Yorkie Paralyzed by Tick
This week news outlets all over the country reported about a Portland-area Shetland sheep dog named Ollie the verge of euthanization due to his failing health and paralysis.
Fortunately, a student veterinarian found and removed a tick behind his ear. Ollie was fully mobile in about 10 hour after it was removed and is now fine.
I had never heard of a tick having the capability of paralyzing a dog, probably because tick paralysis is a somewhat rare condition.
But just a couple of days after Ollie’s story was in the news, tick paralysis struck a 4-year-old Yorkie in Spokane named Tucker.
“I noticed he wasn’t able to jump up the stairs and get into the house,” says Tucker’s owner Kim Rose told KHQ. “Then I noticed his back legs were not working at all. It was like he was paralyzed.”
Watch for These Symptoms
Like Ollie, Tucker is fine now, but their stories should be a reminder to dog owners that they need to check their dogs for ticks whenever they’ve been out in heavily wooded or grassy areas where ticks thrive.
Here is a list of symptoms to watch for if you think your dog could have tick paralysis:
- Vomiting
- Regurgitation
- Unsteadiness
- High blood pressure
- Fast heart rate and rhythm (tachyarrhythmias)
- Weakness, especially in the hind limbs
- Partial loss of muscle movements (paresis)
- Complete loss of muscle movement (paralysis), commonly seen in advanced disease state
- Poor reflexes to complete loss of reflex
- Low muscle tone (hypotonia)
- Difficulty in eating
- Disorder of voice (dysphonia)
- Asphyxia due to respiratory muscle paralysis in severely affected animals
- Excessive drooling (sialosis)
- Megaesophagus (enlarged esophagus)
- Excessive dilatation of pupil in the eye (mydriasis)
If your dog exhibits these symptoms and you find a tick on it be sure you bring it to the vet so that it can be identified and its ability to transmit disease determined.
That’s scary, here’s me telling my sister-in-law in the UK they don’t have the Paralysis Tick (thought only Aust. had the nasty 1)