Rodney Stevens

The Clarence Valley is experiencing an extreme tick season prompting vets to warn all residents to ensure their pets’ preventative medication is up to date to avoid costly bills or potential death of your animals.

In the past 18 days Maclean Veterinary Clinic has treated 19 animals with cases of tick paralysis, with six of the patients succumbing to the tick poison, primarily dogs.

Veterinarian Nicole Quinn said with the current conditions all pet owners need to be vigilant and check their animals for ticks regularly and ensure preventative medicine is up to date.

“Yesterday alone I had two cases, one dog and one cat to treat,” she said.

“Because of the fact we’ve had flooding and now we are getting warmer weather the ticks are starting to hatch, but last year there just didn’t seem to be as many about.

“Last summer we didn’t really have much of a tick season because of the flooding, people have dropped off with their preventatives so because of that we are getting a lot more cases.”

Ms Quinn said the effectiveness of preventatives on animals was clear when used as directed and dogs were generally more susceptible to paralysis tick bites than cats.

“When we see dogs that come in with preventatives on them the ticks that we take off are dead and they’re not getting paralysis,” she said.

“The ones that we are admitting to hospital are overdue for or have not been on preventatives.

“Cats are generally more resilient to paralysis tick bites and recover, compared to dogs.

“Any animal can be affected with a paralysis tick; we’ve even had some of our staff members pulling paralysis ticks off themselves after being in the garden.

“The paralysis tick generally doesn’t affect humans, we’re too big for their toxin, unless you’re elderly, or quite young and small.

“We’ve found them on dogs, cats, birds and some small mammals as well, but dogs and cats are the primary animals that are hit by tick toxin.”

Although there are about 75 species of ticks in Australia, the grey coloured paralysis tick and the black bush tick are the two local animals typically get bitten by.

“Paralysis ticks have quite a long mouthpiece, the nose and head is very long, all of their legs are at the head of their body and they are usually a greyish kind of colour,” Ms Quinn said.

“If people are not sure they can take the tick itself or a photo of the tick into their local vet clinic for identification.

“Bush ticks are usually darker in colour and their legs are spread out across their entire body and they often have all red legs, whereas paralysis ticks have two sets of dark legs and two sets of light-coloured legs.”

If your animal is bitten by a paralysis tick it will display obvious symptoms.

“The first sign is usually vomiting bile and regurgitated food, and the most obvious sign they present with is wobbliness in their hind limbs,” Ms Quinn said.

“After that you get paralysis and in dogs, they get a real respiratory grunt and in cats they get a change in their meow and it can progress to full paralysis and death.”

Applying preventatives which cost around $20 to $30, Ms Quinn said can save a pet owner a bill of a minimum of $1000 if an animal has to be hospitalised for a paralysis tick bite.

“Our clinic primarily recommends Nexgard or Nexgard Spectra, and Bravecto, depending on your frequency of dosing,” she said.

“Simparica Trio is another one I see a lot of people using and Simparica which is quite good as well.”

Due to the severity of the local season, Ms Quinn recommends every pet owner treat their animals for ticks.