Tick-borne diseases including Lyme disease, babesiosis and ehrlichiosis cause significant welfare impacts in dogs, with prevention through tick control being more effective than treatment of established disease.
Tick-borne disease welfare is primarily a prevention problem - established disease causes prolonged suffering and is expensive to treat with variable prognosis. Prevention through reliable tick control products and regular tick checks is straightforward and highly effective. Climate change is expanding tick habitat range and season in the UK, making tick prevention increasingly important even in areas previously considered low-risk. The welfare impact of clinical Lyme disease includes chronic joint pain, episodic fever and in some cases kidney failure - months of suffering that preventive tick control reliably prevents. Dogs that walk in tick habitats should have year-round tick control as a welfare standard.