Maria from Animalur Veterinary Clinic explains how to spot external parasites on dogs, including fleas, ticks, and lice. She covers what they look like, how they affect your dog, and how to prevent them.
Hi, I'm Maria from the Animalur Veterinary Clinic in Fuen Labrada. In this video, in collaboration with Experto Animal, we're going to explain how to detect if your dog has external parasites. The parasites that you'll most frequently find on your dog are fleas, ticks and license. All of them, although fleas and lice are the most common, will cause your dog to itch a lot. You'll notice that your dog is restless and constantly scratching itself, and some can even cause wounds. You'll also notice that the skin becomes red in some areas and the hair may be dry and dull with lice. You can also find a lot of flaking on your dog. Ticks can also sometimes cause your dog to itch, and you'll see them try to bite themselves to try to remove them if they're in an area that they can reach. But we need to know what each of them looks like in order to identify them. Fleas are tiny, about 3 millimeters long, reddish or brown in color, and can be seen with the naked eye. Although it is quite difficult to identify them because they hide in the animal's fur. The easiest way to identify them is their excrement, which is small grains of sand that are blackish or brownish in color. To distinguish flea droppings from any other type of dirt, we must use a nick comb or flea comb, which are characterized by very fine, close set teeth. We must brush the animal, collecting any debris that falls from the fur on a piece of white paper. Since flea droppings are coagulated blood, if we use this paper we will see small brownish spots. The areas that we must inspect most closely to find out if we have fleas or not are the rump and abdomen. Ticks are slightly larger than fleas and the color can vary depending on the type of tick. They can be brown, black or slightly grayish, and they are firmly attached to the animal's skin. The most common areas where we can find ticks are areas where the skin is thinner. For example, these are the areas around the ears, around the eyelids, between the toes and on the abdomen. Lice are even smaller than fleas and are very difficult to see with the naked eye. What we can detect in some cases are the nits that get stuck to the animal's hair. It is very important that you prevent your pet from getting these parasites using any of the methods available on the market. But it is also very important that after returning from any walk in high risk areas such as the countryside or the mountains, you check them thoroughly, brush them and look for any areas where you can find fleas or ticks. And that's it for this video. If you have any questions, comments, leave them in the comments. If you liked it, give it a like and see you in the next video.
