Fig 1.
Diagram provided to illustrate the location of the tick bite on the animal’s body.
Veterinarians or pet owners indicated the dorsal (a) and/or ventral (b) location of the tick bite by marking an ‘x’ on the diagram. Image obtained from Midwestern University Animal Health Institute (https://www.mwuanimalhealth.com; 2022).
Table 1.
Categorization of locations of tick attachment.
Fig 2.
Geographic locations of veterinary clinics participating in the Canadian Pet Tick Survey (blue stars) across Canadian provinces.
(Spatial data were prepared using QGIS version 3.22.1 ((https://qgis.org/en/site/; 2022). Base vector layers were ascertained through the Scholars GeoPortal at the University of Guelph (http://geo1.scholarsportal.info).
Fig 3.
Distribution of attachment sites of ticks on dogs.
A. Ixodes scapularis B. Dermacentor variabilis. Diagrams were generated in Canva (https://www.canva.com; 2022). Note: percentages will not total 100% because some submissions had multiple tick bite locations.
Fig 4.
Odds of tick attachment on sites of the dog body.
Red represents the locations of the body with a significantly higher odds of Dermacentor variabilis acquisition, and where the blue represents the locations of the body with a significantly higher odds of Ixodes scapularis acquisition. Diagrams were generated in BioRender (https://biorender.com; 2022).
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of tick bite location on dogs and cats.
Table 3.
Mixed univariable logistic regression analysis of tick bite location on dogs.
This regression explored the association between tick bite location (outcome) and tick species (Ixodes scapularis vs. Dermacentor variabilis) on dogs across Canada.
Fig 5.
Distribution of attachment sites of ticks on cats.
A. Ixodes scapularis B. Dermacentor variabilis. Diagrams were generated in Canva (https://www.canva.com; 2022). Note: percentages will not total 100% because some submissions had multiple tick bite locations.
Fig 6.
Odds of tick attachment on sites of the cat body.
Red represents the locations of the body with a significantly higher odds of Dermacentor variabilis acquisition. Diagrams were generated in BioRender (https://biorender.com; 2022).
Table 4.
Mixed univariable logistic regression analysis of tick bite location on cats.
This regression explored the association between bite location (outcome) and tick species (Ixodes scapularis vs. Dermacentor variabilis) on cats across Canada.