An unusual parasite

After reading “5 Facts About Dogs and Deworming” (Barn Dogs, EQUUS 469), I wanted to share an odd experience we had last month. On a trip to a family dairy farm in the lower Adirondacks, my dog started licking what looked like a small puncture on her side. She had been doing a lot of swimming in a lake and racing through the woods, and I thought she ran into something.

My niece, a large-animal veterinarian, took a look. She said it was a grub---a small, fat worm common in cattle---and pulled it out with tweezers. She said that in her years as a veterinarian, she has never seen this in a dog. She also thought the ivermectin in the heartworm medication should have taken care of this. My niece warned us that if there is one, there are probably more, but thankfully we haven’t seen any. Victoria Shuster South Orange, New Jersey