What diseases are associated with fleas and ticks?

When fleas bite, the dog can get irritated skin, including dogs with allergies who may have flea allergy dermatitis. Their skin gets red and bumpy can even get infected. The other thing about fleas is when a dog eats a flea because it's bothering them, they can feel it in their fur; then they can get tapeworms from the flea.

Ticks carry a multitude of tick-borne diseases. The one we most commonly heard about is Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Babesia, Ehrlichiosis, and Anaplasma. Those are just some of the many diseases that ticks can cause in people and dogs.

There are a lot. I'll just go through some of the most common ones. If fleas and ticks ingest enough of your dog's blood, this ingestion can cause anemia or low red blood cell count, which can be life-threatening to your dog—also, there are some common tick-borne diseases that we know. Lyme would be one of the most common ones. And dogs can also be clinical with Lyme disease as well.

We see a lot of tick-borne diseases in this area. The most common one that people think of is Lyme's Disease, and we see plenty of Lyme's Disease cases over here. We also see things like Ehrlichiosis and Anaplasmosis—those can definitely affect your pets in this area. And then in terms of fleas, not only can they carry things like tapeworm eggs, so if your pet were to eat a flea they could get tapeworms that way. But they can also cause things like anemia if there's enough of them on your pet, because all of these nasty buggers feed on blood.

People tend to think that ticks transmit diseases, which they do, but fleas also transmit diseases. We commonly see tapeworms in animals that fleas have transmitted. Tapeworms are tiny intestinal parasites that look like grains of rice. Your pet cannot get them without ingesting fleas. If a flea gets on a pet and bites them, the dog or cat will get itchy, turn around, and eat them. That's how the tapeworm completes its life cycle. The thing that people are most aware of in humans, is cat scratch fever, which is a flea-transmitted disease. Those are just two among many diseases that fleas cause.

Ticks, on the other hand, are known for transmitting many different diseases. The most well-known of which is Lyme disease in humans. This is an issue of endemic severity. It isn't a big problem here in the Fort-Worth area yet, but it is a big issue in places like the Northeast, where people often get Lyme disease. Dogs are often the source of infection because ticks bite dogs that transmit the disease to people. Apart from Lyme disease, ticks also cause Ehrlichia, anaplasmosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, among other conditions.

Fleas and ticks lead to different diseases. With fleas, our primary concerns are anemia, which puppies can get. Puppies can get so many fleas on them that they can actually die from blood loss because the fleas suck so much blood from them. We can see what we call tapeworms, which is not a true disease, but can create a debilitating condition. These tapeworms can get to be about two feet long inside the intestinal tract, and they get those primarily from ingesting fleas. As far as ticks go, we're concerned about Lyme disease, Ehrlichia, anaplasmosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. We see Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease in people as well. Your dog can get those two diseases just as people can.

There are a few different diseases associated with both fleas and ticks. Fleas, in particular, can transmit intestinal parasites to your dog. Ticks can also transmit a few different types of tick-borne diseases, of which the most common are Lyme disease and anaplasmosis, which can cause complications and disease in your dog.