External Parasites
Anyone who has ever spent hours peering intently at their dog's warm, pink stomach waiting for a flea to appear will readily understand why we call this chapter the "blight of parasites. " For it is the onslaught of the pesky flea that carries and aids worms and heralds their subsequent arrival.
If you have seen even one flea scoot across that vulnerable expanse of skin you can be sure there are more lurking on other areas of your dog. They seldom travel alone. So it is now an established fact that la puce, as the French refer to the flea, has set up housekeeping on your dog; it is going to demand a great deal of your time before you manage to evict them probably just temporarily-no matter which species your dog is harboring.
Fleas are not always choosy about their host, but chances are your dog has what is commonly known as Ctenocephalides canis, the dog flea. If you are a lover of cats also, your dog might even be playing host to a few Ctenocephalides felis, the cat flea, or vice versa! The only thing you can be really sure of is that your dog is supporting an entire community of them, all hungry and sexually oriented, and you are going to have to be persistent in your campaign to get rid of them.
One of the chief reasons they are so difficult to catch is that what they lack in beauty and eyesight (they are blind at birth, throughout infancy, and see very poorly if at all during adulthood) they make up for in their fantastic ability to jump and scurry about.
While this remarkable ability to jump some say 150 times the length of their bodies -stands them in good stead with circus entrepreneurs and has given them claim to fame as chariot pullers and acrobats in side show attractions, the dog owner can be reduced to tears at the very thought of the onset of fleas.
Modern research has provided a panacea in the form of flea sprays, dips, collars and tags which can be successful in varying degrees. But there are those who swear by the good old-fashioned methods of removing them by hand, which can be a challenge to your sanity as well as your dexterity.
Since the fleas' conformation (they are built like envelopes, long and flat) with their spiny skeletal system on the outside of their bodies, is specifically provided for slithering through forests of hair, they are given a distinct advantage to start with. Two antennae on the head select the best spot for digging and then two mandibles penetrate the skin and hit a blood vessel. It is also at this moment that the flea brings into play his spiny contours to prop himself against surrounding hairs and avoid being scratched off as he puts the bite on your dog. A small projecting tube is then lowered into the hole to draw out blood and another pumps saliva into the wound; this prevents the blood from clotting and allows the flea to drink freely. Simultaneously your dog jumps into the air and gets one of those back legs into action- endlessly and in vain.
Now while you may catch an itinerant flea as he mistakenly shortcuts across your dog's stomach, the best hunting grounds are usually in the deep fur all along the dog's back from neck to tail. However the flea, like every other creature on earth, must have water, so several times during its residency it will make its way to the moister areas of your dogs such as the corners of the mouth, the eyes or the genital parts. This is when the flea collars and tags are useful. Their fumes prevent fleas from passing the neck to get to the head of your dog.
Your dog can usually support several generations of fleas, if he doesn't scratch himself to death or go out of his mind with the itching in the interim. The population of the flea is insured by the strong mating instinct and the well-judged decision of the female flea as to the best time to deposit her eggs. She has the unique capacity to store semen until the time is right to lay the eggs after some previous brief encounter with a member of the opposite sex.
When that time comes for her to lay, she does so without so much as a backward glance and moves on. The dog shakes the eggs off during a normal day's wandering, and there they remain until hatched and the baby fleas are ready to jump back on a dog. If any of the eggs remain on the dog, chances are the scratching of your dog will help them emerge from their shells.
Larval fleas are small and resemble grains of salt; they begin their lives eating their own egg shells until your dog comes along and offers the return to the world of adult fleas, whose excrement provides the predigested blood pellets they must have to thrive. They cannot survive on fresh blood, nor are they capable at this tender age of digging for it themselves.
After a couple of weeks of this free loading, the baby flea makes his own cocoon and becomes a pupa. This stage lasts long enough for the larval flea to grow legs, mandibles, and sharp spines and to flatten out and in general become identifiable as the commonly known and obnoxious Ctenocephalides canis. The process can take several weeks or several months, depending on weather conditions, heat, moisture, etc., but generally three weeks is all that is required to enable the flea to start gnawing your dog in its own right.
And so the life-cycle of the flea is begun again, and if you don't have plans to stem the tide, you will certainly see a population explosion that will make the human one resemble an endangered species. Getting rid of fleas can be accomplished by the aforementioned spraying of the dog, or the flea collars and tags, but air, sunshine and a good shaking out of beds, bedding, carpets, cushions, etc., must be undertaken to get rid of the eggs or larvae lying around the premises.
However, if you love the thrill of the chase, and have the inclination for it, you can still try to catch them on safari across your dog's stomach. Your dog will love the attention-that is, if you don't keep pinching a bit of skin instead of that little blackish critter. Chances are great you will come up with skin rather than the flea and your dog will lose patience.
Should you be lucky enough to get hold of one, you must either squeeze it to death (which isn't easy to do) or break it in two with a sharp, strong fingernail (which also isn't easy to do) or you must release it underwater in the toilet bowl and flush immediately. This prospect is only slightly more likely. We strongly suggest that you shape up, clean up, shake out and spray-on a regular basis.
There are those people, however, who are much more philosophical about the flea, since, like the cockroach, it has been around since the beginning of the world. For instance, that old-time philosopher, David Harum, has been much quoted with his remark, "A reasonable amount of fleas is good for the dog. They keep him from broodin' on bein' a dog." We would rather agree with John Donne who in his Devotions reveals that "The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can. " This is especially true if your dog is a show dog! If the scratching doesn't ruin the coat, the inevitable infestations of the parasites the fleas inject into your dog will do it!
So we readily see that dogs can be afflicted by both internal and external parasites. The external parasites are the aforementioned fleas, plus ticks and lice. And while all of these are bothersome, they can be treated. However, infestations of the internal parasites, worms of various kinds, are usually deeply-seated before discovery and require more radical means of ridding the dog of them.
The Book Of The Pekingese
By Anna Katherine Nicholas
And Joan McDonald Brearley
