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Deworm

Deworm your pet regularly!

Worm infections

It is, as is apparent from the information below, of great importance to humans and animals is to deal well with the worm control.

This means that puppies and kittens from the age of three weeks should regularly (every two weeks) be wormed with a good and safe remedy. From the age of four months, a biannual deworming will be sufficient. It should be remembered that deworming doesn’t work like a vaccination; deworming is cleaning up existing infections, not preventing new infections. This means that a dog which is dewormed a few weeks ago, nevertheless may have been re-infected again. Hence regularly repeat deworming is important. Twice a year is found to be a good working frequency.

  • Pay attention: In deworming products there are many good and bad products, the veterinarian is the best person to advise you which product is best for your animal!

Mawworm infections

Dogs and cats infected with Mawworm usually pass considerable amounts of eggs in their feces. One Mawworm female lays about 200,000 eggs per day! The eggs in the stool flush with the rain out over a relatively large surface area, and the larvae wait until they get sniffed or licked by a new victim. This can also be a child!

In the animal’s intestine, the larvae begin a trek through the body. They leave the intestine, and a large part end up into the lungs, is coughed up, and swallowed. Subsequently, they grow in the intestine into adult worms and start laying eggs again. So the circle is complete. A portion of the larvae does not come back again in the intestine via the lungs, but encapsulates itself into fat tissue or muscles, and wait until the animal gets pregnant. Once the animal is pregnant, these larvae become active and move into the mammary glands and uterus. In this way they infect the puppies/kittens before and immediately after birth. It is this infection route which makes it almost impossible to eradicate the Mawworm. The “sleeping” larvae are namely not prone to deworm cures! With people (mostly children) who become infected with Mawworm larvae, we also see the trek through the body. Because man is not the normal host the cycle through the lungs is not completed. The larvae are “dormant larvae”. However, they can, depending on the place where they encapsulate, cause problems.

In puppies and kittens the Mawworms consume much food causing poor growth and thick bulging bellies.

Tapeworm infections

Most of the tapeworm infections in our domestic animals are caused by the licking of fleas that are infected with tapeworms. It is usually the tapeworm Dipylidium caninum, a relatively harmless worm, which is also not dangerous for humans. We recognise the infection if small worms (grains) or segments of worms are in the stool, or visible around the anus. Well deworming with suitable products is then necessary.

There are a number of tapeworms that are absorbed through contaminated meat from cattle or sheep. These tapeworms are more harmful. One of them, Echinococcus granulosus, is for humans very dangerous. Man is an intermediate host for the tapeworm, which is harmless to dogs itself. People who become infected with the eggs of the tapeworm through contact with dogs (Not washing hands after contact with contaminated feces of the dog) can develop huge blisters in their belly or brains, which cause great problems. This is one of the reasons why dogs always need to be treated against this kind of worm before leaving for England or Scandinavia. They want to keep these risks outside.

Dogs which are regularly dewormed (2x per year) are at low risk.

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