Dogs and ticks

Okay, smarty, what about ticks? You’ve probably had a run-in with ticks at some point, whether on your dog, your child, or yourself. They also love to feast on the blood of mammals and tend to hang out near ground level until they sense a shadow, vibration, or heat, which clues them into the fact that a potential snack bar just came into the area.

After finding a suitable place on the host animal, the tick dives right through the skin and gorges itself. Their saliva can cause inflammations on the skin, but a more troubling problem is an infestation of several ticks, which can lead to anemia.
In extremely bad cases, the poison in a tick’s saliva can cause paralysis, Lyme disease, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Prevention of tick bites is identical to prevention of fleas - consistent monthly use of a flea and tick repellant recommended by your veterinarian. Even then, the repellant may not work well against different varieties of ticks and you should make it a habit to check your dog for possible parasites after any walk in the woods. If you find a tick on your dog, get tweezers as close to your dog’s skin as possible, then grab onto the tick’s body.

Remove the tick slowly, then clean your pup’s skin with an antiseptic or, at the very least, soap and water.