Days 11 and 12: Home Sweet Home

I finally made it home! Our goal was to make it home yesterday late at night, but we decided we couldn't make it and got another hotel. I started my college search by looking at Wake Forest and Davidson, which will serve as good comparisons for other schools now.

I couldn't get a lot of research done yesterday, so I did some today when I got home. Although this is slightly tedious work, I'm excited to apply it next week in the clinic. Today I got through Heartworms, Fleas, and Ticks.

Heartworm is transmitted from animal to animal through mosquitoes; microfilariae (baby heartworms) in the bloodstream are not capable of causing hearworm without first passing through a mosquito. These worms can reach more than 12 inches in length when mature! General symptoms include labored breathing, coughing, vomiting, weight loss, and fatigue after moderate exercise. Unlike other worms, diagnosis involves radio graphs, ultrasounds, or blood tests rather than a fecal exam. There have been recent studies showing that in southern states, heartworm resistance is growing because mosquitoes are active all year long; vets are seeing more pets on prevention dewormers testing positive for Heartworm.

The flea life cycle involves four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The eggs are laid in the animal's fur in bunches of about 20, and an adult female can lay about 40 eggs every day. The eggs represent 50% of the entire flea population present in an average home. The larvae develop over several weeks and can get up to a quarter inch long; they make up about 35% of the flea population in an average home. A cocoon protects the pupae for several days or weeks before an adult flea emerges. It has a sticky outer coating, which allows it to hide deep in a carpet and cannot be removed by a vacuum; it makes up about 10% of the flea population in a home. The adult fleas need to feed from a host within a couple hours of emerging from their cocoon and can live from a couple weeks to several months on a host; they make up less than 5% of the entire flea population in a home!

There are 850 species of ticks, which are put into two general groups classed by body structure: soft and hard ticks; the most common with pets are hard bodied ticks. Like fleas, there are four stages to their life cycle: egg, larva (or seed tick), nymph, and adult. A unique thing about ticks is that most of them need three different hosts to complete their development. The six-legged larvae attach to a host and fill with blood over several days, fall to the ground, molt (shed their outer skins), and become eight-legged nymphs. They then wait for a second (slightly larger host) and repeat the same process to become an adult tick. After that, they look for a third host (which is usually either a deer or dog), feed off of them, then breed to produce more eggs. Their entire life cycle can take from two months to years depending on the environmental conditions.

Tomorrow is a needed day off! I need to get unpacked and prepare for the vet clinic starting on Monday...no holiday for me!