Patapsco Valley View
Volume 2
Spring 2011
The Bugs Are Back in Town
The Bugs Are Back In Town! 
Ahh, Spring has finally Sprung! The grass is green! The air is warm, and soon, the Orioles will win some baseball games! (We can only hope.)
What’s that?! Furry and Kitt are scratching at WHAT?!
Yes, it’s that time again when the sun shines, the birds sing, and the bugs go out for dinner! If you haven’t seen them yet, be forewarned. The deer ticks are already out searching for a meal, and your family dog, plumped up by a winter of cold weather and inactivity, is the perfect main course. But the ticks aren’t picky, and in a misquote of the Wicked Witch of the West, the ticks will, “Take your little cat too!”
You may have heard that Lyme Disease has become endemic in Howard County and that means that if you want to protect yourself, you have to protect your pets.
Lyme Disease is transmitted by a tick bite, and it’s not just the little deer tick that is the culprit. Any variety of tick can carry the disease.
Ticks tend to live anywhere you find high grass or brush, and they wait eagerly for your pet to walk through, then they grab hold and get a quick lift to your home.
And if that isn’t bad enough, in June you’ll probably see a whole new crop of FLEAS who live only to annoy like the unwanted houseguests that they are.
Once inside your house fleas breed prolifically, and you can have a major infestation in a short time.
In an effort to remain at the front of the battle against pet parasites Patapsco Valley Veterinary Hospital has begun to offer a new product to help combat these nasty creatures.
It’s called Vectra!
Like earlier products such as Advantix and Frontline, Vectra is applied topically once a month on your dog to kill flea and ticks. (Unfortunately Vectra does not have a tick product for cats.)
Research has indicated that Vectra may have a quicker tick kill, in most cases within 24 hours, which will help protect your dog from Lyme Disease and your home from flea infestation.
Since some research has indicated that some fleas and ticks may be becoming resistant to products that have been on the market for more than a decade, we want to give you a new option for the war on pet parasites and it‘s called Vectra.