No one likes the idea of their dog having to deal with something like a parasite. Despite these issues often being completely harmless, most people will want to make sure that their dog doesn’t have to deal with conditions like this, and it makes sense that you would want to work hard to avoid it. There is a range of different mites that can impact your dog, all of which fall into the parasite category. To help you to handle these critters on your own pet, this article will be exploring the types of mites you will find a dog and how they can be treated.
The Types Of Mite
Your dog’s skin and fur offer ideal environments for mites. There is shelter, food, and plenty of warmth, ensuring that they can go through their entire lifecycle without having to leave their host. This means that there are a lot of different types of mites that can attach themselves to your dog, and they all work slightly differently when it comes to using your pooch to reproduce. We’ve listed some of the most common mites found on dogs below.
Harvest Mites
Harvest mites are one of the most common mites found on dogs. These mites are extremely small, but they have a distinct reddish hue that should be easy to distinguish from other mites once you’ve found them. Unlike other mites, harvest mites don’t lay their eggs under your dog’s skin, instead breaking the skin cells down and feeding on them, causing pain and itchiness.
Scabies Mites
Scabies mites are some of the most infamous in the dog ownership world, with most dog-lovers having experienced it at some point or another. These are the mites that cause mange, laying eggs under your dog’s skin and causing it to become sore and inflamed. These sorts of mites tend to be highly contagious, but your dog doesn’t need to see other dogs to pick them up.
Walking Dandruff
As the name suggests, walking dandruff looks like small flakes of dandruff that move around the surface of your dog’s skin. This type of mite is extremely contagious, but it can be hard to tell whether or not your dog is infested, as not all pooches will have an uncomfortable reaction to mites like this. This type of mite can infest your home, making it well worth working to solve the problem before it gets out of hand.
Ear Mites
Ear mites can cause extreme discomfort for a dog, making their home inside your pooch’s ear canals and spending very little time on the outside of your dog’s body. Extreme infestations can cause swelling, redness, and even puss, though most pet owners will notice their dog shaking their head and itching their ears before it gets this bad.
Resulting Conditions
Before diving into the solutions that can be used against mites like this, it’s always good to think about the medical conditions that could be caused by them. Extreme mite infestations can result in a range of severe issues, from infections to conditions like malnutrition. Of course, some mites can cause their own specific issues too, with examples like scabies mites causing mange in dogs.
Ensuring that your dog is able to overcome these conditions is difficult, and you need to work hard to get rid of the mites on both your dog and in your home to solve this. In some cases, people will find themselves constantly having to deal with mites, though this is usually when you walk your dog in areas with a lot of the critters.
Treatment & Solutions
Finally, as the last part of this process, it’s time to think about what you’re going to do to treat your dog’s mites. The treatments for the mites on your dog can vary, but there are some common actions that a vet will take to get started. Shaving the areas with the largest infestations will be a good start, removing the habitat that these mites need. Alongside this, special shampoos can be used to help to clean the dog, killing mites in the process.
While there are plenty of guides and ideas around the web for mite treatment, it usually makes sense to go to a vet when you experience something like this for the first time. They will have a good understanding of what needs to be done to get rid of the mites afflicting your dog, giving you the chance to rest assured that you’re not making the wrong choices.
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