This Month at Vetrica

10 May 2005

Latest News

This page contains the latest news from Vetrica and Vetrica OnLine. It updates at least monthly, and will also keep you up to date with the latest news about animal care and welfare.

An archive of previous articles is also available.

Dog Fouling Prosecution

Fife Council recently announced that it has "Secured its first conviction for dog fouling." The guilty individual was served with a fixed penalty notice of £80, but after initially challenging the decision in court, pled guilty and was subsequently fined £80 and given a criminal record.

There is no excuse for allowing your dog to foul our parks and streets. In common with most Scottish local authorities, Fife Council supplies poop scoop bags completely free of charge. Vetrica is one of the many places where these can be collected, and there are now suitable poop bins dotted all over Rosyth and Dunfermline. People who allow their dogs to foul our public places give all dog owners a bad name.

Dog fouling is not just unpleasant, it's a serious potential health hazard. A survey in 1997 showed a high prevalence of roundworm eggs in dog faeces samples taken from parks and streets across Britain. Moorfields eye hospital deals with 20-30 cases per year of roundworm larvae migrating to the human eye.

So please, for all our sakes, always clean up after your dog. It's the law. It's just good manners.

This Month's Interesting Case

Angus is a 14 year old cross-breed dog. Angus had been seeing another vet for many years with skin disease, and despite treatment, had never properly recovered. The photograph on the right, shows Angus's head and neck, which had a widespread pattern of hair loss with skin scaling. His flanks and hind legs were similarly affected. He also had a large number of pustules on his inner thighs which are not shown. Angus was being treated with cortisone tablets.

Angus had a lot of hair loss, with skin scaling, redness, and a marked itch.

Under the microscope, a very large number of the typical cigar-shaped demodex mites were easy to see (arrow heads). Click on the picture for a larger image.

There was a large number of possible causes for Angus's skin disease. High on the list of possibilities was a mite infestation. The presence of pustules on Angus's thighs made it easy to test for this. A sample of pus was collected by bursting a pustule with a needle. Under the microscope, a large number of mites were observed to be floating in this pus.

In Angus's case the mites were Demodex mites. Angus's skin disease is called demodectic mange, and is an uncommon cause of skin disease in adult dogs. The demodex mites that cause it are found in all dogs, and are thought to be transmitted by the close contact that occurs when pups are suckling their mother. Demodectic mange is not transmitted from dog to dog.

When dogs are affected by demodectic mange, it's usually considered to be due to a failure of the dog's immune system to properly maintain the mites at the low levels that do not cause disease. In Angus's case, he was being treated with cortisone. Cortisone is often used in dogs to treat itchy skin. However, one of the (many) side-effects of cortisone is to suppress the immune system. Consequently, although dogs with demodectic mange appear initially to improve with cortisone (because they're less itchy), they then usually deteriorate because an already deficient immune system is further suppressed. This appears to have been the case with Angus.

Angus's treatment has been to remove the cortisone treatment (although because he's been taking this drug for so long we are having to wean him off it), and a new drug called Advocate^®. In the past we have had to use weekly washes with a chemical that makes the dog feel ill, and is very unpleasant. Advocate^® is much easier to use, being applied to the skin as drops once a month. Only time will tell if this is as effective as the old washes.

Special Offer for May 2005

This month's special offer is five ostrich twisters for only £5.99! If you don't live locally, contact us, and you can pay over the phone by credit or debit card. Please note, only one offer can be used per household. If you would like more than five twisters, our long-term offer of 3 for 2 (£3.88 total for 3 twisters) will apply.

Click on the voucher for a printer-friendly version.