“Trying to identify this as I just took the dog to hospital for what looked like a seizure and found this where he was”, writes this reader in her submission regarding the dark brown worm-like organism pictured below. “Scared this may be the cause. What is it?” Right off the bat, we will have to inform our reader that we can unfortunately not identify this worm, given its possible connection to her dog’s health issue. In fact, we never identify organisms that could be the cause of a health problem, as those situations are always medical in nature, and since we are not medical professionals, we are neither qualified nor legally able to provide such identification, as doing so would be tantamount to giving a diagnosis.

The best thing our reader can do for her dog is to inform her vet about this development: send this same picture to the vet and ask if this organism might be the cause. It might also be helpful to bring the worm to the vet. Now, in the case that the vet concludes that this worm is not causing her dog’s problems, then we would be more than happy to try identifying the creature, but until then we cannot say anything. Likewise, if the worm does not turn out to be the cause of her dog’s health issues, then she could take the worm to her local county extension office to have it identified.

Now, if the worm does turn out to be causing her dog’s issues, and our reader starts to grow concerned for her own health, there are medical professionals who specialize in this very field – medical parasitology. As opposed to a primary care doctor or ER doctor, who will likely not have received training in this field, a medical parasitologist is equipped to identify and treat organisms like this one (provided it is a harmful organism). To find one, our reader can do one or more of the following:
1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.

To conclude, we cannot identify the worm that may be causing our reader’s dog’s issues, as unfortunate as it is. We hope that her vet will be able to help where we cannot, and that she finds the answers to her questions as soon as possible. Likewise, we hope that the information we were able to provide proves helpful. We wish our reader, and her dog, the very best.

Summary

Article Name

Woman Fears Dark Brown Worm May be Causing her Dog's Seizures

Description

"Trying to identify this as I just took the dog to hospital for what looked like a seizure and found this where he was", writes this reader in her submission regarding the dark brown worm-like organism pictured below. "Scared this may be the cause. What is it?" Right off the bat, we will have to inform our reader that we can unfortunately not identify this worm, given its possible connection to her dog's health issue. In fact, we never identify organisms that could be the cause of a health problem, as those situations are always medical in nature, and since we are not medical professionals, we are neither qualified nor legally able to provide such identification, as doing so would be tantamount to giving a diagnosis.

Author

Worm Researcher Anton