(I’ve mentioned dog poop and anus today, so if you don’t like this kind of talk, don’t read.)
I came home from work Saturday and took the pups out to play catch. They run around wildly chasing a ball, with tongues hanging and smiles split from ear to ear. If anyone says a dog doesn’t smile, drop by the house and I’ll prove you wrong.
Henri, Honey and Jake are ball crazy. The happily play together and whoever gets the ball first is then chased back to me so I can toss it out again. Fiz, is more of a one-on-one girl, she will chase a toy and bring it back but not play with the pack. I think when she was a pup she got trampled in an avalanche of legs as they all scrambled for the ball. She’ll chase me around the yard when I engage her but mostly she hangs around my legs, sometimes with her feet in the air waiting for me to bend down and scratch her belly. So true to form she did and that's when I felt a tiny bump around her neck. That groan moment when you think a tick might be sucking away at your baby’s blood, growing obnoxiously fat and about to pump disease into its host, the ungrateful parasite that it is.
Sure enough, It was a tick, a very small one so probably the deer type, the kind that carry disease. Over the years, I’ve found the best way to pull off a tick intact is with my fingernails and a quick tug. They don’t know what hit them so they don’t have the time to regurgitate their stomachs into your pet. The vets don’t recommend it but I’ve never left a body part behind. I know there are all kinds of gadgets to remove ticks, several are in the drawer upstairs, but truthfully, what works best is my fingernails. So I yanked the bugger out, he must have been recent because it wasn’t very bloated and didn’t leave a red mark.
I’m a self-proclaimed, mighty flea and tick hunter. I'm like a baboon digging and checking for bugs. I don’t spray or give any pills or liquids to my babies, so it’s down to lots of handling. Every morning I feel their ears and head, and give them a total body massage to detect any telltale lumps. My fingers are as adept as any braille reader, I can feel the slightest change, almost like the princess and the pea. My fingers float gently over their skin and sometimes I’m fooled momentarily by a tight curl but if there’s a freeloader on any one of my babies, I find it!
The same goes for fleas. Unusually my dogs don’t scratch themselves so if one starts I’m on them immediately. If I find one then I start my routine of checking twice a day. Each dog has a different area where a flea loves to dine. The best time to check is right after a pee as soon as they are inside. We have a routine they seem to like. I say “it’s flea time” and one by one they jump up on the sofa and flop on their back to expose their soft bellies. If a flea recently jumped on board, that’s where they hang. I kid you not, my babies know what I’m looking for....and when I find one its crushed between my thumbnails and I let them smell it. They know mommy is saving their hide from being nibbled.
If Henri has a flea they are usually on his head so I look for the telltale droppings. Sometimes it’s just a bit of dirt from outside but to be sure, I put it on a wet Kleenex and if it leaves a red stain, its blood from flea poop. Then I go hunting! And no hair is left unturned until I find my prey. They can be elusive and constantly on the run, staying one step ahead of me especially in the hairy thicket of Henri’s coat, but I eventually cross paths and bam! At least while they are fleeing....pardon the pun, they aren’t stopping to take a bite. There might be a small part of me that enjoys the hunt, I’ll spend hours going over them with a fine toothed comb, literally. When I find one it's a tiny adrenaline rush, the reward for all the picking. There have been times I stayed up until two or three in the morning because a flea eludes me. I can't go to bed and sleep knowing there's a parasite chewing at my baby. Fleas can create Flea Allergy Dermatitis from their saliva so allowing them to roost on your pet can be detrimental.
With Honey they are always on her belly, they hang where her umbilical cord would have been and Fiz, they like her back just above her tail. Jake is black haired and black skinned along his spine so they are harder to find on him but usually they race across his belly to escape the bristles when I brush his back. When I find a flea I act fast and rub my fingernail over it a couple of times to immobilize it. I don’t press too hard or it would hurt the pup, just a gentle scrape and they don't seem to mind. The flea tries to get away but after a few scrapes it slows to a crawl or stops moving, and then I am able to squeeze it between my thumbnails. Game over. I don’t believe in killing natures creatures big or small, but anything sucking the blood of my babies sure makes me a hypocrite. Besides, if you don’t get a flea infestation in check quickly, the house will become overrun with them. Luckily I’ve only found one flea in well over two years, probably picked up while on a walk downtown and annihilated swiftly.
Back to the arachnid. Even though they say it’s a bad year for ticks and with four pups that should up the odds of finding them, fortunately occurrences are few and far between. Maybe they don't like the cool breeze off the ocean, we see fewer black-flies because of it. Maybe it's because I don't allow the pups to wander into tall grasses or near wooded areas, but when it happens I usually find them quickly. Only a couple of times I’ve been fooled. They latched on in places I don’t touch, like the one on the rim of Fiz’s anus. As she walked away from me I spied what I thought was a willnot (you know, a piece of poop that will not fall off), went to wipe it and realized it was a supersized tick, so big it was about to explode. It had to be there for a few days and as I flushed it, I admired its tenacity for being able to hang on during her squats in the back yard. Knock on wood, nothing ever came of it. None of them have displayed any signs of Lyme’s disease so my diligence is paying off.
I came home from work Saturday and took the pups out to play catch. They run around wildly chasing a ball, with tongues hanging and smiles split from ear to ear. If anyone says a dog doesn’t smile, drop by the house and I’ll prove you wrong.
Henri, Honey and Jake are ball crazy. The happily play together and whoever gets the ball first is then chased back to me so I can toss it out again. Fiz, is more of a one-on-one girl, she will chase a toy and bring it back but not play with the pack. I think when she was a pup she got trampled in an avalanche of legs as they all scrambled for the ball. She’ll chase me around the yard when I engage her but mostly she hangs around my legs, sometimes with her feet in the air waiting for me to bend down and scratch her belly. So true to form she did and that's when I felt a tiny bump around her neck. That groan moment when you think a tick might be sucking away at your baby’s blood, growing obnoxiously fat and about to pump disease into its host, the ungrateful parasite that it is.
Sure enough, It was a tick, a very small one so probably the deer type, the kind that carry disease. Over the years, I’ve found the best way to pull off a tick intact is with my fingernails and a quick tug. They don’t know what hit them so they don’t have the time to regurgitate their stomachs into your pet. The vets don’t recommend it but I’ve never left a body part behind. I know there are all kinds of gadgets to remove ticks, several are in the drawer upstairs, but truthfully, what works best is my fingernails. So I yanked the bugger out, he must have been recent because it wasn’t very bloated and didn’t leave a red mark.
I’m a self-proclaimed, mighty flea and tick hunter. I'm like a baboon digging and checking for bugs. I don’t spray or give any pills or liquids to my babies, so it’s down to lots of handling. Every morning I feel their ears and head, and give them a total body massage to detect any telltale lumps. My fingers are as adept as any braille reader, I can feel the slightest change, almost like the princess and the pea. My fingers float gently over their skin and sometimes I’m fooled momentarily by a tight curl but if there’s a freeloader on any one of my babies, I find it!
The same goes for fleas. Unusually my dogs don’t scratch themselves so if one starts I’m on them immediately. If I find one then I start my routine of checking twice a day. Each dog has a different area where a flea loves to dine. The best time to check is right after a pee as soon as they are inside. We have a routine they seem to like. I say “it’s flea time” and one by one they jump up on the sofa and flop on their back to expose their soft bellies. If a flea recently jumped on board, that’s where they hang. I kid you not, my babies know what I’m looking for....and when I find one its crushed between my thumbnails and I let them smell it. They know mommy is saving their hide from being nibbled.
If Henri has a flea they are usually on his head so I look for the telltale droppings. Sometimes it’s just a bit of dirt from outside but to be sure, I put it on a wet Kleenex and if it leaves a red stain, its blood from flea poop. Then I go hunting! And no hair is left unturned until I find my prey. They can be elusive and constantly on the run, staying one step ahead of me especially in the hairy thicket of Henri’s coat, but I eventually cross paths and bam! At least while they are fleeing....pardon the pun, they aren’t stopping to take a bite. There might be a small part of me that enjoys the hunt, I’ll spend hours going over them with a fine toothed comb, literally. When I find one it's a tiny adrenaline rush, the reward for all the picking. There have been times I stayed up until two or three in the morning because a flea eludes me. I can't go to bed and sleep knowing there's a parasite chewing at my baby. Fleas can create Flea Allergy Dermatitis from their saliva so allowing them to roost on your pet can be detrimental.
With Honey they are always on her belly, they hang where her umbilical cord would have been and Fiz, they like her back just above her tail. Jake is black haired and black skinned along his spine so they are harder to find on him but usually they race across his belly to escape the bristles when I brush his back. When I find a flea I act fast and rub my fingernail over it a couple of times to immobilize it. I don’t press too hard or it would hurt the pup, just a gentle scrape and they don't seem to mind. The flea tries to get away but after a few scrapes it slows to a crawl or stops moving, and then I am able to squeeze it between my thumbnails. Game over. I don’t believe in killing natures creatures big or small, but anything sucking the blood of my babies sure makes me a hypocrite. Besides, if you don’t get a flea infestation in check quickly, the house will become overrun with them. Luckily I’ve only found one flea in well over two years, probably picked up while on a walk downtown and annihilated swiftly.
Back to the arachnid. Even though they say it’s a bad year for ticks and with four pups that should up the odds of finding them, fortunately occurrences are few and far between. Maybe they don't like the cool breeze off the ocean, we see fewer black-flies because of it. Maybe it's because I don't allow the pups to wander into tall grasses or near wooded areas, but when it happens I usually find them quickly. Only a couple of times I’ve been fooled. They latched on in places I don’t touch, like the one on the rim of Fiz’s anus. As she walked away from me I spied what I thought was a willnot (you know, a piece of poop that will not fall off), went to wipe it and realized it was a supersized tick, so big it was about to explode. It had to be there for a few days and as I flushed it, I admired its tenacity for being able to hang on during her squats in the back yard. Knock on wood, nothing ever came of it. None of them have displayed any signs of Lyme’s disease so my diligence is paying off.
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