How to Know What Kind of Worms Your Pet Has

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Marcia Martin and we're here at Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Jupiter, Florida and today we are going to talk a little bit about how to know what type of parasite your pet has. Basically without the help of a veterinarian you probably won't know what parasite your pet has. There are numerous intestinal worms, hook worms, round worms, tape worms, giardia, coccidia and only two of those are worms that you can actually see in the stool, tapeworms and roundworms so just because you are not seeing worms doesn't mean that they're not there. Some ways to tell if your pet has worms and often you won't know because an adult dog can carry worms and you'll never even know as long as the burden is small. Now when worms become a problem in puppies especially you may see a pot bellied appearance, you may see poor hair coat, vomiting, diarrhea, all of those are signs that your pet may have intestinal worms and you should probably take him to the vet and let him get checked out so that the appropriate medication can be prescribed because the medication that we use depends on the type of worms that the pet has. Now roundworms are pretty obvious. They are in the stool and they kind of look like big spaghetti. So they are the ones you'll see. Now tapeworms you're going to see those too and they look like little flat grains of rice. Why we use food when we are talking about worms I will never know but veterinarians I guess have a strange sense of humor and we like to talk about food and worms at the same time. Tapeworms come from fleas so if you are seeing those little rice like worms your pet probably has fleas too and you probably need flea control as well as intestinal parasite control. When you take a stool sample into the vet we do what is called a fecal sample. We float it in either a salt solution or zinc sulphate solution and this causes the worm eggs to rise to the surface of the fluid and then we can see those under a microscope and each worm has a characteristic egg so that's why we are looking at the stool and what we are looking for is actually the eggs, not the adult worms themselves. Worming is really important because some of these parasites that your dog and cat carry can be infectious to you and your children. Hookworms and roundworms both the larvae can infect children, often with disastrous consequences because the worms when they go into the people don't realize they're supposed to go into the intestinal tract. They get lost and they wind up in vital organs like the brain and the liver so these have become less of a problem as we have been worming our animals with more frequency and with better wormers. We are not seeing the problems that we used to see in children. So knowing what type of parasites your pet has and treating them properly is important not only for your pet but for your family and that's how you know what type of parasites your pet has."