Guide to Know More: Can You Help Detective Bear? Bookmark

by the Tortorella Family Foundation and Bear’s Angels

Can You Help Detective Bear? is a bookmark created for children by the Tortorella Family Foundation that shares information on ways to keep pets healthy.  It shows how fleas, heartworms and ticks can hurt our cats and dogs and the ways that we can protect our furry friends from these pests.

Who is Detective Bear?
Even with his cap and trench coat, it’s easy to recognize that Detective Bear is a dog… a very special one at that!  Bear was the Tortorella Family’s pet and they loved him very much. After he passed away, the family decided to help animals in his name. They created Bear’s Angels, a program for shelters and rescues who do great things for animals in need.

The  bookmark, Can You Help Detective Bear? asks readers  to help discover  what is “bugging”  Detective Bear’s friends, Molly, Jake and Patches.  By looking through Detective Bear’s magnifying glass, we find three different bugs that might be harmful to cats and dogs.

Fleas
Fleas are tiny insects, no more tha 1/12” to 1/8” long. They cannot fly but can jump very high for their size. If they jump onto an animal, such as a dog or cat, they can live in the animal’s fur for a long time. The fleas lay eggs and in a short amount of time, a cat or dog can have hundreds of fleas. Fleas will bite the animal and cause discomfort (itching) and pain. Fleas can cause skin diseases in animals and in humans.

Heartworms
These worms most often attack dogs. The worms, when fully grown, are 1 foot long. Heart worms get into a dog’s skin though a mosquito bite. The mosquito carries baby heartworms in its blood from biting an animal that has already been infected with heartworms. This is how a mosquito spreads heartworms from one dog to another. The baby heartworms find their way into a dog’s heart and lungs where they grow and lay eggs. Heartworms can seriously damage an animal’s lungs and heart and if they are not treated with special medication, the animal can become very ill and die.

Ticks
Ticks are arachnids – animals that have eight legs,  like spiders. They don’t fly or jump, but live in the grass and bushes. Ticks can attach themselves to cats and dogs when those animals walk through the grass or bushes. They can even attach themselves to humans. Ticks insert their mouth under an animal’s skin and feed off of its blood. They can pass along diseases to the animal. One disease caused by ticks is Lyme disease. This is a disease that causes the swelling of the joints in the animal’s legs and makes walking or moving very painful.

How can we help our pets so that they won’t get sick? There are special medicines to prevent and treat disease from ticks, fleas and heartworms.   It is important for us to talk to a veterinarian to learn more about these medications.
 

To learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.tortorellafoundation.org and our facebook page www.facebook.com/tortorellafoundation