Stop Burning Your Ticks! A Parasitologist Debunks Dangerous Pet Myths | SOP Ep. 121 - Dr. Lindsay Starkey

Welcome to Speaking of Pet. I'm Dr. Alice Novotny-Jeroman, a board-certified veterinary dermatologist. And I'm not. I'm Janet Novotny-King, the doctor's sister, podcast co-host, pet owner, rescuer, and lover. We're here to provide pet owners with science-based information to help them be the best pet parents they can be. Here's today's episode created just for you and your pets. Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Janet, you know the whole reason we started this podcast was to correct myths and misinformation that pet parents may be reading elsewhere and ultimately could harm their pet. And the number one area, in my opinion, where they are not getting their facts straight is ticks, heartworm, fleas, and we're going to even talk about screwworm, which if you guys don't know what it is, you need to know what it is. And so I am so fortunate that Dr. Lindsay Starkey, parasitologist, took time to join us today. Dr. Lindsay? Dr. Lindsay? Dr. Lindsay Starkey got her vet and Ph.D. degree from Oklahoma State University, where she is an associate professor and Distinguished Teacher Award twice. She's a diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Microbiologists with a subspecialty in parasitology. She's not only a teacher, a lecturer, and a researcher, but whenever she is hosting a webinar as a veterinarian, I tune in because I want to keep up on everything. Dr. Lindsay? Dr. Lindsay? Dr. Lindsay? Yeah, definitely don't do alcohol then flame. That's a bad combination. But all of those things are irritating. They would be irritating to us if someone put them in our face. So as a tick who's concreted into the host, right, they don't have anywhere to go when they get irritated and they're connected by a straw that connects our bodies to their bodies. And so all they can do, if we squeeze on them too hard or if we bug them by putting irritants on them, is they're likely going to regurgitate. And that's just, that's exactly how they transmit things like the Lyme spirochetes or leukeobacteria or viruses into us to begin with. So we don't want to facilitate that. Oh my gosh, I never thought about that. I am anti-spirochete. Because they wreak havoc in your body once they're in there. So, okay, if I take the tick off, what should I do with it? My favorite thing to do is to put them in a little Ziploc baggie and put them in the freezer. and startle my husband when he goes to open the freezer to pull food out um but saving it so so we routinely have random things in the freezer at my house but that's a side effect of my job chocolate yeah so but saving it because that can be a valuable tool to your physician if it's off of you or to your veterinarian if it's off of your pet because different ticks carry different things they transmit different things and we can test the tick specifically to see if it's carrying something someone can look at the tick and identify it and make an educated guess as to the diseases that might be playing a role it helps us monitor tick expansion because we have new ticks in this country expanding we have new things in general entering this country so i can't wait to talk a little bit about screwworm too but it's important to keep track of that and so definitely save it ziploc baggie uh in the freezer on your counter it'll actually live for a while you can put it in alcohol if you have it in your freezer and then you can put it in your freezer and then have alcohol at yourself at house like rubbing alcohol and then just make sure put the date on it who or what it came off of so that you can track that because you may have more than one tick over the course of a few days that creeps its way into your life so i think our listeners need to contact their town or city because where i live they tell you to put it on a piece of like white tissue or a cotton ball put it in the ziploc and then you write on it and then we take it to our health department right here in town and they send it out for testing and then they actually send it to a letter that says positive or negative and they are because i live in connecticut you know lyme connecticut is where it was founded um they actually track the address and everything it's it's kind of cool it's very rewarding when it comes back negative right but they are they're tracking them i think pretty much everywhere because it is such an issue different states have different funded programs and even like different universities we have a project here called show us your ticks oh i love that started years ago by my mentor actually and it's still ongoing today but it's ticks pulled off of dogs or cats by the veterinarian and submitted through the veterinary clinic but there are outlets online for pet owners or individuals to get their ticks identified remotely via pictures so the ticking counter website's really good but state health departments or different institutions may have their own programs to assist in human or animal tick identification and testing so do only ticks carry lyme disease and other diseases to your first question yes your second question no so the deer tick or the exotes genus of ticks in this country they are the ones capable of transmitting the lyme spirochetes it's different if you get outside of the united states there's a little more variety of the spirochetes that cause lyme and potential vectors in different parts of the world but in the states it's exotes that deer tick so exotes scapulars now all the other ticks transmit a bunch of other stuff and exotes can transmit a bunch of other stuff too so anaplasmosis babesiosis to people whereas some of our really severe tick-borne diseases are ehrlichiosis and dogs or cytosinosis in cats as well as lyme disease and dogs so any tick is potentially a dangerous tick okay now my neighbor who called me because her dog was limping even though i'm a dermatologist her husband had rocky mountain spotted fever yeah and i'm in you know south of cleveland ohio and i think another misinformation besides rocky mountain spotted fever is only rocky mountain area no they just don't need for it talk about that and also what about people that rush their dog up to the vet because they took a tick off their dog and want antibiotics i i'd love your opinion on those two things the rocky mountain and they put my dog on antibiotic because i found a tick on him yeah the rocky mountain spotted fever is kind of a misnomer now that we've done a lot more exploration so back in the day when that disease was first discovered like lyme connecticut yeah or lyme discovered in lyme connecticut they were looking at derma center ticks in truly the rocky mountain areas well we now know derma centers are all over the place they're the primary vector for rocky mountain spotted fever but not the exclusive one and those we definitely see more rocky mountain spotted fever cases i think more through like the mid-central southeastern united states but it can be anywhere because derma centers truly are everywhere yeah and what about taking the dog to the vet to get antibiotics i think that's a misnomer isn't it i think taking the dog to the vet is absolutely the the best thing you can do if you're concerned as a pet owner or the cat yeah however i think we need to be a little cautious on the antibiotic stewardship yeah uh trail that we're having to have more conversations about that right now because depending on where you are geographically like for me here maybe two to three percent of the ticks are carrying the herlichia bacteria which is the most common disease in my neck of the woods in oklahoma in parts of new england or the great lakes regions i just saw a talk this past weekend where over 50 percent of the zodis were carrying lyme spirochetes so it kind of depends is it a 50 50 shot is it like a two percent chance that tick was maybe uh and that's why saving the tick is so important you can test the tick and then that can actually drive our monitoring our diagnosis and maybe our treatment conversations a little more pointedly than just guessing because antibiotics are only good if there's truly bacteria there otherwise that's true we mess up the microbiome we can cause diarrhea we can cause you know resistant skin bacteria so we need to i think be a little cautious with the antibiotics rather than just throwing them into everything um but they're absolutely the right thing to do in some situations so how long does that tick have to be in there with that cement semen to transmit, to transmit. i'm out engorged sometimes they're not when i pull them out yeah and it depends on what pathogen you want to talk about right now so if you want to talk about lime we typically say at least 24 hours and the longer the ticks attach the more likely that transmission event can occur with things like rocky mountain spotted fever though there has been a study where they showed 30 minutes of tick attack was enough and so it's all over the place viruses seem to transmit very quickly yeah uh some of our bacteria are a little more slow but like half a day to a day and a half kind of is that like scary range and then protozoal organisms so for humans babesia is the big one of concern in this country when animals we talk about cytosol and babesia those are more than half and beyond so the protozoal organisms is what those categorize as they're a little more slow wow so the nymphs which are itsy bitsy tiny yeah they look like little spiders because people will take a picture and send it to me and say is this a spider or is this a tick but go on jen they're tiny like i had one i felt something funny on my hand and i looked i'm like oh my god it was one of those do they transmit at that young age they can so that's technically if we want to um simplify it our ticks have three life stages there's the baby version or the larva that's the first one that comes out of that tick's egg into the environment then there's the next one that comes out of that tick's egg into the environment then there's the next one that comes out of that tick's egg into the environment then there's the nymphs so that's the one you're referencing and they are the side of size of a poppy seed they're still really small when they're flat that's the teenager version and then you have your male and female adults so there are pathogens like rocky mountain spotted fever and some of our babesia species where the ticks can be born already infected if the mother tick was infected so she basically passes that on into the egg so those larva can immediately transmit to the first thing they feed on so that's the nymphs that's the one you're referencing and they are the size of a poppy seed to a chia seed they're still really small when they're flat that's the teenager version and then you have your male and female adults so there are pathogens like rocky mountain spotted fever and some of our babesia species where the ticks can be born already infected if the mother tick was infected so she basically passes that on into the eggs so those larva can immediately transmit to the first thing they feed on now for the nymphal stages they've already fed once in their life so if they fed on something that was infected and they're capable of carrying that pathogen on they can transmit it as that teenager or nymph version so nymphs it's fair game any pathogen that tick is capable of transmitting that nymph could be carrying it and same with the adults the larva maybe a better chance you're not going to contract anything but that's still not a risk-free tick feeding event okay so deers we know carry ticks what other animals in our neighborhoods carry everything that's literally everything yeah um i saw a picture of a turtle from i was in oklahoma but they're throughout the southern united states right so this tick can become the size of a golf ball when she is fully fed and it was the most enormous sick on a turtle on a turtle i love true dangling off the turtle skin so you think about like snakes and turtles and they're semi-aquatic they're like they're like you know i don't know if they're semi-aquatic and you're thinking now they're they have you know anything that has legs or even not legs when we're talking about snakes can harbor different tick species and some tick ticks have preferences some are very generalists i have a question you know we go to florida half the year and of course we take the girls the dogs the two goldens and i and correct me if i'm wrong but i was reading there's not as many ticks there because of the little lizards or anals or what what's the story with that the relationship two oh that's true because we have way more ticks here at oklahoma than we did when i lived in auburn so i've i'm raised in kansas went to arkansas for a few years for school lived in oklahoma for nine years and then took a faculty position down in alabama and we had way more ticks when i was doing my grad school in oklahoma than i ever encountered in alabama and you think further south more ticks yeah that's the that's the florida story and honestly south texas too those climates are different soils are different the uh predators are different and so even mosquitoes don't seem to do that well in florida but i think part of that's um community-wide mosquito abatement that hurts yeah true impact to the ticks so much but yeah you look at the maps of these different vectors right and florida's oddly light if you will for some of them um same with south texas so there's there's something going on there i think there's a lot going on there there's a lot going on there there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on there there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a lot going on in south texas there's a perspective. So do cats and dogs react differently from Lyme? I had a golden that had Lyme four times. But so I don't know if the cats, you know, I call it. Well, wait a minute, back up. Did the dog actually have Lyme four times or she just had antibodies to it that whole time, Dr. Starkey? Well, I don't know. She tested it and they treated her four times with doxy. So our diagnostics for some of these pathogens do rely on antibody detection, as your sister mentioned. And so that's just our immune response. Right. And I so veterinarians in general have to get rabies vaccines when they go through school and they have to remain boosted because of the risk of rabies associated with our our day to day work. And so I had a rabies shot in 2007. That's when I was a little first year baby vet student. I have never needed a booster shot. My titer has remained high enough. Nineteen eighty nine. And my titer has remained high enough. And my titer is still like eight hundred times. Right. Go on. I don't know. I'm borderline. I'm going to need a booster when I get checked. But there are veterinary students every year as I'm talking to the clinical vet students. And I asked them, how many of y'all needed a booster before you could even come to clinics, meaning their immune system did not react strongly enough for them to even have a detectable titer three years later. And so it's incredibly variable, an individual's immune response. And then when our diagnostic test is relying on that immune response, it it's difficult to interpret. And so we do antibody based testing for things like Lyme and anaplasma interleukia and even Rocky Mountain spotted fever. But whether or not that animal's actively infected with that is difficult to tell from that test alone. You have to do additional testing to make sure. Are they sick for Lyme? Are their kidneys OK? So kidneys are an often second checkpoint for those Lyme positive dogs on that antibody test, because those are where we start seeing the severity of Lyme set in. It causes arthritis. It causes kidney disease. And so those are the things we absolutely want to follow up and check on when that positive antibody test happens. OK. So, Janet, was your dog limping? Did she? Oh, she was like an old man. OK. OK. That explains it. You know what I mean? OK. Oh, my son's had it three times. I had it once. But I think what the doctor also told me is I will always test positive. And then they also check your inflammation numbers along with that. That's something we love about Dr. Tim's pet food. Every formula starts with a question. Does this actually help the animal not just look good on a shelf? Dr. Tim has spent decades as a working vet, and that experience shows up across the entire product line. Whether your dog is a little overweight and needs a healthy, balanced food to help shed a few pounds, or could be a picky eater who won't touch their breakfast without Dr. Tim's Vagabond Freeze-Dried Toppers, or just a regular couch companion who deserves real nutrition and every bowl. Speaking of pets is committed to bringing you science-based information and partners that align with that mission. And Dr. Tim's is a great example of nutrition done right for every pet, not just the athletic ones. Head to Dr. Tim's Pet Food to find the formula that fits your pet's life. Now, what about the myth that, hey, I don't need to keep my dog on flea tick preventative or heartworm preventative in the winter? Yeah, please address that because I can't even. For our listeners, Dr. Starkey just fell out of her chair. I, I, I, I know, wait, yeah, um, my own family members are guilty of this. It makes sense, right? We all think of winter as being this colder, incompatible climate for things that like warmth and moisture. Yeah. But my winter is very different from your winter. Yeah. And then a Florida winter. And how many of y'all in New England are like, I'm getting the heck out of here in winter and I'm going south and I'm taking my animals with me. And so we cannot allow that misperception of seasonal approach to think that we're going to cover our bases because it may be, I mean, I remember here in Oklahoma, I was at BMX, which is the largest veterinary conference in the United States. Um, for those that don't know, and it's in January, every year around Martin Luther King weekend in Florida, in Florida. So it was fine there. I fly home. It was literally like 70 degrees the day I got home. And within two days we had eight inches of snow on the ground in Oklahoma, which we don't get a lot of snow here, but like that's, you can't do monthly or even beyond monthly based treatments on a, like, well, it's January. So I don't need to give anything because there's going to be days in January where those ticks or mosquitoes or what have you are absolutely active. Some ticks live indoors. Fleas like to live in your house and your house is more climatically controlled than outdoors. And then most of these products that we recommend to put pets on for tick protection. A lot of them also provide intestinal deworming or heartworm protection too. And those things aren't nearly as seasonal as as what we think about with fleas and ticks. The roundworm eggs are in your backyard forever. The whipworm eggs are in your backyard forever. And so that risk is constantly there if you have that contaminated environment that your pet sees, that they could acquire intestinal parasites routinely year round. - You know, I read there was an insurance study that said that the majority of pet owners only buy flea, tick, and heartworm perfection for five months instead of 12 months. And I think that's crazy because in Ohio, sometimes we have mild winters. Sometimes it never gets below 35 degrees. And to me, I've found mosquitoes in the house in the winter. - Well, cockroaches in New York City are impermeable. They don't die anymore. And I think ticks are the same. - Yep. - Yeah. - Honestly, those things, and since being sick, I don't ever wanna go through that again, and it's completely ruined my joints for the rest of my life. - Yeah, Janet, I'll tell you. - Yeah, me too. - For a whole year, and you know, when you're looking at- - Well, it was almost a year, nobody knew what was wrong with me. - Well, and when you read about Lyme in humans, and the minimum people have seen it, five to 10 doctors before they're accurately diagnosed. But anyway, yeah. - Well, but imagine your pet, 'cause like Libby can't tell me, "Hey, I'm really achy today," or, you know, I feel- - Yeah. - So you have to be aware as a pet owner and do the damn stuff every month. Put it on your calendar. It's so easy. - Well, and the other thing is, buy it from your veterinarian. You know, people think, "Oh, they're marking it up and they're trying to make money." No, we stock the up-to-date, in-date products. We store it correctly. - And authentic. - When you buy it- - I'm sorry? - Authentic. - Authentic, yeah. When you buy it online, you have the chance of it being a counterfeit product. And if you remember a few years ago, someone was selling counterfeit heartworm preventative. And how horrible is that? So just buy it from your vet, put them on it all 12 months a year. Let's just say that right now. - I have a question about that. - What? - Are collars, oral meds, and topical preventative, are they all equally effective? - Oh, boy. - Okay. - Well, that's a loaded question. - Yeah. - If I could put up a chart for you all, comparatively between all the products that are out there, some only do fleas. Some only do fleas and ticks. Some do as much as we can. And by that, I mean, we're talking about intestinal parasites, which there's still variety there on different products and their capabilities. But intestinal parasites with heartworm, with flea, with tick, but those products do not repel anything from biting. They don't have the chemical active ingredient in there for any repellency. So collars by and large are only ectoparasite control. They're not gonna do any heartworm prevention for you, classically against the worm or any intestinal deworming. Orals, as long as the dog eats it or the cat eats it, 'cause there are oral products for cats too, actually. - Nope, that's not gonna happen. - Then it's in there and it's not going anywhere. - If you have an actively swimming or bathed animal, a topically-applied product might not be the most effective long-term because you might be removing some of that product as you bathe your pet. And so you have to be cognizant and maybe even use a combination of things if your finances allow and the risk of your pet deems necessary, a combination of those things to provide the most robust protection. I can tell you for my own dogs, I use multiple products at the same time. And fortunately, I'm in a position to be able to do that. For my dogs. But I do know a lot of folks are crunched and they're having to make really important decisions and they need to partner with their veterinarian to have those conversations because it is case by case. There is no, I wish I could say, everyone should just use this. - Yeah, right. - And it's gonna be simple. - Right, yeah. - Even with the advancements and all the products that are out there, I still can't say this is the blanket everyone should be just using this thing because it's not that simple. Your veterinarian is the best resource you can have to have a point of conversation. A conversation about flea, tick, heartworm, deworming for your pets. So make sure if you have any questions, they should be your first stop at having those conversations. - Okay, so when I go out to garden or I'm going out for a walk, I spray my clothing with permethrin and I have clothing that's actually been soaked and treated with permethrin. I don't ever apply that to my dog. - You might, depending on what products you're using. That same-- - That's right, permethrin, 100%. And then also you can use those other, they have, what's the other chemical they use? In like cutter. I'm trying to think of this. - Oh, DEET? - DEET. - Or Picardin? - DEET is not good for animals. - Okay, good to know. - That's the point I wanna make. - Good to know. - Yeah, and permethrin, I wouldn't spray the one you spray on your clothes directly on your pet, definitely not your cat. Permethrin and cats don't go together. But there are permethrin-containing dog products on the market. So it's-- - It's the same active ingredient, just different formulations. And we do apply it directly to the dog's skin, but it's a monitored volume. It's a tightly regulated and tested formulation. Because if you just go to spray on your animal, who knows how much is gonna get on there? And is it getting down to like the base of the skin or they're just on the fur? So we don't wanna use the dog products on us and we don't wanna use our products on the dog. And definitely don't use any of those things we just talked about on the cat. - And don't use DEET, you know that one for sure, yeah. - Well, yeah, and never use dog products. - Never use dog products on a cat, right? - In general, that would probably be okay. But if it has permethrin in it, you're playing Russian roulette there. And if it's got moxidectin in it, which a lot of our canine products do now, the amount of moxidectin in the cat product is a different concentration. And so we do have to be careful just to make sure, 'cause we don't wanna accidentally overdose or underdose any of our products for any of these things. - So we're talking about outdoor cats. Outdoor cats and dogs now. But what if I have a cat or a dog, but people in the city have dogs that don't go outside? - They live in a high rise. So what if my pets don't go outside? Do I need to worry about ticks? But don't forget the human's going outside, I'm just saying. - Yeah, so let me tell you a traumatizing story that happened a couple months ago at my parents' house. So we went to visit my parents' house for the first time, and it is in a rural place. But they've done studies in city parks, doing tick collections and Lyme disease prevalence. And like, the place you go to, to socialize your animal or socialize yourself might be inundated with ticks. So it doesn't have to be like an out in the middle of Kansas situation. So that was my situation. We went fishing. I sprayed permethrin in our shoes and socks before we went. And we were in a pretty well manicured area around the pond. But anyway, I do tick checks on my young kids. I have a six year old and a two year old. They're fine. I was checking myself throughout the day. Didn't see anything on me. Okay, go to bed. Everyone's clean, showered. But we had gone back out that evening to mess around with my parents' new Starlink, because my mom was trying to get her Starlink installed and my husband was helping her. So we were in some taller grass areas right beside their house. But they have deer and turkeys all over in their yards. And a lot of people, even in urban areas, have coyotes and turkeys and all sorts of things running around, right? So anyway, come back in, go to bed. Well, turns out my husband's shoes, he took them off between the like two twin beds our family was sleeping in that night. So I was in bed with Luca. And I was like hanging off the edge 'cause he's like taking over a bunch of space. And my husband's in the other twin bed over by the pack and play with Mateo. So I've got like an arm hanging off the side of the bed. - That is a PJ party. - Yeah, super fun. So I've got my arm hanging off the edge of the bed and I'm breathing like towards my arm and towards the open space between the beds, right over where his shoes were. I wake up at two in the morning to literally a sensation going up my arm. Not down, up, which means that Tick got on me somewhere on my hand or wrist which is what was hanging over the edge of the bed. - It's going somewhere warm. - And going somewhere warmer. So I could not go back to sleep. This was like two in the morning, could not go back to sleep. And then I'm like, are there ticks on my kid that I'm sharing food with? Did it come off him? I washed him. I swear it probably came off my husband's shoes from the stupid wifi antenna experiment that they were running out in the yard. But yeah, they come inside. - Yeah, they do. - And then they come in the middle of the night. And I do Tick work all the time. - You were freaked out. - Yeah, if anyone would have spotted it, it would have been you. You know what I'm saying? - So the one on me was a full-blown adult female. Like she's not sneaky at all. - Is there anything pet owners can do to their yard? - Oh, I love, I learned from Dr. Starkey. I now spray my yard. - Yeah, there's something called Tickscaping, which is landscape your yard. - Oh, like manscaping. - Yes, I love it, Janet. - Well, I can't wait to tell Matt, my gardener guy. I can't wait. Hey Matt, are you Tickscaping today? - Yeah, can you go Tickscate my yard? So it's making your yard less conducive for the ticks in multiple ways. And so part of that is trying to not make it enticing for wildlife to come in. So trying to keep the wildlife out if we can. Trying to keep it manicured. So that's part of it. So keeping the grass shorter, creating dry borders between where you spend time and where the wildlife is more likely to be. So those are places ticks don't like to cross because they need moisture. So if you have a really dry gravel area or like dark wood chips or something, they may not be able to traverse that to get into your yard. And then there's drugs you can add on top of it. Maybe I shouldn't call them drugs, but sprays that you can add to your yard to then kill what's out there. Now those only last so long. And I do know that some people don't like the idea of chemicals in their yard, but all of those other things are chemical free. But hold on, we use, our guy uses every month, he comes, he just came this week, it is a cedar oil. It has no other chemicals in it. No, no. And before he even started doing it, I researched it and it does work on the ticks. Something about the oil kills them. So that's what we use and it's not a chemical and it's safe for animals. When it comes to feeding our pets, we believe in results you can see over hype. And that's exactly why we're proud to partner with Dr. Tim's Pet Food. Dr. Tim Hunt is a practicing veterinarian who spent decades formulating nutrition for every kind of pet, from the laid-back lap dog to his own Iditarod sled team. Check out Dr. Tim's Pet Food and see what science-backed nutrition looks like for your pet. They'll have a shiny coat, more energy, healthy weight, and more. Because every great adventure, even a nap on the couch, starts with a healthy pet. Well, we use Bayer. I'll tell you right now. I love using Bayer. Chemistry makes a better life, you know. But I remember, Dr. Starkey, seeing a picture of your area and you demonstrated, you know, where you spray. Like, you don't spray in the open, sun-exposed grass. It's more the shady areas, right, where the leaves accumulate and things like that. And we're targeting our yard for things like mosquitoes, too. Yeah. Because honestly, like, as bad as ticks are, I hate mosquitoes worse. And so, yeah, areas that get some shading, remain more moist, areas that are more likely going to have wildlife traverse through them. So, along the perimeter, along, if you have hedging and bushes and shrubs, like, that's where the wildlife are going to go tuck away. Well, that's more likely where a concentration of ticks are more likely to be, too. So, yeah, if you've got a big, open, expansive backyard, unless you know the wildlife are running through there, maybe that's okay. But definitely, the edges where you've got more growth along the fence or whatever your, you know, backyard containment is, that's more likely where they're going to be more concentrated. But I don't think you're wrong to spray all of it for just ease and consistency. Gotcha. That's the easier thing to do. But some of those areas may not need it as much, especially if you keep the grass short. All right. Let's turn the channel. What? To screwworm. I mean, screwworm. Name that. It sounds sexual in a weird way. It's, to me, it sounds serious. Yes. It's scary. So, what's going on with that? First of all, let's start with what is screwworm? Yeah. So, I'm going to start with screwworm. Not a worm. Okay. And I just had to teach some folks this weekend. So, at our parasitology conference, we have a group of folks who help us manage the meeting. They are business people. They are meeting planners. They are not scientists. And so, all of this happened literally the day I arrived on site to start this meeting up because I was coordinating the meeting this year. Screwworm happened the night before. And we're all talking about it. It's all a buzz. One of our speakers who was supposed to come to this meeting works for the USDA. And he couldn't because he's having to stay in Iowa to identify all these maggots that are getting sent in. Oh, my God. So, anyway, they're like, it's a worm? I was like, well, actually, it's a fly. And they're like, but they look like worms. I'm like, yeah, those are. So, the larval stages of this fly are maggots to most of us. But that's the problematic phase of the life cycle. The adults aren't causing problems. They're not biting us and transmitting stuff. They lay their eggs on a wound. They're not biting us. And then those larvae feed on living tissue. So, most maggots feed on dead tissue. And we even use maggots medically sometimes. Clean maggots for surgical debridement. These will eat a carcass alive. Well, they'll eat it alive until it becomes a carcass. So, from the outside in. Yeah, the pictures are horrifying. And we had an outbreak in the States back in 2017 down in the Florida Keys. And we just lost the key deer as a species. They almost went extinct. Wow. I remember that. Yes. Yes. Oh, they're so cute. I know. They're like little. But we were able to contain that one more easily because we intervened really quickly. Treated as many animals as we could. And there's one highway in and out of that entire region. We're talking about Texas and New Mexico with this one. There's, I mean, there's miles and miles and miles without a cow on it. Let alone, you know, there's not a lot of surveillance considering the expanse that we're dealing with this time. So, that's what gives me most concern is I know people are getting really active and involved in trying to do as much surveillance as possible. But it's just a huge, huge area. Can those animals be saved that are being affected? How do you get rid of it? Well, fortunately, they're flies. And flies are insects. And insecticides work pretty good. And we actually have quite a few chemicals Mm-hmm. that can treat insects as long as they're feeding on the chemical. So, in this case, they're feeding on animal fluids and tissues. So, the drug needs to be in or on the animal to provide efficacy. So, doing like fly sprays out in the environment may not necessarily be all that effective. And actually, part of our management strategy for screw wearers is to release more flies into the environment. And that's such a cool thing. And I hope we have time to talk about it later. But we want to make sure that animals are protected with a really, really long-lasting and strong insecticide. So, on the pet side, there actually are a few compounds now that we use and have used in the States for several years now for some of them to treat fleas and ticks. And we've gotten conditional approval. So, an emergency use authorization from the FDA to be treatments for screw worm. So, if the pet is treated with that for flea and tick normally, then it's on board and a screw worm fly, we're ever going to lay eggs on it. And those maggots hatched out of that egg, they're going to start feeding. They're going to ingest the thing that kills the ticks and the fleas. And it's likely going to kill the screw worm maggots just the same. So, a few products do have that. How did this happen? How did it get back to us? No, but how did the screw worm start up again? Because we hadn't had it in so long. It never fully went away everywhere. So, it was eradicated from the States. And back in the '60s and '70s, that's when the eradication happened in the United States. And so, there was a massive effort. So, now I can, I guess, talk about how they did this. They irradiate male flies. So, they raise the flies in the lab, save the males, irradiate them so they cannot breed. Okay. They could try, but they're sterile. Well, the biology of these flies is that the female only mates once. So, if she mates with a male fly who has been sterilized, she can't have the next. And so, by doing that and releasing tons of these male flies, we swarm out all the wild males that really could breed a female. And so, she has this just event that happens that leads to nothing. And so, she can't lay eggs. And so, over time, we were able to push it out of the States, collectively worked with governments, organizations south of our borders to get it pushed all the way down to Panama. So, they've still been living with screw worm in South America ever since then. It's just a bit normal there. But collective efforts and shifts in governments and et cetera, this thing has been slowly creeping back up through Central America and Mexico the past several years now. So, this is something that we've been keeping an eye on and talking about as parasitologists. Mm-hmm. Probably as soon as the COVID buzz wore off, this was the next buzz to kind of talk about in the parasitology world. And it just got close enough now that it has truly spilled over the border. And I checked the dashboard right before this call. Right now, there's seven confirmed cases. Oh. One dog. Is it still two dogs? One dog. Yeah, two dogs. Two dogs. Two dogs. Okay. And then livestock. And Texas, pretty much, but there is a New Mexico county where a dog resided that ended up testing positive, I guess. Okay. This might seem like a dumb question, but is any of our meat infected? We don't. Even if we ate them, it wouldn't hurt us. Okay. It's just extra protein. It's really gross to think about. So, it is going to be one thing that people are looking at at meat inspection, because you get the whole carcass there. So, they're definitely going to be doing surveillance, because that's a great access point with trained folks to make sure there's nothing on that carcass when it goes into slaughter. It's not going to affect the quality of your meat, other than the lesion itself. So, I don't think these animals would go through commercial slaughter processes. Now, if you had a cow in your backyard that had it, you could probably consume what part of the carcass didn't have the active lesion, but I don't know that many of us would do that, just because it seems kind of weird. But no, this is not going to be something that should impact any of the food we're consuming, but the impact is going to come in how many animals get infected and thus cannot make it to production. And our meat prices going up, fewer animals to be able to go to the commercial food chain. So, that's the big concern. It's going to be a huge hit to our agricultural industries, and not just cattle. These things feed on everything. Yeah. And then the pets, the farm dogs too, when you think about it. You know, I can't even imagine, you see these big herds of cattle, like on Texas ranches and stuff. How in the heck could you protect? I can't even imagine. You don't like overhead spray them, but that doesn't get to the underside like that one I just read, the baby cow had it in the navel. Yeah. So, it's a fresh wound, right? The umbilicus is a recent wound. And for the flies are attracted to that, and any kind of maggot creating flies is going to be attracted to that. The problem with the screwworms though, is they're not going to stop at the dead and decayed tissue. They're going to keep going. And so, it's really important that for the pets, use that year round approach that's got really good insecticide control in it, because then your pet will be protected should they come to the flies. For the livestock, fortunately some of these drugs that have that emergency use are longer acting and things that could be applied on board and I think that might be where we're like leaning toward right now is using some of these to make sure these herds have that chemical on board when the flies strike so that the maggots can't continue so just go through the herd and inject them yeah so there's several products that are available for cattle even some unique ones like we got emergency use to use Floralainer in the U.S. which is a commercially available product in Latin America for cattle we didn't have it commercially available here but we have dog and cat Floralainer here the brand name's Bermecto for that one but Exalt is the cattle version and so that is available for people to choose from amongst other things like macrocyclic lactones and other more classic ectoparasite products for large animals to try to provide prevention treatment for screwworm okay general question are there any parasites that we should give a little more attention to of interest you mean in pets in pets we talked about ticks we talked about screwworm are there any other like bad parasites for pets yeah I mean heartworm is the heartworm passion of mine um that heartworm pill is a great treat for Libby she loves it yes my dogs enjoy their heartworm experiment every time we do it too it's like a trip yeah some of them love it right and if your dog loves that treat experience do that as long as you can remember to do it there's injections for heartworm too and I'm a busy mom I have two-year-old six-year-old so my dogs get that now granted before I had my children I was really good at remembering things more consistently yeah but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna play around with heartworm where I live no so I'm gonna make sure they've got that on board but that injection doesn't do a bunch of other stuff it does not do fleas it does not do ticks there's another injection that could right like we've got a whole bunch of different products but you have to combine forces sometimes to get that best coverage for your animal against the things you're concerned about knowing your own uh issues so for me it's remembering and getting busy and so I want to be compliant and I do things to help facilitate me being compliant so every owner is going to be a little different so heartworm I mean it can be fatal yeah it damages the vessels and the lungs and the heart and it does it it starts damaging those vessels really quickly and in dogs we have a treatment but the treatment is horrible should I say what the drug actually is yeah it's arsenic yeah like that's not a fun thing we want to give it it's horrible and did you just see Lindsay that recent article about the dog that developed horrible infections at the areas where you give the two in the melarsomine injection they actually surgically remove that the dog got septic oh it was just a nightmare and I thought of all things this could have been prevented in so many ways and now heartworm preventatives they're making generics of them there's no excuse to not have your dog a heartworm all year round no matter where you live yeah well I'll let them off the hook right now right right about your pets oh yeah what pets do you have besides the six-year-old and the two-year-old today's episode is sponsored by Dr Tim's pet food until next time keep asking questions keep learning and keep loving your pets learn more at Dr Tim's pet food.com. Dr Tim's.com right and the husband and the husband so I've got two weenie dogs right now we actually called it because my husband's from Argentina so we actually called them like salt chicha half the time which is like Spanish for hot dog um but Kevin she is nine now we uh she was a roadside abandoned dog and so long long time ago she's been with us a long time and then like any good crazy person I was buying a house and about to have a baby in a few months and I said let's get another dog and so we we acquired Bruno who is a full-bred uh long-haired dachshund um from one of the students here actually friend them and I was like oh okay at least if I'm like spending a lot of money in that situation I would much rather get shelter dogs as a personal decision but I was like well at least she'll go on to help shelter dogs with the financial that came from me getting Bruno um and Bruno's been like Kevin is classic weenie dog like she has her people and then she just doesn't like anyone else oh and she doesn't really even like my kids because she grows out then like she's just she does she's not used to children well Bruno we got when my oldest was three and a half and then you know he's the baby's starting to get to interface with Bruno now too like she she doesn't like strangers like she's still weenie dog in that regard but like when it comes to us and the little boys she will just let them like grab her and every time I do this I'm like yeah right but like she tolerates any and everything he's ever done and I'm just like wow you're the most chill little weenie dog I've ever yeah I love those long-haired dachshunds when they walk and that hair goes if they're so Janet they're like little miniature Irish setters you know with that cute fur with a Swiffer we actually shave her now though like she still has her long hair but it's so hot here in the summer down everywhere else and I think she enjoys that more and she's like it's actually like she's kind of like really soft where she shaved I'm just curious living in Oklahoma now do you were you raised in the country are you a city girl I raised in the middle of nowhere we lived in Wichita for the first five years of my life which is a city and then Topeka for a couple years and but my dad is an avid outdoors person okay wanted to raise cattle like he was born in the city his whole life and he's like I want to do cattle okay so they my parents bought a big farm north of Topeka and that's where I was essentially raised for wow part of my childhood that I remember so he was I'm just curious so he was the only person that went country he gone country yeah he still liked doing outdoorsy stuff even though he lived in the city so they would go fishing he would go hunting yeah but he wanted to live in a place where he could just walk out the back door and do that so oh my gosh it's a country song about that gone country look at them boots remember that so Lindsay I'm going to ask you our guest question I don't know what is what is your pet or human peeve a pet peeve it can it can be about a human or a pet oh okay well I was gonna say grammar like bad grammar I have editor roles and a lot of different things that I do so I I notice weird grammar things um giving table scraps to dogs giving table scraps oh oh it is love she's not a nutritionist no but I've got dogs that are prone to back issues oh yeah yeah keep them thinner like I'm clearly struggle with with um but like with the dogs like we can control this yeah stop giving the dog food and even my two-year-old now he'll just he's still in the high chair right he's sitting next to me and I'm close to him and I see him grab something like as he's finishing up and he's like looking down at the floor like Bruno and like starts to move his hand no no no on the floor it goes I'm like you turd stop stop stop stop stop stop stop you turd stop feeding the dogs well this has been incredibly informative I could talk about ticks all day because people don't believe me how awful it is when you do get lime or Janet tell Lindsay about the stupid question that you ran into last night at the cocktail party last Friday and somehow Lyme disease came up and people know here that I've had Lyme and they call me what did you do everybody knows it everybody knows it and well because it was like a big deal so yeah one it's a dear friend of ours is like you know you can only get it from deer ticks and you know you don't have to worry about any other kind of ticks and it's not about the deer it's not about the chip I was just like I just finally said you know what I can't talk with you yeah I can't even you can't fix student educate yourself um I I was like holding back so yeah when you have been and I'm left for lack of a better word named from a disease you're pretty passionate I mean I choose to be pretty passionate about it so anyway I start going off on people like that with all this information and then they look at me and walk away because they think I'm nuts well what's happening here is Nantucket like 45 of the residents which you know it's small oh I read that Lindsay did you read that they have they have the bad the um alpha gal yeah yeah I was just going to say we didn't even talk about alpha gal but yeah that's the most in the news tick associated thing right now so what's the deal on alpha gal Dr Starkey dairy products meat milk anything that comes out of a cow or other red meat animals so it's pork it's I mean if you like lamb or that sorts of thing no it's potentially off the table for you and potentially forever so I am not because this is a human only thing right veterinary parasitologist but I do take stuff I'm not sure if the mechanism has fully been understood as to how to Lone Star Ticks, but not exclusively. There are cases that are caused by other ticks And it is available, or it happens in other parts of the globe where low-to-star ticks aren't. So your body now sees this alpha-gal substance as foreign and reacts to it when you ingest it. And so it's something with, like, the skin immunity, where the ticks are feeding, because we're not eating ticks, right? So they feed on us, our skin immunity responses, then we end up with a gut response later when we eat. Some people have mild reactions, like, my belly doesn't feel good, but the chicken is still so delicious. So keep eating. Some people died, like, anaphylactic, full-blown. And sometimes it extends beyond the meat products. And so it's things from those animals, too. So dairy or gelatin. And gelatin's in so much candy and other things. I had a student, poor gal, could not even eat something cooked in a skillet that had previously cooked meat. Like, she was so sensitive. So I can't imagine how, like, in tune you have to be to what's going on to try. If you eat. Outside of your house at all. Like, how concerned, honestly, you would have to be, depending on your level of allergy. But it's bad. It's starting to be reportable in different states, which I think is why a lot of people are talking about it. Because we've got better diagnostics for it now. People are talking about it more. So it's largely underreported, as every tick-borne disease honestly is. Because human diagnostics aren't out there screening for these things. It's only when the person feels ill, goes to the TENS doctor, gets the right diagnostics. And then they get the right diagnostics done. Do we actually figure out what's going on? But yeah, alpha-gal is scary. I love meat. And that's the tick that was crawling on me, right? The one that's most notorious for alpha-gal. And I've had that tick feed on me. And I still can consume meat products. But that may shift if more of those ticks feed on me. I don't know. Or I don't know if I'm, like, immune to the reaction, right? Because I've. Actually, because I'm near Nantucket. They have found that sales of meat are down. Sales of meat in restaurants. And there's an increase in vegetarianism. Because of alpha-gal syndrome on Nantucket. It's really bad. It's really bad. So anyway, we can't thank you enough. This is like -- See, I told you, Janet. I never miss one of her webinars. And this is the perfect example. Honest to God. This is so fun. webinar groupie. Totally. I'll call you. I am. Now that I'm retired. My sisters will call me. I'm like, can't talk. Listen to webinar. And I'm going to tell you, Lindsay. And you'll find this out someday when you retire. I can tell in the first five minutes. If it's going to be a good webinar or not. I can tell you. And when we go to Florida and I walk every morning, I put in a podcast or webinar. Same thing. Same thing. And to be honest, that's how Janet and I have got a lot of our guests. Because like Dr. Boyko, who founded Embark DNA. Yeah. His webinar is good. I'll call and email anybody. Because we have met so many fascinating people. I mean, really, we had him on. I never thought Ed Brightwood would do our show. I don't know him. We had a delightful hour with him. We picked him clean, Janet. We got into some personal stuff. I was like, you don't have to answer that question, you know, type stuff. Well, and I will say, like you said, listening to webinars, I think podcast. Do you know within the first five minutes whether you're going to-- No, I do. Absolutely. And also books in the first like three chats. Yes. And we just had Dr. Cluck Backyard Chickens with Dr. Pitesky from UCSF. Yeah. Yeah. He's from UC Davis. He wrote Chicken-- yeah. That was so much fun. We have met the nicest people doing this podcast. We have. It's a lot of fun. It really is. It was. And so were you today. Well, you're right. I'm so glad you emailed me randomly. Oh. I'm curious. Do you want to do this? It's like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Where did you just get back from? You were in the Midwest? No. I'm in Puerto Rico. It was amazing. Oh. So our parasitology conference moves around every summer to a different location. Summer in Puerto Rico? Yeah. Last year we were in St. Louis. And this year we were in Puerto Rico. Oh, OK. And I was actually really sad to get on the plane to come home. I was like, oh, this is. That's fine. Were you there without the family? You were there by yourself? How could you have a two-year-old? Well, yeah. So because I was in charge of the meeting, I knew I would have zero free time to try to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You were busy. So the family didn't come with me. But they had plenty of fun on their own. My oldest and husband are on an RV road trip right now. They saw the Argentina friendly game in Auburn a couple of nights ago. They got to see Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. And my husband being from Argentina and my son being six, like, that was a life altering moment for them. So-- I love it. They're having fun. They're at the beach now down in Florida. It's fine. They'll come home eventually. I have to ask you. One of my best friend is from Venezuela. He is a retired PhD chemist. I love South American men because every time I see him, it's, Alicita. And he picks me up off the ground. And I call him Minovio. Aw. Which I guess is my sweetheart. I don't know. I only know a few things. Yeah. Yeah. That's like when the dog, because we're having our kitchen redone, and the guys will be down on the floor and Libby starts licking them. And I'll go, besame mucho. They like absolutely crack up. They love it. Thank you. This has been enlightening. We so appreciate you. And I hope our listeners learned a lot. I know we said the word tick a lot, but it's really important. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for liking and sharing us. We're number two in our category. So we're-- So we're really psyched. And that's all because of you. So thank you so much. And Dr. Starkey, it's been a pleasure. Alice, anything else? If you have any emails or questions you want answered of a veterinary nature, please email us at soppodcast.com. Have a great day, everyone. and give your pets a big kiss from the Novotny Sisters.