Interrupting The Cycle Of Worms In Dogs
Posted on July 30th, 2010 by doggielover
Worms in dogs, although normally not serious, are one of those little problems that seem to come back a lot, particularly for puppies. This is because of the way their lifecycle works. The threat of worms in dogs to canine and human health means that owners have a responsibility to intervene in the worm cycle and try to stop infestation.
Because most puppies are born with an infestation of roundworm, this is the most common type of dog worm in the UK. It often causes puppies’ bellies to swell and may delay their growth, whilst in humans the worm larvae can cause blindness, although this is rare.
Like all types of worms in dogs, the life cycle of the dog roundworm (the Toxocara Canis) is not complex and can be controlled with care and patience. At first, a female puppy is infected in the womb or through her mother’s milk. In the infected puppy, some of the worm larvae will move out of the intestine and into the blood before forming indestructible cysts in the muscles. If she later becomes pregnant, the larvae will be activated and will move back into the bloodstream to infect any unborn puppies, completing the cycle.
Not all the larvae in the young puppy will form the cysts previously mentioned. Instead they will mature to adulthood in the intestine. Having reached maturity by feeding of the partially digested contents of the intestine, the worm will release eggs which will be passed with the dog’s faeces. In the environment, the eggs pose an infection risk to other dogs and even humans. For people it is the touching of contaminated soil rather than the handling of puppies which poses an infection risk.
That is the cycle and in order to interrupt it, dog owners should give worming treatment to adult dogs every three months. As they are so prone to worm infection, puppies should be treated every two weeks from the ages of two to twelve weeks and once a month thereafter until they reach six months. However small and rare, worms in dogs can cause problems for human health, so dog owners must take responsibility for picking up after their dogs and encouraging good hand hygiene in the family, in order to break the cycle and reduce the risk.
