Illnesses such as Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever are all things that are human type of tick-borne diseases that dogs can get as well. You are preventing that by giving them preventative care. With fleas, they can become very anemic because of the amount of blood they can lose. Preventative care includes preventions against heartworm disease as well. The list goes on and on. Preventative care is a lot easier and cheaper than treatment.

Preventative care is something that you can give your dog to prevent diseases that they otherwise would not be getting exposed to or affected by.

There are some that can spread to people. Tapeworms aren't common as you would actually have to ingest the tapeworm in order to get it, so that's not a huge ordeal that we see, but it is a possibility. But there are some other intestinal parasites that can spread to people as well, mainly by not handling the stool appropriately. Not being very hygienic whenever handling that litter box can cause some problems.

Make sure that you are regularly checking your cat's stool and that you don't see any signs of loose stool or worms, because cats sharing a litter box is a very easy way to get contamination amongst them. Make sure to check that often, and if you believe that they could've been sharing or if you have seen anything unusual, get them dewormed.

There are different medications that you can use as prevention, but there are also medications that we use to treat them.

The biggest thing that you can do is to have all animals in your home on effective flea prevention, making sure they're on that year-round, even during the winter. Fleas like to come inside and have their way, so make sure that every single pet in the home is on effective flea prevention.

It's definitely a possibility, especially with tapeworms. Even if they don't go outside at all, things like mice can get into your house and have tapeworm eggs in the fleas that they carry. You can even bring in fleas on your pant legs which will expose them.

Many times it's from either ingesting fleas that have the tapeworm eggs, or from being in a litter box that has otherwise been contaminated by a cat. Kittens are especially a lot more prone to having those intestinal worms that they can spread around.