Protect your Pet, Protect your Family

by Shannon Pecora, M.A.

Stream Valley Veterinary Hospital

            Is your family one of the many who brought home a new puppy over the winter holidays?  You may have intended to adopt a snuggly, couch potato friend, especially if you have a backyard or a short route around the block for exercise and potty breaks.  Winter can be the perfect season for staying indoors, enjoying quality time with family, after all.

            Yet this time of year, spring is in the air.  Temperatures have finally crept out of the freezing range, and now many of us can’t wait to get outside.  This may hold true for our dogs as well.  It’s easy to be a homebody in cold weather, but springtime—even in April showers—brings the opportunity for many fun outdoor activities.

            Those outdoor plans may require a bit of extra preparation for your dog though.  In the winter, you and your vet may have decided against certain vaccinations which may not be necessary if your pet were to truly spend most of his time inside.  But hiking, camping, or just neighborhood jogging can expose your dog to dangers or infections that you might not have considered.

            Specifically, two vaccines that help protect your dog from the great outdoors are the lyme and leptospirosis (lepto) vaccines.  Lyme disease is carried by deer ticks, which can be found all throughout the woods, bushes, and grasses that are so prevalent in our area.  Signs of infection include fever, lethargy, and joint pain.  Lepto can be shed in the urine of infected wildlife, such as raccoons, rabbits, and squirrels.  It is spread wherever these animals urinate and/or where water can collect: our yards, ponds, streams, and even small puddles.  The lepto bacteria can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and bloody urine.  These symptoms are tell-tale signs of infection in your pet, but unfortunately, we can share the diseases with our dogs and suffer the effects ourselves.

            So if your dog’s lifestyle will now include more than just five-minute visits in the backyard or brief on-leash walks, you should talk with your vet about further vaccine protection.  Lyme and leptospirosis are dangerous diseases that can put your whole family at risk, and a couple of vaccinations might be just what your dog needs to help prevent infection.  While we love the wildlife that is such an integral part of our community, we certainly don’t want to share in its diseases!

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