How to Deal with Ticks and Your Dog

Dog ticks are blood-sucking insects that can cause problems in both you and your dog. Ticks can be the cause of a variety of skin irritations as well as illness to your pets, children, and self. The sole purpose of a tick is to suck blood from their hosts, without regard to the health or comfort of the host.

Ticks are actually very tiny in size normally, but once they start sucking the blood from your dog, they can expand to 50 times their usual size. It is also very important to note that ticks are responsible for spreading two major diseases including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Tips for Keeping Ticks off Your Dog

Ticks enjoying living in tall grass and vegetation and usually will wait for animals to come by so they can attach themselves and start beating on them. By knowing your grass regularly, you give ticks fewer opportunities to attach themselves to your pet.

If your property has small rodents, it is more likely that you will have ticks on your property as well. As ticks mature, they usually will feed off of smaller animals like mice until their large enough to move to animals such as your dog. By keeping your garbage stored in containers and limiting other trash on your property, you can reduce the rodent population as well as tick population around your home.

If you know you will be traveling in an area with tall grass and possibly a high tick population, you can spray your pets coat with a veterinarian recommended insecticide before you arrive at your location. Insecticides are also good to use if you've seen a tick on your dog. After you have sprayed the coat of your pet, then comb through it to try to remove the tick.

It is possible to find a tick in the process of feeding off of your dogs. It is extremely important that you remove the tick as soon as possible because the longer a tick is attached to your dog, the higher the chance that it will pass an illness or disease to your animal.

Many people say that you should use a match to remove a tick from a dog, but you should never use a match or anything else that could burn your dog while you are trying to remove a tick. Simply use tweezers and grab at the head of the tick, hold pressure for a moment and then gently try pulling the tick out. By taking your time with this process, the tick will be able to stop sucking and you can remove the entire tick without leaving the head in your dogs skin. After you have removed the tick, put some antibiotic lotion on your dogs fur to help protect against infection.

Article by William Beasley of Oh My Dog Supplies, your top spot to purchase sturdy dog steps online.