Tick fever season: how did you catch it early, and what did treatment cost?

Tick fever is one of the commonest summer illnesses in dogs here — warm, humid weather is exactly what the brown dog tick wants — and it is the one people notice late, because the first sign looks like a dog that is simply tired in the heat.

What it actually looks like:

• Fever, sometimes up to 105°F
• Off food, flat, not itself
• Pale gums
• Swollen lymph nodes, or joints that look puffy
• Bruising, nosebleeds, or blood spots on the gums once the platelets drop

It is treatable, and it also kills dogs. The whole difference is between noticing on day one and noticing on day six.

Two questions for anyone who has been through it. What was the first thing you actually noticed — the thing that made you go? And what did diagnosis and the full course cost you, in which city? People are quoted wildly different numbers for the same thing and it would be useful to see them side by side.

The thing I noticed was that he did not come to the door. Nine years, every single day, he meets me at the door. That day he lifted his head and stayed on the floor. No fever I could feel, eating normally that morning. I took him in on a hunch and the platelet count was already down.

If you know your dog, the first sign is almost never on any list. It is just that the dog is not the dog.

Marking this as the answer for the cost breakdown alone. The "leaving half the food" detail matches what happened to us almost exactly and I did not act on it for four days.

Lahore. Diagnosis and full course came to about Rs 11,000 in 2024. Adding one thing nobody has said: if your vet does not recommend a repeat CBC after the course, ask for one anyway. My dog's count came back to normal and then dipped again six weeks later, and we caught it because we checked.

Karachi, Rs 9,500 in total including three CBCs. Would add: the vet who diagnosed it in ten minutes had asked me one question the previous two had not — "have you seen a tick on him at all this month?" The answer was yes, one, three weeks earlier, and I had thought nothing of it.

Update for anyone finding this thread: she finished the 28 days and the platelets are back in range. The vet said the thing that made the difference was that we came in on day two rather than day six.

Worth flagging for anyone reading in summer — this is not only a dog disease in the sense of "your dog gets it". The brown dog tick will live in your house quite happily. If you have an infestation you are dealing with a building problem, not a dog problem, and one round of spot-on will not touch it.

Multan. Lost a dog to this in 2019 because I thought he was just flat from the heat. It was 44°C and a tired dog seemed completely normal. That is the trap in summer — the disease looks exactly like the weather.

Following the environment advice from post 2 this year. Sprayed behind the kennel and around the wall cracks in April before the season started. Zero ticks so far and this is the first summer I can say that.

Good. April is the right month — by the time you are seeing ticks in June the population is already established and you are fighting uphill.

Rescue perspective: this is the single most common thing we see in street dogs we pick up in summer, and it is also the most treatable. A dog that looks like it is dying of something terrible is very often just this, and 3,000 rupees of doxycycline brings it back.

Does this affect cats at all? Vet said no but I have seen ticks on my cat this month and now I am anxious.