Wednesday, March 07, 2012

How to remove a tick

Sometimes even with frontline a tick will attach himself to my little dog... his nose is always sniffing in the long grass.

Today I discovered a simple technique to remove a tick from your dog without pulling it out. The tick will crawl out on it's own and you won't have to deal with 'did I get it all out?'. This sounds like a magic trick and you might even think it is, I did.

When you remove ticks using tweezers you get as close to the head of the tick as you can and pull straight out, it often leaves parts of the tick behind and that can be really bad and cause infections and other problems for your dog. Ticks seem to like areas near the eyes and ears, which could also leave marks and scars that wouldn't ever go away.

So how do you do it?
Rub the tick in a circular motion and pretend you're trying to make the tick dizzy. I generally stick with one direction, clockwise. It usually takes less than a minute, so if it's not working, make sure the body of the tick is moving around. Remember you can't get dizzy unless you're actually moving in a circle, quickly. I doubt the tick actually gets dizzy, but they sure don't like something about the movement and they crawl out on their own.

I used this technique only today and it worked a charm!