Pet owners: Experts say tick season has arrived early

AMARILLO, TX (KFDA) - Dog owners are advised to be on the look out for ticks.

Due to the dry, spring like weather we're experiencing, ticks have arrived early this year.

"We had a dog come in about 10 days ago for an unrelated problem that had about 20 ticks on her," said Veterinarian Janice Wolf. "So they're definitely out there. We'll see them coming pretty hard and fast here pretty shortly."

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With five months of no rain, and the weather warming, veterinarians say this will be an early and long tick season.

"The last two years, which have been wetter than normal, we actually saw more flees than we did ticks. Ticks seem to favor drier weather. I suspect this year will be a bad year for ticks," said Dr. Wolf.

This isn't the first time dry weather has impacted tick season and animals. The drought of 2011-2012 also brought an increase of tick cases.

"Ticks were really bad. We saw ticks bad enough in some animals to literally exsanguinate them, sucked all the blood out of them to the point that they were very anemic, life threatening," said Dr. Wolf.

The danger, of course, with ticks is the diseases they carry.

"The bad part about ticks is that they carry [diseases] which includes rocky mountain spotted fever, Lyme's disease and Anaplasmosis. Those can be quite devastating to a dog's health," said Dr. Wolf.

Vets urge pet owners to use tick preventative medicine to help with their dogs health.

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