Mary Crover lets her dog play in the leaves and it comes back with a hidden passenger, a blacklegged tick.At home, the dog can't stop twitching. Crover finds the tick and takes the dog to the vet.
Her dog has Lyme disease.
Later, the Scarborough woman discovers she has the disease too, and so does her eight-year-old son.
Health authorities would say Crover was unlucky, the victim of a rare event. But contracting Lyme disease in Toronto can happen, and it may not be as rare in the future.
The ticks carrying the disease-causing bacteria, also called deer ticks, aren't often found in Greater Toronto.
But authorities say the insects can hitch rides on migrating birds.
"It doesn't just travel on deer, like we think," said Crover, who believes Lyme disease is sometimes mistaken for other ailments in Toronto because doctors here have little experience with it. She added since early detection and treatment with antibiotics can keep the disease from becoming a long-term illness, people should be warned, pet owners in particular.
Crover frequently walked her dog, a maltese, in the Rouge Valley and Morningside Park.
She found the tick on Oct. 17.
But the veterinarian didn't warn her she may also have been bitten or exposed, and that if you find one tick on a dog, there may be others, Crover said.
The dog, after three weeks of medication, still shakes. Crover wasn't feeling well either.
Three weeks ago, there was a mark on her arm that looked like a burn. Then she had frightening but fast-changing symptoms: confusion, paralysis in her hand, numbness, heart palpitations, blurred vision, fatigue. "I've been exhausted a month."
On Nov. 13, Crover was diagnosed and then so was her son, who hadn't gone with her on the walks. After a week on antibiotics, her son is doing well and there are times when she feels like herself again, she said.
Crover's misfortune does not mean Lyme disease has established itself in Toronto.
Toronto Public Health says city residents averaged nine reported cases a year between 1998 and 2007.
There were 26 cases in 2008. Most were residents who had travelled to U.S. Atlantic seaboard states or other areas where the blacklegged ticks and bacteria are far more common.
But three residents acquired Lyme disease in Toronto - from ticks, it is thought, which fell off birds. And ticks taken off dogs do test positive.
No part of the city carries a special risk, Dr. Howard Shapiro, Toronto's associate medical officer of health said this week.
"There's no established population of the tick (here) to begin with," said Shapiro, adding city staff in protective clothing sometimes search for such ticks, dragging a white cloth over grassy park areas where the insects may be waiting for prey to brush by.
"Even if they did pick it up in Rouge Park, it's a rare event."
The only known Ontario footholds for the blacklegged tick on the north shore on Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River are bird migration spots, such as Point Pelee and Long Point.
Shapiro acknowledged global warming would allow the ticks to further establish themselves in Ontario, but added, "it's not happening right now."
Ontario's health ministry says precise boundaries of blacklegged tick populations are hard to define, "but it is anticipated that some of these populations will continue to expand into neighbouring areas."
The ministry says it's "most likely" feeding ticks need 24 hours to transmit the infection, so ticks should be quickly pulled off with tweezers, without squeezing them, and taken to a doctor or health unit for testing. The bite site should be cleaned with alcohol or soap and water.
Crover, meanwhile, wants Ontario's College of Veterinarians to require members to tell people when they may have been exposed to Lyme disease through a pet, as well as what the symptoms are.
Martin Fischer, its practice resource officer, has told her the college "will consider this issue with a view to developing a policy surrounding the appropriate advice veterinarians should be providing to their clients, when faced with the situation you found yourself in."