There is a tick borne bacteria that is similar to Lyme disease. I know this because my poor dog Ollie has contracted it. He’ll be fine as soon as the antibiotics take hold. Actually, the vet put him on pain meds too and last night he was his usual playful self for a short time.The hard part about suspecting that he was sick was that he’s a Jack Russell and bound to his life’s love to play and greet friends even while in great pain.

A few weeks ago, I observed that he was stiff and had a limp. It was not constant and because he plays so very hard, while camping, I assumed he’d over done it a bit. He is 7 years old, so I figured he is middle-aged and some times he was going to slow down.

He had been laying around more often the last few weeks but his poor appetite and low energy could have been caused by a heat wave that we experienced. None of us felt like eating or playing.

This last week, he was still a bit picky about his food and ate lots of grass. He woke me up one night to go out to eat grass, I knew he had a belly ache but it seemed to go away. Then on Saturday, he became very stiff. He hardly wanted to mingle with people we had over for a picnic…I decided, that day, that he might have Lyme disease, as I had thought about the symptoms over time and they just fit.

Yesterday, I took Ollie to the vet and she took a blood test that confirmed Anaplasma. The doctor said Ollie was in a great deal of pain and gave me something to ease it, as well as, antibiotics. She told me that Ollie was not running a fever and was not having frequent bowel movements which would have been a further stage in the disease. This made me feel better about my own diagnosis of him, at least we caught it early.

All I have to say is, darn those sturdy little friends of ours! They suffer in silence and work so hard to please us that we have to be brain scientists to know they are ill!