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 Summertime is a great season to explore the outdoors with your canine companion. However, danger lurks around every corner when you're playing in the forest, coastal scrub, high brush or grasslands. Ticks abound this time of year, which can carry diseases including Lyme's Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. SHS regularly tests for Lyme's disease, and has successfully treated several dogs testing positive for the disease.
For pet owners the best solution is prevention - treat your dogs (and cats) with a safe topical flea and tick medicine. And get used to picking ticks off your dog's coat after each outdoor excursion - these topical treatments are effective once the tick (or flea) gets close to the animal's skin, but ticks can drop off your pet and crawl down onto you and your family in an instant.  HSU Biology professor, Dr. Jianmin Zhong, is trying to understand more about the symbiotic relationship between certain species of local ticks and a microscopic bacterial parasite they can carry.
"Ticks are the number one vector of infectious disease in the United States," says Dr. Zhong, whose research on ticks is a crucial element in designing new tick control measures for California and the entire West Coast. Dr. Zhong is studying the relationship between the Western Black-Legged Tick (Ixodes pacificus) and a microscopic bacteria called Rickettsia species, which can cause diseases such as typhus and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Our local tick has some sort of immunity to this bacterium, which is a possible link to a cure.  To aid in his research Dr. Zhong is collecting ticks from a variety of "hosts" (e.g. cats, dogs, humans, lizards). SHS will be participating in this study by collecting ticks found on our shelter animals. Although all animals at SHS are treated with topical tick medication, we are still noticing a large number of ticks 'taking a ride' on dogs that have just been walked through tall grass during their thrice daily "constitutional". What better way to contribute to the future of effective tick control than by collecting these parasites and putting them to good use?
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Sequoia Humane Society
