Ticks on the dog...oh my

[Croney]

After walking in the woods, we knew to inspect our little terrier for ticks, and we found a couple on her longish hair. She gets monthly flea & tick treatment so we don't worry much.

Later we noticed her batting at her face with her paw. We found ten ticks just below her mouth and around her chin! We hadn't thought to look closely there. Luckily, none were embedded.

Remember this area when you check! Now I'm calling her ticky monster.

[SheltieLover]

1. Poor pupper!

Experts cautioning about this as awful year for ticks.

https://www.prevention.com/health/a36558703/tick-time-bomb-summer-2021/

Glad you knew to inspect & got them off!

[Croney]

3. Yes, this year is definitely bad!

[SheltieLover]

5. It sure is!

We can see them jumping out in yard. (We live in swampy red hellhole TN, which I glumly refer to as Jurassic Park. )

I would appreciate any recs for nontoxic bug killer. Have already tried Vet's Best & Wondercide yard treatment.

I think the fleas, ticks & others ran out to grab ice for their yummy cocktails.

Dog has Seresto collar - not working this year, but Bayer sold the brand, so...

Dog is also on heartworm.prev. Nex Guard, & indoor only cat on Revoltion.

Nothing is working.

[Croney]

7. FirstShield Trio is her flea & tick treatment.

I guess there would be no way to prove what works best!

[SheltieLover]

9. Do you use a yard tx?

Dog, who came to me as stray is "high positive" for heartworm. Hes had a month of doxy & on preventative - the "long" treatment. So he can only have certain meds.

I'm so sick of fleas & ticks I'm constantly tempted to call an exterminator & order them to eradicate anything that crawls or slithers, but that would affect birds, bees, etc., etc. I just can't do it ethically.

[Croney]

11. No, we have a large yard but it's in the city and

my husband keeps it fairly well groomed, plus we have a vegetable garden and flowers, so we don't put any chemicals around. Veggies are fenced off from the bunnies. The dog keeps thinking she'll catch a bunny one of these days, and we let her dream.

[SheltieLover]

13. Nice!

We cut grass 2x/ week. Does not help & now as of a few days ago, dog appears to have chiggers.

Tried to get him in to vet Sat but it was a 3 hr wait & IFFY if they would be able to see those waiting 3+ hrs.

So I bought NexGuard, but nobody at vet could tell me if it works on chiggers. If that's what these reddish spots are.

Your home sounds lovely!

[Croney]

14. Thanks! It was New Hampshire woods where we had the tick problem today.

Good luck with the chiggers!

[yellowdogintexas]

15. you need a couple of possums in your yard

They eat ticks and can clean up a yard.

Tempt them into your yard with cat food and hope there is a breeding pair in there somewhere.

THey are harmless, do not carry rabies and my feral Momcat had no fear of them, even when she had tiny babies. In fact she seemed rather bored with the whole thing.

We live in an older subdivision (around 1961 - 1965 construction date for most of the houses) with lots of trees. Raccoons and possums invaded my patio and ate her food. We just fed her more often in the daytime.

It is rather hilarious to watch a raccoon try to wash dry cat food though

[Diamond_Dog]

2. That's great advice, thanks!

My Sophie is a yellow lab and ticks are fairly easy to see on her (we check her over every time she comes in as well) Still, you can easily miss one. I don’t know how anyone can find one on animal,with dark colored fur! Sophie gets the monthly treatment, too.

[Croney]

4. Our Luna is mostly beige, so they're easy to spot on her body.

But her face has darker hair so we really need to look closer there.

[Rorey]

6. Tick nighmare

Years ago we took our dog with us to North Dakota. The then-husband wanted to check out a place to fish and trekked through some very tall grass to find the shore of the lake. Of course he let our chow/Shepherd mix go along. I warned him about ticks, but he just acted like I was over-reacting. When they got back in the van I noticed some ticks on him right away. He started freaking out.

He was absolutely covered, and so was the dog. They were soon all over the van. We removed them as we saw them, but they were pretty bad all the way back to Colorado. As soon as we got home we gave the dog a good bath and I took him to the vet. It's been a few years, so I don't remember just what the vet did, but I'm pretty sure it was something oral. He told us it would take a week or so for the ticks to all fall off. So for that whole time I was following the dog around the house watching for the ticks.

Even now I have to laugh at how freaked out the then-husband was about having ticks on him. He SO deserved it. I'm really not freaked out much by bugs, and I think that bothered him too. I grew up in rural ND, so dealing with ticks was just a fact of life in the summer.

The poor dog got at least six baths in just a few days. He had already rolled in a dead raccoon he found at the farm, so that was pretty gross. We only had well water there, and it was sort of gross too. Nothing we tried in ND was working to get rid of the dead animal smell. I felt so bad for him. He wanted to get loved but he wasn't too lovable between the stench and the ticks.

[Croney]

8. Haha! You sound pretty spunky.

🙂

[Rorey]

10. Yeah, about some things

We didn't have any poisonous bugs in ND. Here we have scorpions and black widows, but I've never seen a live scorpion, and very few black widows.

Now snakes? Yeah, I'm freaked out by snakes. My cats bring lizards into my house, and I have to catch them and release them outside, but so far I've been able to do it without touching them.

Editing to clarify: Where I grew up there were no poisonous bugs, but in western ND there are.

[Rorey]

12. BTW - removing ticks

We used dental floss to make sort of a lasso around the ticks on the dog. We didn't pull, but just held with very gentle pressure, and they'd back out. Of course the ticks that were on my Murphy were already engorged with blood.

This will sound gross, but I actually collected the ticks I pulled off of Murphy for a couple of weeks in case they needed to somehow be tested. We had to keep an eye on him for a few weeks for signs of tick-borne disease. Here in Colorado we have Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, so I'm not as cavalier about ticks. And of course there's a fear of Lyme disease in some areas. It's rare in ND.