Does Your Dog Need a Lyme Test?

How much do you know about Lyme disease? Perhaps someone you know contracted it and felt listless and miserable for months or had a pet that died of lyme's  or has severe arthritis because of lyme's. Perhaps you know that Lyme disease is carried by ticks. Well, a bite from one of those ticks can do just as much harm to your dog as it can to you.

Lyme disease stems from the Borrelia bacteria. Ticks carry this bug around and transfer it when they bite in search of blood. Many but not all ticks you see on your dog will harbor Lyme disease, but the deer tick or black-legged tick is the most common culprits. It only takes one fateful bite for the bacteria to enter the animal’s bloodstream. While your dog may show no signs of the disease at first, early symptoms typically include a noticeable limp or swelling in a limb, the result of swollen lymph glands in that part of the body. Your dog may also run a fever and seem extraordinarily tired. Left untreated, a chronic Lyme infection can lead to serious nerve and heart problems. For this reason, early detection is essential. LYME disease infects up to 60% of the dogs and people in the New England states and most of the Atlantic coastal states. 10-30% of the dogs are infected in most states east of the Mississippi river. Lyme disease is found in dogs in every state. Since the disease is so common and can be so devastating, everyone should test their dogs and an easy time to test is when you test for heartworm disease, which is becoming more prevalent in every state as well.

Our Online Pet Shops Can Help!

Lyme disease is frequently accompanied by other tick-borne illnesses, including those caused by Ehrlichia. Ehrlichia attacks and destroys blood cells, causing swollen lymph nodes, elevated temperature, and arthritis, loss of appetite, internal bleeding and signs of anemia. Fortunately, an Ehrlichia test can detect this problem early, and here at Perfect Pet Products, we offer a combination of a Lyme test and Ehrlichia test when combined with our inexpensive heartworm test.

We also offer a convenient at-home heartworm test with a $12 add on to test for all three disease-at unbelievable low costs. You collect the sample, then mail it(normal first class USPO mail) to our licensed veterinary lab where our vet techs run exactly the same test that your veterinarian runs-we just charge a lot less. We also offer convenient at-home testing: 1) for worms in all pets, 2) worms in horses and all other livestock,  and 3) feline leukemia. We have a test kit guaranteed to solve dogs killing the grass, to prevent dogs from eating their stools, and help train or retrain dogs/cats to urinate and defecate in the right places. Our newest product is a comprehensive one step urine test that you perform at home to help you diagnose diabetes, kidney, liver, or bladder diseases as well as help your dog or cat stop urinating in the wrong places in the home.

Here’s a question for the gallery: Have you ever had the human version of Lyme disease? Share your story here and help others understand just how disabling it can be for humans and pets alike!

Keeping Creepy Crawlies Off Your Pet

With the weather growing steadily warmer, a pet owner's thoughts soon turn to those fleas and ticks that come along with the summer temperatures. Fleas and ticks are not only painful and irritating to pets, but can also infest a home far too quickly. Prevention is essential, and one of the main objectives here at our website is to help pet parents do just that. Our online pet shop offers products that are designed to keep pets safe, while keeping pet parents sane. Worms and Lyme disease are potential problems in people as well.

Preventive Products

Our products include a range of testing products that test for Lyme disease, heartworm and all worms in pets, feline leukemia and ehrlichia that can be easily performed at home and then sent off to our licensed vet lab. Pet parents can do a urine test, test for worms, and test for heartworms at home, then have the results needed to treat the animal. All diseases tested for are preventable as long as they are found early, so these tests can be truly invaluable for pet owners and pets.

Our online pet shop sells Frontline, a flea and tick preventive application that kills all fleas and ticks -- including the ticks that spread Lyme disease. We are offering Frontline for a 25% discount to our pet parents for the entire year of 2011, which reduces costs to just $29.99 for a 3-pack of Frontline for dogs, and $39.95 for a 3-pack of Frontline for cats. Frontline Plus contains an insect growth regulator which controls each of the three stages of flea development, keeping your pet completely free of the pests.

Whether pet owners need a worm test, a feline leukemia test, or want to pick up some Frontline to keep the creepy crawlies off their treasured pet, our online pet store has the products to meet that need. Questions about flea and tick prevention?

We're happy to answer your questions in a future blog, just leave them in the comments box!

An online pet shop comments:

At Perfect Pet Products, we provide services and make products for your pet, horse, or other animals that you need-at prices that you will love! We are excited to bring you our newly updated website with an online pet product store, along with our new blog feature to help educate potential clients about the pet, equine, and various other animal products we offer. Our primary goal is to provide the same accurate testing services, that we offer our clients at our veterinary hospital, to you in a convenient and affordable way. All your do is collect a small sample and mail it to our licensed veterinary lab. We provide these services for nearly all pets including horses and livestock (except fish). At Home testing saves you time and money with no change in the accuracy of the results plus you receive fast written results within 24 hrs. of the receipt of the sample.  Please visit our online pet and equine shop. Contact us if you have any questions!
Today, I would like to briefly talk about the different pet products we offer. In future blog posts, we plan on delving into more detail as we showcase each of our pet products individually.

We offer three main categories of pet testing products for heartworm, lyme, ehrlichia, worms, giardia, and feline leukemia, horse and livestock tests for worms, Frontline flea & tick products, and our other miscellaneous pet products.

Home Test Products

We offer convenient AT HOME tests so you can check your animal companion for heart worm, lyme, giardia, other types of worms, common diseases, and more! We have worm tests for dogs, cats, rabbits, reptiles, birds, and most other pets. Our Equine Worm Kit tests for worms in the horse and all other livestock including chickens, sheep, goats, hogs, ostrich, camels, etc. We also offer convenient at home tests for lyme disease and ehrlichia. In fact, our ehrlichia test, lyme test, and heartworm test are all actually part of the 3-in-1 at-home heartworm test. When using this blood-sample based test, you can choose to test just for heartworm, or you can test for all three: heartworm, lyme disease, and ehrlichia.

Our fecal worm test allows you to check your dog, cat (or just about any pet) for worms at home using a pre-paid stool-based test. Just send in the feces test sample and we will process the stool sample within 24 hours of receipt. Another exciting at home test offered is “The Pet Health Checkup.” This test is an easy, inexpensive way to help you identify common pet issues which may be causing pet health problems as well as common urination problems. For those with feline companions, we offer a convenient saliva-based feline leukemia test. Learn more about our at-home pet tests!

Frontline Flea & Tick Products

If you have a cat or dog, then you will want to provide them with some sort of defense against fleas to prevent a flea infestation. Frontline products have been at the forefront of flea and tick defense for several years, making Frontline a trusted brand among pet owners. At Perfect Pet Products, we carry a whole line of Frontline Flea & Tick Defense products for dogs and cats. Frontline products are easy to use and only need to be applied to your dog or cat about once a month.

Additional Pet Products

In addition to our other pet products, we also carry the Shur-Lock Pet Collar and the Cat Carrier Bag, which are two popular pet items sold at our store, used by our clients and sold to veterinarians.