Great awareness from Chris Packham – No doubt we all agree that keeping our animals safe, happy, and healthy is as important to us as our own health and welfare.
Extra vigilance is needed here in the UK and when travelling abroad, and using suitable tick, flea, and worming products is absolutely crucial and needs prioritization.
Regarding the various preventatives and treatment options available, it is vitally important to seek expert veterinarian advice for appropriate protocol use on your particular type of animal and travel destination – healthy animals are happy animals, and it’s our responsibility to keep them that way.
We have previously highlighted the concerns to pet travel/ passports
http://www.visavissymposiums.org/veterinary/pets/pet-travel/
Thanks goes to The Big Tick Project for all their recent awareness of ticks and tick borne diseases, relevant all the year around not just in the month of May.
‘The Big Tick Project is the largest ever veterinary study of ticks and tick-borne disease in the UK. Explore the site to learn more about the study, the growing problem of tick-borne disease in the UK and what you can do to protect your pets from ticks’
http://www.bigtickproject.co.uk/
The Big Tick Project is calling for change to the pet travel scheme:-
‘There is growing concern over the threat from ticks and tick-borne disease from countries outside of the UK. France, Spain and other popular European holiday destinations are hosts to ticks such as the brown dog tick and to tick borne diseases such as Mediterrean Spotted Fever which are not currently found in the UK. As a result there is potential danger to dogs travelling outside the UK from ticks and tick-borne disease as well as the risk posed by non-native ticks and new diseases being brought into the UK.In 2012 the requirement for dogs entering the UK to treated with tick protection was removed. This means dogs travelling outside the UK are at risk of contracting ticks and tick borne diseases and allowing them to be brought back to the UK, putting both travelling and non-travelling dogs at risk.’
Further details can be read here http://www.bigtickproject.co.uk/get-involved/back-the-campaign/
