As you know, we moved to France lock stock and two dogs, this May (2000) with the intention of staying for some years but two weeks ago our dream was shattered by the sudden death of our wonderful West Highland Terrier, Sheila.

Unknown to us and we believe many others like ourselves, there is a disease caught from Tick’s called Piroplasmosis (Babesia canis) which in a lot of cases is fatal to dogs, cats, and horses.

This type of tick is only found in the southern areas of France but is also in Spain and Portugal.

If large numbers of red blood cells rupture at the same time, fever,vomiting,diarrhoea, jaundice and kidney failure can result, which is what happened to our dog. The parasite lives in red blood cells where it reproduces by dividing in two. Sometimes 2,4 or more parasites can be found in a single red blood cell, they rupture and release more parasites that can infect new cells. Our little Westie died a dreadful death and what is so maddening is that in all the press coverage and publicity about Passports for Pets, absolutely nothing was mentioned about these ticks.

When we lived in England our dogs were always getting ticks and we just pulled them out and there was no problem. This tick is a different strain and is brown in colour, the vet here thinks she got infected while we were in the Pyrennes for a couple of days. We have been told by him that all we can do is to completely cover our other dog with the spray "Frontline" make sure the animal is wet from it afterwards. Yet even with this protection, the veterinary nurse told us that her dog caught the disease twice.

There is a vaccination but dogs should have this when they are puppies and even then our vet said he had still seen the parasite in blood tests.

Please publicise this dreadful disease and prevent other dogs dying as ours did in such agony.

Please, I do not want her to have died in vain, let her help others and warn these families who in all innocence will take their beloved pet to live in France or on holiday and only have it die, I believe there has already been a case in England.

We are still very upset and miss our little girl dreadfully, she was full of fun and made you smile every day and we are lost without her and now we worry about our King Charles Cavalier.