Ann in Houston wrote:

I was at the vet's the other day and they were treating a Labrador for
this
parasite. It supposedly comes from the dog drinking from a natural
waterway
where "infected" flukes were present. My fish have never had flukes, but
I wonder if it would hurt our neighbor's dog if he drank water from my
pond and they actually had a case of them before I knew of it. Flukes are
bad
enough, but "infected" ones? I wouldn't worry about it, but it just made
me wonder because he is such a nice dog.

Not much, but some. Giardia is known as "Beaver Fever". I'm not remotely
sure that there's any relationship between fish flukes and the flukes your
vet was talking about. Probably not. However, Giardia is now so endemic
in North America that you can not safely drink untreated water from any
stream. The problem is, many municipal drinking water systems (Thunder
Bay, Ontario, is the largest I know of) have discovered Giardia even in
their _treated_ water.

Remember how as a kid you'd just make sure the water wasn't muddy before you
drank from it? Don't even think about it now. Giardia isn't a deadly
disease, afaik, but you never get rid of it. Sort of like the Malaria of
the beaver world.

As for the neighbor's dog, there's not much you can do. If your fish pond
is infected, it had to have come from somewhere, and the likelihood would
be nearby streams.
--
derek