capcvet.org

More on pet disease alerts in your area: https://petdiseasealerts.org/forecast-landing/

This episode is certified to provide 1 hr of PACCC CEU’s!  The unique code will be delivered during the episode, so listen up! Don’t know what PACCC is? And why would they be involved in CEU’s?  Pet lovers can get more information at www.paccert.org

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00:03

This episode is brought to you by full bucket veterinary strength supplements the leader in digestive health for dogs, cats and horses.

 00:13

Welcome to chats with the Chatfields. This is a podcast to expand your idea of what impacts veterinarians, pet owners and basically all animal lovers in the galaxy as humans. We are your hosts.

 00:23

I'm Dr. Jen the vet. And I'm Dr. Jason.

 00:26

And if you have not yet subscribed to our show, why not just go to Chatfieldshow.com And subscribe today. And if you want to reach us, you can find me with any message of love and positivity at jen@Chatfieldshow.com

 00:39

and for everyone else with serious messages and inquiries we can reach me at Jason@Chatfieldshow.com Listen, stop talking, I had to say a different Why not with a little more inflection to get more to drive more people to be joining our website. I'm, I've given up I'm changing it. You can't keep doing the same thing. We got to get more people on the website. Okay.

 

00:57

We do go to our website website and subscribe and we'll send you special messages. Okay, so into the chat room. I think that that is chat with a capital C today comes our friend and colleague, Dr. Craig Prior. And Dr. Prior is he's got a lot of hats. Jason. For for just one guy. He's an independent consultant, a lecture practice sales consultant, an author and and a practitioner, just a veterinarian. My goodness. I know but here's the thing that we're going to talk about today. He is a board member and a past president of the companion animal parasite council. So come on in.

 

01:39

Otherwise known as CAPC that's correct.

 

01:42

Okay, but we're gonna find out what all that means. Let's get him in here. Dr. Prior. Welcome to the chat room. Hey, good. Hey, glad to be here with you. Okay, yes. And there's that lovely accent? First of all, first of all, where are you from? You gotta tell the folks.

 

01:57

Okay, so I'm from a southeast Queensland in Australia. So Brisbane Toowoomba area. So it's a subtropical area of Australia. It's a wonderful, wonderful place.

 

02:09

Sounds like it

 

02:10

does. It does. And I'm American, so I heard Australia. Okay. Fabulous. I love the detail. So what is this thing? So I strongly suspect that many of our listeners are unfamiliar with CAPC, and and I think that they should be I think all pet owners should should understand CAPC what it does and how they can use it. So you know, like, so I guess I'll go to like the veterinarian, I talk to him as often. Jason, do you know about CAPC?

 

02:42

I do but only because you said we were talking about it today. I'm gonna be super honest with you. And I don't I don't mean to make anyone feel bad. You haven't mentioned it before. But like everything else, when you mentioned something that I don't know about, I do not want to give you that satisfaction of having that information over me. So I just roll on with it. Like I understand that. But I have heard you mentioned that before, when you're rolling out, you know trying to sound smart and talk about stuff that I don't understand. So I heard from you before, but I did not know what it was.

 

03:14

Okay, so for the uninitiated, Dr. Prior, can you share

 

03:18

companion animal parasite council we are a national nonprofit. We are funded by industry, but we are totally independent from industry. Our board is made up of practicing veterinarians like myself. We have preeminent parasitologist public health veterinarians, and we have a technician as well. So what are we here for our aim is to see every pet tested and every pet protected from parasites. That's our mission. If we can ever get to that with every pet is tested every 10 to 12 months out of the year, we can pack our bags up go

 

03:55

home. That's a pretty big mission statement and vision every pet every parasite, and then you go home. Right? All right. Well, I don't

 

04:04

know, what's your engagement strategy. Parasites are dynamic and ever changing and parasites are on the move.

 

04:10

I don't think that I've ever heard her dynamic and on the

 

04:17

so dynamic think about and throwing them at Think about the Asian Longhorned tick, right.

 

04:22

I actually I do that every morning. I think what's happening with the Asian Longhorn tick, I can't believe someone else does that.

 

04:28

So a little background for me it was first they thought it was first found in the US back in I was bought like October 2017. And that was found on a sheep farm in West Jersey, and they thought they had eradicated and then it popped up again on the same sheep farm in March 2018. And then went up, look out, it's here. It's here. It's here, New York West. And now it's in 17 Different states, right 17 Different states and this tech exhibits parthenogenesis. It's an asexual form of reproduction. She doesn't Oh, man.

 

05:01

Exactly. I was like, what does happen to hear that tick is like the ultimate feminism, the tick, the tick can reproduce all by herself. Correct.

 

05:12

He doesn't need a man. You can get up to 100,000 ticks on one cow, and they examinate the cow suck them dry, right? Oh, yes.

 

05:21

Oh,

 

05:22

I believe in that. That's a bad

 

05:25

chick does not care where it lives. Chicks tend to like brush short, long grass, doesn't care. It'll live on short grass. It doesn't get and now they realize it's probably been in the US since 2010. It just miss it was misrepresented or mis recognized. Right. They thought it was another type of tech. So yeah, that's just a great example for you.

 

05:45

So okay, so So part of that is like when you said sheep, all of our dog and cat people like to dance it? Oh, the sheep problem. Right. Yeah, exactly. And then, and I was like, for I was still hung up. I'm like, well, they don't want to have like livestock in Jersey.

 

06:04

You know, that visual backyard pitfalls. But yeah, the thing about ticks ticks on multi host animals. Right.

 

06:12

Okay, so this check sounds like the originator of adapt and overcome, right? Like, they don't care where they live, they don't eat brush, you can keep all of your yard clean, it doesn't matter. You could still have them. It doesn't matter if it's a sheep. It doesn't matter if it's a goat or cow, a dog cat or a human. Interesting. Okay. All right. So so if you weren't paying attention before, you better be paying attention now. And if you're listening to this episode, you may want to kick over to our YouTube channel, because we're gonna have pictures up of the Asian Longhorned tick and he doesn't really have local words. Well, you'll have to look at the picture to know when check. Okay, and then also we're gonna get into so what are you going to do about it? Right? Because if you're panicked right now, and you're wondering, like, what am I supposed to do about that? I'm not a tick detector.

 

07:00

Does that tick sounds like it's taken over the world question and causes problems.

 

07:06

Listen, it is good. It better look out for influenza. That's all I was gonna say. Maybe we can affect it with influenza. Influenza is taken over the world tics are second, okay. Although I like I have a friend who would say it all comes back to tics. Susan, little shout out you will always say it all comes back to tics. Okay, so we're gonna go on, we're gonna take a short break, pay some bills, but we are going to come right back. And we're going to tell you what you can do about it. What's going on in your area? How would you even know there's tools out there friends, and we're going to share with you so hang with us. We'll be right back. Professional Animal Care certification council or pack brings independent testing and certification to the pet care services industry is your dog daycare, or boarding kennel or a groomer manned by pack certified professionals? Don't know if you don't know you got to ask. Look for the pack emblem at your facility to make sure that your pets receiving the highest level of professional pet care because we all know it's safer in a pack your pack CE code for this episode is cc 220078. Dr. Jenn the vet and I'm here with my friend and colleague, Dr. Ki platsen. He's got an incredibly interesting story all about full bucket health,

 

08:31

my college roommate and that school housemate. Dr. Rob Franklin and I were collaborating on some cases, both of us were struggling with diarrhea in some of our patients, whether it was after a procedure or after after an illness. So we created a formulation but we didn't want to just create a formulation. We also wanted to create a movement and animal health for being able to help animals in need through the use of bark products that we developed that really has resulted in our one for one giving program which we're really proud of as much as we are our formulations for dogs versus cats.

 

09:05

And so if you want to know more about their one for when giving full buckets or if you're interested in better supporting your dog cat or horses, digestive health head over to full bucket health.com to learn more. We're back in the chat room. We've inspected we have no Asian Longhorn tick here currently, none of us could be done a tick on our body yeah.

 

09:33

Dog today for ticks.

 

09:34

I just checked myself I didn't worry about my

 

09:36

dog. Good. Yeah. Cuz that I think will come and tell me when there's a tick because it wasn't her idea. And she does not get down with things that are not her idea. And I know you know what I'm talking about with French Bulldog structure prior Okay, yes. So so so we know CAPC exists the companion animal parasite Council. And we know that ticks are on the move. So what other quarters, what are we supposed to do as veterinarians and actually as pet owners? If if your mission is to get every pet tested, and get them on the prevention that's available? What does that even look like? And how am I supposed to know, give us some indication.

 

10:17

As a pet owner, what I can tell you is your veterinarian is the local expert. They know what's in your area, they know what your threats are, you just need to talk to your veterinarian go. They know what to do now. It's up to them the veterinarians to actually know what's going on in their area. But also, I think the other thing we need we need to remember as veterinarians is that we have a very mobile clientele these days. Everything, like everyone who said, Hey, go work from home. And, and all the millennials go well, HEC home can be anywhere. So they go spend three months in the Northeast, and three months at Tahoe skiing, and three months in Florida. And then they come back to where they normally live, and they've taken the pets with them. And we need to know what our past travel history of our clients is and what a future travel history is. So we need to be able to work out what their threats will be, and then make the appropriate recommendations. So where do we find that out? Well,

 

11:20

well, I'd like everyone to stop you right there. Because here's the thing,

 

11:23

I think, attacked by ticks.

 

11:27

Ticks are holding up your microphone here. A little renovation there in his little studio. I think it's I think it's unfair to to demand that we rely totally on our local veterinarian. Right. And I think today's pet owners, I know that the chatterboxes our listeners, they want to be empowered with information as well. And so does cap C provide anything for pet owners as as as well as

 

11:58

what we provide to veterinarians is completely open to pet owners and soaking up the discussion. So really, we can reframe that and say it's a discussion between the client and the the veterinarian is guided by the veterinarian, and the veterinarian has access to the tools and is helping the client understand the tools so that they as a, you know, as a co op can work out what the best strategy is to because you know, much just protecting that pet. You're protecting the family as well. Yeah, because you know, we've got zoonotic diseases, these vectors, you know, it's not just ticks, it's intestinal parasites that are zoonotic. And the vector borne diseases the ticks carry can be there. We call them zone otic. They're just transmitted by ticks. Right, right. And so it's it's a conversation between them between the client and the vet and their veterinarian to work out what the best strategy is.

 

12:53

And that's my point. Because if I like, I love it when clients come into the exam room with me, and they have a piece of paper with them, because they printed it out off the internet. Although I'm dating, I'm dating myself because they just bring it on their phone. They're like, Hey, man, my brother lives in Hawaii. And he said that they're worried about they just diagnosed this and their dog. Like, are we protected against that? And I'm like, Well, don't go to Hawaii. No, I wouldn't go.

 

13:19

Don't eat lettuce in response to why because there's a snail there that causes the that can harvest a parasite that causes neurological migrants. it crawls through your brain and gives you headaches.

 

13:31

Oh, my gosh. And it was totally weaponized by con. Yeah, right. A rabbit of fun. No,

 

13:38

I got it. Wrath of Khan. I told you. I wouldn't no one else knows what you're talking about. They

 

13:42

do. They do. Okay. All right. Dr. Prior, can you show us show it like show us and those of you listening again, don't drive off the road. There's links in the show notes can be links to what he's what he's showing all of us right now. This

 

13:54

is showing all of us. Alright, hold on. Yes. Go back to the beginning. What is this exact What am I looking at?

 

14:00

I am going this is the opening page. This is kept seeing that.or writing

 

14:05

the opening page of the CAPC website that has all this information on it correct?

 

14:11

website. Now first thing I'll point out is we provide guidelines for the veterinary industry. Here are our guidelines. It's all the common parasites and less parasites of dogs and cats listed alphabetically. He said by common name and scientific name,

 

14:26

okay, good because I don't know the Latin names of all that stuff.

 

14:29

Everything you need to know in our guidelines are written by parasitologist. They're reviewed by border pest technologist once they're approved and then put up and then we update them on an ongoing and regular basis. Okay. All right. The other thing is click here and we're going to go to the maps Okay, let's go to the maps. We're at the maps and I'm on so this is obviously a hot one. And we got on cane on hot one dog of course because his cane on hot, warm and we've got on the year you can go by all year, or you can go by the month, and then we show you what the prevalence percentages now, I'll point out, I'm gonna go to 2012 2022.

 

15:10

While you do that, and I'm just gonna remind everyone that prevalence rate prevalence is like what we expect the normal like number of cases or percentage that are positive for something. That's all it is.

 

15:25

We are pulling from the major veterinary labs and tick IDEXX. We're about stop pulling from status as well. And this is not the total number of dogs in United States is the children number test that we have access to. Okay, even though it's not 100% of the dogs, we've got so many, like 18 million data points, the prevalence percentages are very, very accurate, I think.

 

15:49

And this is this is what we call harnessing the metadata, right? Yes,

 

15:53

exactly. So you can then choose feline heartworm antibody feline heartworm antigen, or you can go here and you go to intestinal parasites. You've got to intestinal parasites, we've got roundworms, hookworms, wet worms, and giardia five, click down again to tick borne diseases. We have Lyme, Anaplasma, and Laiki osis. By Click down again, I've got viral diseases, we've got Finley on the Kimi and Filon eights there. And we're considered the mapping experts. And we've been asked to map feline leukemia, feline AIDS, because a lot of people think this relationship between immune suppressed cats and parasites, right, we want to map so hopefully someone will come up and find a relationship there and publish a paper on it. And they'll

 

16:35

even have a tab that says switch to Canada have their contact information on there. We got

 

16:42

we've got Canada Lyme disease there, right? Just saying Stephanie, Kathy, Canada. And we've got this button here it says get updates live, you ought to click on that to get updates, you'll set up an account with us, you choose your state. So I'm in Tennessee, and you choose your county. So I'm in Williamson County, and then you choose your parasite or parasites of interest. You can choose more than one county if you want, and we'll send you monthly updates. So why do I want to know that because it's timely, it's local, it's motivating. It's happening in my backyard is happening in my clients backyard. Right? Yeah, I just

 

17:21

told us why you want to know it, because two things, especially with ticks, but parasites are dynamic, and they're moving there on the on the moon to pay attention to

 

17:32

you know that there was a study done by Dr. Jason Drake, who's now with Merck and his past. He's a veterinarian and parasitologist. He scraped data off the cap scene maps, he pulled off 39 million fecal samples over seven years and looked at it over time. And what he found there's an increasing prevalence of roundworms in increasing prevalence of hookworms. slight decrease in wigwams, but there's true seasonality. So roundworms tend to peak in December, January woodworms peak in January, February and then hookworms peak in July in June, July, and it shows you that we've got intestinal parasites prevalent year round is a year round issue.

 

18:12

Okay, okay. I like I have to say stop for just a second. Because, you know, well,

 

18:19

I was getting so excited. He has to take a breath, I guess.

 

18:24

So, so Dr. Prior and I know each other, and so he knows, I'm just gonna be like, Wait a second. Wait a second. Let me let me be skeptical. Because I so So okay, so you said he's, you know, he scraped data. I love saying that somebody's scrape data. He's scrape data from the cap C website. And what he determined was that the hookworm and or GI parasite incidence is increasing right around once. Yes, hookworms and roundworms are increasing. But I have to say, is that real? Or is that like a product of the data? He's scraping, right? Because there are limitations to the data reflected? Because like you said, you guys compile the data beautifully. And you get this spatial temporal mapping going on.

 

19:20

And big data doesn't lie.

 

19:23

No, it doesn't. But people can interpret big data.

 

19:26

And they'll prevalence percentages of prevalence percentages. Okay, however, and so if you've got a background noise, you sort of say this, you know, which testing more animals so therefore, if that's the reason for but the you got to think that this probably, you would think that there's a prevalence percentage, which would be fairly consistent through the population. And when you start seeing that rise, I think it's a reflection that we're not doing a good enough job with compliance with our up, you know, we use monthly hot, warm bass preventives that has the parasites as well, that we're getting lacks on that we're not doing a good as good a job as we were because we're just getting fairly Lexa day school about it. I got good products, it's gonna work, don't worry about it. Yes should worry about it.

 

20:21

I wouldn't disagree with that. I guess I'm just, I'm just playing a little bit of devil's advocate, because, you know, everyone's using metadata to say all kinds of things these days, and I think we're a little bit data insensitive, you know, like, oh, you had 36 million samples? Well, I'm not sure if that's enough. And but I think that's that your your point is, is perfectly spot on that. Yeah. But we're not looking at individual things. We're looking at prevalence over time. And

 

20:50

let me show you that. Can I show you that?

 

20:52

Yes. I would love for you to show us that.

 

20:54

Let's look at West Virginia starting in 2012. Okay. 5% prevalence in West, the whole state of West Virginia. And look at the map now.

 

21:04

We're looking at Lyme disease right now. Yeah. And when

 

21:07

you look at gray areas on the map here, either one, we're not testing in those areas, or we can't pull the data. So it's one or the other.

 

21:14

And I will say historically, like 98% of Lyme disease cases happen in like seven states and like West Virginia is not necessarily one of them. Right?

 

21:24

Watch this. 2013 About the same prevalence but watch the map, watch the map and watch and watch the orange. Did you see a little bit more orange?

 

21:33

A little bit? Right. Oh,

 

21:37

election night?

 

21:38

I know. Exactly.

 

21:40

Look at the orange. Okay. The neither Republicans or Democrats? That's right.

 

21:44

orange, and purple. Don't care.

 

21:49

Look at this. 9.65% prevalence Wow. 11.44% prevalence

 

21:54

and it's darkening. It's actually a dark 24

 

21:57

Look at that map. Why are 14.55% Right, yeah. 2020 22 15.66. And look at the way the maps just lining up. And they're one of the I think the biggest things about this the so 2012, CDC came out with a paper that said, Any prevalence of Lyme in your county of a 5% share of dogs are sent off for the risk of human infection at the same percentage. QFC has since come out with another paper published in 2019, I believe it was it said it doesn't matter any percentage positive in dogs. Dogs are settled for the risk of human infection at the same percentage. So in West Virginia, with dogs having a 15.66% prevalence of Lyme shipments are at a 15.66% risk of developing Lyme as well.

 

22:48

And see I would not have said that about West Virginia. I mean, it doesn't.

 

22:53

But it doesn't, it doesn't lie and look at what's happening. Right? It's just eaten. And that's, that's black legged ticks on the move and the changes in the vector borne diseases with them.

 

23:02

And I'll tell you that, that I would say that, what would you would you agree with the fact that like this number saying is 15%, it may underestimate slightly, the prevalence because, again, these are only dogs that have been tested. And so not every dog gets tested for Lyme. And so maybe it may be more prevalent than then what we're seeing here, but the comparison is true, that it's you know, gone up exponentially. Since what was the first year you started with showing us 2012 20? Oh, my God 2012. It's not even not even a long time ago.

 

23:42

It's tripled. Yeah, yes. Yeah.

 

23:45

That's incredible.

 

23:46

That's a question. You guys are getting all into the data. And I think it's super interesting. And you could probably spend six hours on this map alone, because it is just a lot of information to sort of digest and look at, but the overall picture is exactly what you said. They're on the move, and they're dynamic. And so is this website, and is this group, this is for everybody, right? We're normally talking about binaries and a lot of this stuff, but anybody, anybody can go to the website and join and get updates for themselves. Correct. Right.

 

24:19

We just for the design, we designed the website for veterinarians, but anyone can access this. Yeah. You know, and then we sort of said, Okay, there's a lot of data, it gets really busy. How can we do this better just to show people what the risk is right? I can see the data, what do I do with the data? Okay, so we started doing forecasting back in about 2012, not 2015 2014, somewhere in there. Anyway. We started forecasting parasite prevalence heartworm. Lika Anaplasma in line and we do a national forecast once a year. It comes out in April we do a national media tour along with that But we realize now that we got so many millions of data points that we can now forecast 30 days in advance in your backyard in your county. And we realized that that was actually a better way than just throwing people. Let's show you what your

 

25:16

people want. They don't want what happened. You'll want to know what's happening tomorrow and better be right or wrong, gonna hold you accountable. But that's okay. So

 

25:24

we've got papers, peer review published papers to support our forecasts that 94 to 99% accurate weather. The weatherman can't do

 

25:32

that. No. Is that on the website? Someone? What can you show? Me

 

25:37

the Money? Show me this?

 

25:40

Disease alerts.org up here. There it is. last.org. So we have the forecast maps. We got a fleet forecast and we've got a word. So let's go to the forecast maps.

 

25:52

Yes. Let's look at a forecast. So

 

25:56

forecast, so I got hot one. out one dog. Okay, so let's say you guys are in Florida, right? Yeah. Right. It's got to Florida. Here's

 

26:05

all heartworm all the time. All right.

 

26:10

You've got a high forecast for next 30 days, which is typical this time of year. Right. What county you in?

 

26:16

Pasco? So around the Tampa area? Yeah.

 

26:18

Good morning. Here my screen. I'm right here. What are you talking about?

 

26:22

County, you've got a medium risk for hot one, which is actually lower than you normally see this time of year, but a medium risk, right. So this is the next 30 days. You don't need to take your foot off the accelerator, you need to remember to give your monthly preventives. Yeah, your pet is at risk. Right. The other thing I say is low prevalence does not mean no prevalence. Right? It's

 

26:44

let me ask you what your forecast so I get it right. You're you're forecasting, but what exactly? Are you forecasting that there's gonna be more diagnosed cases of heartworm in the next 30 days? Or what exactly? Are you going to more at risk in the next 30 days? Or what do you forecast

 

26:58

forecasting what the risk of a positive test is from an I Gotcha, okay, which equates to at the risk for your pet. So let's go back to here, and I'm in Tennessee. And I'm in and I've got a medium risk, which is lower than usual as well. Right. But let's change unless it was

 

27:19

better get on it. I

 

27:20

know the western part. Whoa.

 

27:24

Look at this is insane. It's a hybrid, which is

 

27:28

this a tick borne disease, airless? Yeah. Is a tick borne disease. And look at Dr. priors having to process so much data. That's why he's video gets hated every so often. When the machine has to work it Good thinking, Okay, this is

 

27:42

why disease. And for Williamson County, it's a medium risk, which is typical. But look at the way lime is oozing down into tents. Again, I'm coming back out. I'm gonna come back out just to Tennessee on the move. Yeah. North Carolina's I think a really interesting state because you've got line oozing in up here. And then you've got a leaky osis of the state from there. And then heartworm is hammering it as well. Right? Yeah. So the trifecta lenders.

 

28:15

And they're like, here's the tricky one. Right. Like, like, I think that a lot of pet owners they know about Lyme disease, right? And they know it has its tick borne I think a lot of times, but when you're looking at preventing dogs

 

28:26

down here, they do because they're, you know, they are moved from the

 

28:28

They've all moved from New England. Right. So Ehrlichia, I think is like kind of sneaky. From the pet owners perspective, because they don't know about it, then I mean, we test for it. I

 

28:39

have very short transmission time. That was what I was getting at. Right like that. Can can be that there's been studies, the show can be as little as four hours,

 

28:48

correct. And so you need to be up on what sort of tick prevention your dog and cat are on. And I think that's the interesting piece, because sometimes I run into pet owners, and they're like, well, we don't have ticks. And I'm like, I mean, I'm from South Texas, and I won't disagree with anyone when they say they don't have ticks. In South Texas. We have ticks. However, it only takes one tick bite. Okay.

 

29:12

I'm in New Jersey, okay. You've got a leaky osis coming up from the south. And then you've got Lyme disease coming down from the north. I mean, it's just getting hammered. And so transmission times matter. And so yes, my dogs on not just an oral, right, but also a topical. Yep. And I want to beat ticks as I want that. I want to just get them before they can transmit disease.

 

29:39

And I agree. So I have friends that live in Virginia, and they like literally they have a Great Pyrenees. I know it's crazy. But the dog can just go out to do their business at the farm and come back into the farmhouse. And you can see the ticks crawling on him. Right. So so

 

29:55

this Lyme disease for Virginia for next 30 days and here's the leaky osis for next already took a look at the dual threats you've got there. Yeah. Right. So we've done that. And that's, that's next more than one type of check. That's the black tick. That's the livestock tick. Right? We've got multiple ticks going on here.

 

30:14

Yes. Okay. So now everyone's petrified of ticks,

 

30:17

and everything else. And and about this map, it's a little scary.

 

30:21

I know. I want to see the flea one because I encounter many people who live in a magic household where they will tell me as they come in with an itching dog that their dog doesn't have fleas, because they don't go outside except to do their business. I'm like, I don't know.

 

30:39

To me, fleet. flays are easy, we can break the cycle, right? So slaves are obligate ectoparasites. What that means is when a fleet dumps on a host and takes a meal, it is now an obligate ectoparasite. It does not want to leave that free lunch. It just takes it takes literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of plays on one animal for them to say, oh, tap out and then find another host, right? Yeah, they stay there. So I can break that flee lifecycle kick really easy. I can't break the tick lifecycle because of the lifecycle. So can we talk about that for just one minute. So you think about it so that typically the ticks we deal with three host lifecycle. So the female tick, she gets on it, she quests, which means he search for that house, she gets on a host, multiple different hosts that they can get on to

 

31:27

was there a little video of ticks questing? Because

 

31:30

there's not there's not a better name thing in veterinary medicine, I don't think that was the most.

 

31:37

And so she jumps on a host she has eventually has one blood meal, she drops off lace two to 6000 eggs, some of them up to 18,000 eggs in the environment that hatch out to a larval stage that will eventually quest get on a different host has eventually one blood meal drops off becomes the eventual becomes the name that then quests gets on a different host yet again, eventually has one blood meal finally drops off, eventually gets becomes an adult. And then life cycle starts again. So yes, average life cycle length of time, three to four years, and they will spend less than 10% of their total life on all hosts combined. Right? Crazy. We can't break the we can't break the lifecycle. We just have to kill them before this Printezis. Right. Right. That's correct. Yeah, right. So we'll move on to fleas. Here's your flea daily flea forecast. And this is we've got the date here. This is 332 1023. So this is where fleas are very active. Okay. And it's really surprising, right? It's a function of temperature and humidity. What please rely on now here's historical video. This is November just sandbar

 

32:54

blowing colors moving? Like boiling, right? I don't know,

 

32:59

March, April. Look at that. Look at the way I look at my

 

33:03

lord. Look at Minnesota and North Dakota. Yeah. Isn't that cool? That is okay, zombie maps. And I will tell you pet lovers out there. I saw I saw a market research data point that said that, I don't know. Like half of pet owners give one dose of preventive like flea prevention or like parasites.

 

33:34

Average average usage is two to four months for flea tick product and four to six months for a heartworm based product. Right and crazy 60 to 69% of all clients leave that clinics without ever bothering to get anything for flea ticks or hot one.

 

33:52

Right? So a little bit, I'm putting that on my professional family. Right? Because if you didn't get excited about eco parasite prevention, then how is a pet owner supposed to know that it's that crucial right to their pets quality of life and length of life? And then and but then the other pieces? Come on now. You gotta you gotta give this stuff routinely marketing the calendar, set your phone something so that we give it or get the long lasting ones and then you don't have to remember as often. And so, yeah, so I just think that's cool. So I do have one more question here before we because we've had tons of information into this episode already. But you know, I'm going to ask about one of my two favorite pathogens. Jason Which one do you want to find out about

 

34:43

first? Me or either one is fine.

 

34:45

Okay, how about how about lepto?

 

34:47

Can you show us and I'm also not shocked you went to leptin?

 

34:50

I feel I feel like I'm on a game show. Can you show us love?

 

34:54

We have a look maps. This is the last 30 days. This is the art states and counties where leptospirosis has shown up has

 

35:05

one, four, and

 

35:07

we have positive and I think that this is so number one as a veterinarian, I think leptospirosis vaccine should be a cool vaccine. Full stop. I just considered a coal vaccine and it should be

 

35:22

its core. If Dr. Jen is your vet, I can tell you that right now. Or if you

 

35:26

see me made, right, it's core for me, because it's so nonstick and so many people get it and they don't know that got it and it can kill you.

 

35:35

Right. And I and I would tell you, in the chat room, we did some time ago banned the phrase core vaccine because I think they should all be an individual lifestyle based assessment. Because people get in trouble when they do become lazy and rely on for

 

35:53

individual lifestyle assessment. We used to think of lepto as a farm dog problem. Now it is it's a highway stop problem,

 

35:59

right is it is dogs under 15 pounds dogs living in urban areas and dogs and vaccinated those are the three risk factors for your dog getting lepto but if you want to know what's going on specifically in your area, you can look here, but I'm gonna say that the caveat the blanket caveat which says a lepto people don't test for lepto as often as they should. This data reflects tested dogs so this radically underestimated estimated right

 

36:24

underestimates. Knoxville, Tennessee Memphis Tennessee. Cases

 

36:29

urban. Right. Urban

 

36:33

Florida. Look at you know, Miami Dade County, right. Broward County, Palm Beach County. Wow. Ouch. Right. In in river. I'm

 

36:41

kind of I'm kind of shocked this not more red, like you want.

 

36:45

This is just the last 30 days.

 

36:47

No, no. Oh, I see. Yeah. But I still I still. But when

 

36:51

people say in California people say we don't have parasites or diseases out here. Look at this. This Santa Barbara. Look at this. Ventura County, Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Diego County Jail everywhere.

 

37:03

Well, you know, in LA in late 2022. They had a massive by massive I mean, hundreds, if not 1000s of confirmed cases of lepto and dogs and influenza.

 

37:18

Yes. And that was actually close a bunch of important dogs.

 

37:21

Well, then there's that. Dogs move to dogs move just like people do.

 

37:28

I look at canine influenza. You know, we were just talking about earlier that we you know, it's endemic. Basically, it's just it's just what when you're going to have an outbreak? It's it's not.

 

37:39

It's now endemic, which means it's circulating in North American. Well, American dogs for sure. Consistently

 

37:46

all the time. Dallas just had a big outbreak of canine flu. Right.

 

37:51

And actually distemper too.

 

37:54

Yep. Palm Beach. Yep. Yep. And that's, that's, that's

 

37:58

in the last 30 days, folks. Last 30 days. So. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the thing, and I guess it's the frustrating thing, for me as a person who loves preventive medicine, is that we have just talked about some very preventable diseases and dogs that not only can kill your dog, but a lot of them you can become infected with. And so, you know, like, with cars that I don't want cars that have no disease, she could give me right, because she sleeps in the bed, she lives on the couch. And she's always with me. And so I think a lot of people have that relationship with their with their dogs. And so it's easy to prevent these things. It's super easy.

 

38:45

I agree. It's super easy to talk to your veterinarian.

 

38:50

Absolutely. So talk to your vet. And then if you're afraid, right, because there's a lot of who do we do we get to say misinformation. Dr. Jason, can we use that word, no. Information, peers, a lot of information, a lot of incorrect information. Thank you. There's a lot of information that's less than correct. And also less than transparent, right? And so if you are if you've seen some of that on the internet, tell your veterinarian that right. Like so if you've seen stuff about lepto have you see stuff about flu? Do you see tick prevention

 

39:23

let go they say oh lepto vaccines cause massive reactions? No, it was what October? Not anymore? Yeah. WMA that's got that peer reviewed article that says it's no more reactive than any other vaccine that purified these vaccines really? Well.

 

39:38

You'd be surprised it's just wrapped

 

39:40

up in Dr. Morgan.

 

39:41

Yeah, the weird stories that stick with the majority of people like that is it's just weird. What but people just pass down to person to person. Oh, yeah, that's, that's gonna give my you know, my my cat cancer and I can't do that. It hasn't been true for a very long time. So

 

39:56

yeah, it's scary, and it's care. Okay. Listen, it's not just scary for predators scary for veterinarians, because if you've ever seen one of those rare cases of true anaphylaxis, because they are actually quite rare, it is really scary. It's really scary. But also like, we can treat that we can, we can treat that. That's why sometimes it seems like it's taken a little while for you to check out like, especially if you come see me for vaccines, I want you to remain there for a good 12 or 15 minutes after I give your dog vaccinations. Because if you're going to have a really dramatic reaction, it's going to happen then, and I want you there still so that I can intervene immediately. But if I let you just walk out, and you're in the car on the way home, God forbid, and your dog starts, you know, vomiting, or just lays down and becomes severely lethargic very quickly, you're in the car, I want you to be at the clinic, right? So I can intervene effectively. But also, if you're worried about that we can we can prevent that, too. Right? We can pre medicate your dog and prevent that too. That's the thing. So yeah, so those sorts of reactions do happen, but they're really, really rare. But if you're afraid you should share your fear. Share your fear. So all right, so this is a ton of information that Dr. Prior has thrown at us. Yeah, let's say energy.

 

41:24

It's a ton of information. But you got to you got to talk to your you guys did a good job getting all that information to where you guys lay it out in the way the website because we've all been to bad websites, the way the website is laid out. It is it's phenomenal. It's fun, even someone like me can follow it. And it makes sense. And it is really intuitive. So don't be scared of that giant amount of information because you guys have done a great job of packaging it and in the in a way that anybody could sort of understand it. Or if you can't understand it, ask your veterinarian. Yeah, you understand it. We need to get this people out this information out for everybody. It's great.

 

42:00

Yeah. And you can sign up. That's that's the other piece that actually I was unaware of that, like full disclosure, I did not know

 

42:07

the alerts as well. Yeah, torture was

 

42:09

great. People love getting all that stuff on their phone. Oh, I gotta pay attention to this. Right. Yeah, it's really good. Super smart. Yeah. See? Your whole group? I think it's great. Thank you,

 

42:20

and nonprofit. And again, I'll say not I'm not beholden to any single piece of the industry, right? Like, we wait.

 

42:30

Summation and the threat and the risk data. And it's up to the drug companies can recommend whatever product they want. You know, the veterinarian can work out what products they want to use.

 

42:42

Yeah, which is whatever is best for your pet. And also, if, if you're sitting there right now listening, you're thinking well, but I have a cat, that's 100% indoor cat, I don't need to worry about that.

 

42:54

Just as much at risk,

 

42:55

you are wrong. And so I would, I would dare you, I would challenge you go to the websites. And again, we're gonna have links in the show notes. But go to these websites, and check out the risk for cats in your area. And then get the to the vet to get the to the vet. So this is a lot Dr. Jason, did you have any other like burning questions?

 

43:20

No. But again, I was just blown away. Like it was really impressive. I've seen a lot of websites with a lot of metadata and they're just garbage and you can't read them. But this website is really fantastic. And to go check it out. I mean, everybody should just go check it out. I can't say it enough structure prior

 

43:34

anything that any other burning thing you think every pet lover should know that they might not otherwise or did we get it all I'll protect

 

43:42

your pet. You're protecting a pet, you're protecting your family because there's so much going on at risk. And your veterinarian is the local expert talk to them. Yeah, no, I love you.

 

43:52

I know this is fantastic. So I get that that's all we have today all about all things cat See, check out their website. I'm Dr. Jenna vetch,

 

44:01

and I'm Dr. Jason.

 

44:03

I will catch I will catch you guys on the next episode.

 

44:09

This episode is brought to you by full bucket veterinary strength supplements the leader in digestive health for dogs, cats and horses.