There were a lot of interesting things on the microscope today! I did a bunch of cytologies on ears, urine, and skin. Ears are kind of boring, bacteria and yeast. But urine can have crystals in addition to bacteria and cells. Crystals develop when the urine's pH is too high or too low and there are many different crystals. This is from a puppy who was having accidents in the house, her urine pH was 9.0, normal should be around basic, 7.0 to 7.5. Crystals can develop into stones, actual mineralized stones in the bladder, and some can be dissolved with a special diet but most have to be surgically removed. Here are the crystals:
Then I did a skin scraping on a puppy who had patches of hair missing. We suspected either mange or a bacterial/fungal infection. I examined the scraped skin and lo and behold! Mange! This one is called demodectic mange. The other type of mange is sarcoptic mange aka scabies. Sarcoptic mange is contagious to other animals and people. Demodex is not. All animals have this type of mite in their skin, it's natural. But in animals who are very sick with compromised immune systems they increase in numbers and cause hairloss and can cause them to be itchy. It is also very common in pitbulls, even healthy ones. This puppy happened to be a pitbull mix. I circled the mites, everything else is hair, skin, and blood droplets.
Here's a close-up of one
Treatment is very simple: give monthly flea/tick prevention! We use 2 products, one is called Nexgard and the other is Simparica. They are a newer class of drug for flea and tick prevention that have also been approved to treat both types of mange and they are a chewable tablet. It makes owner compliancy great and we know that the pet will get better because of it.
There's your lesson everyone. I hope you all paid attention, there will be a quiz. Those who fail will have to stay after and receive their punishment, I mean take detention, from me! 😁
