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Maneka Gandhi responds to queries raised by animal lovers across the city

Q: My neighbour keeps threatening to remove the two street dogs I feed. Can an individual remove dogs from a colony?
A: No sterilised or any other dog can be relocated from their area as per five different High Court orders. If a dog is not sterilized the residents can simply approach an animal welfare organisation to sterilise and vaccinate the dog, but they cannot relocate him. Your neighbour can go to jail under the prevention of Cruelty to Animals act 1960.

Q: Can tick fever be prevented?
A: Use anti tick treatments, such as Frontline or Advantix. These are easy to apply and to work well please follow the directions.

They must be applied to the skin and not on the hair. But be very careful as dogs can overdose and die from the skin application — as my dog did. At the first sign of distress take him immediately to a vet. Then there is the obvious option of checking your dog over daily for ticks, especially in the ears, armpits, groin, belly and between the toes and removing them. Swab the house twice a day with an anti tick powder mixed in water and look at the walls because they climb to breed.

Q: How do I recognise tick fever?
A: Symptoms of tick fever (Erlichiosis) include high fever, total or partial loss of appetite, pus discharge from the nose and/or eyes, bluish discolouration of the cornea, bad breath, excessive salivary flow, bleeding from the nose or gums (in chronic bleeding the teeth may appear black), vomiting and diarrhoea, coughing, swelling of the hind limbs and scrotum, lameness, weakness or paralysis especially of hindquarter, emaciation, haemorrhages in the skin especially on the abdomen.

Q: My dog has tick fever and it keeps recurring. What do I do?
A: Once the dog has had the fever he/she will be prone to it her whole life so you must keep the dog away from ticks. Also, most vets and owners under-medicate the dog. The dog gets a normal dose of antibiotic (doxyclycline) and then after a week or two when the fever comes down and he/she starts eating again and the blood count comes back to almost normal, the dog is taken off medicine. But the dog usually needs up to two months of the antibiotic before the tick infection is truly destroyed. Otherwise it simply goes into hiding and then comes back again after a few weeks. There are usually three stages in the course of the disease. Check with your vet.