It can. There are certain diseases that can be life threatening, especially things like heartworm disease.

Often, it is. I would much rather prevent diseases in dogs than have to treat them. It won’t have nearly as big of an impact on your dog's body and it's usually easier on your pocketbook.

For puppies, you have flea, tick and heartworm preventions and vaccines preventing diseases. Similar preventions are used for adult dogs . You have preventative care of fleas, ticks and heartworms. You should be consistent on that and make sure their vaccines stay up to date whenever they're around other dogs at the dog park. In your senior dogs, you want to have preventative care by checking out some blood work levels and making sure that you're not having any issues regarding their organs as those can start to get some diseases over time.

It's going to do its best possible job. You still need to watch over your dog, especially if you're going out on any hikes or they're in fields where they could potentially have increased exposure. Also make sure that you are giving your dog preventative care routinely to make sure it is still effective.

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.