Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Stuck On You…Day One Hundred and Thirty Five

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I feel lately this blog has become all about ticks.  Ticks are disgusting and vile and I want to blog about them one more time and then put this subject to rest, permanently.

I found a tick on Delilah last night, we were on our way back from our hike and I looked at her face and sure enough, there was a tick on the side of her nose.  I tried to remove it in the car, but the tick had already embedded itself so we had to wait until we got home.

Once we were home we kept the dogs outside, and I went and got my Ticked Off.   The Ticked Off is much easier to use on a couch potato like Sampson, than a wiggle worm like Delilah.  Sampson’s was on his chest and very easy to get to.  Delilah’s was on her nose and not so easy.

Either I didn’t have the Ticked Off positioned correctly or I didn’t have the skin tight enough, but I think I left the head of the tick in the skin; because 1) the tick didn’t move when I removed it and 2) Delilah has a big bump on her nose where the tick was.

You cant see it in the picture, but there is a bump there!

I put some Neosporin on her nose, but as you can imagine this kept me up a good portion of last night, worrying about what might happen to Delilah with the head of a tick embedded in her nose.   I researched it this morning and that is what I want to share here with you today, and then let’s put this topic to bed.

Big Dog Boutique says, you can either take your dog to the vet (expensive) to have the tick removed, or you can clean the area with rubbing alcohol, the body will form a hard protective bump around the “foreign object”  and the natural growth and shedding of skin will remove the tick head after a period of time.  You can speed the process up by applying Vitamin E to the bump.  As of now this is our course of action, I will continue with the Neosporin until I get the Vitamin E.  I will keep a watch on her nose to make sure it doesn’t get infected. I am upping their garlic intake and purchasing some Earth Animal Bug Off spray because I know it works better than this Neem Oil stuff.

On another “stuck on you” theme, check out this picture I took of Sampson this afternoon after he went diving in the stream.

Yes, a leaf is stuck between his eyes!

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is…Day One Hundred and Thirty Four

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First I want to thank you all for your comments and suggestions regarding yesterday’s blog.  I do think about what you say and they do help.

Second I want to caveat this blog with this thought…if you are squeamish, you may not want to look at the pictures.  No it’s not bloody, just (in my opinion) really gross.

Yesterday I got a message from my friend Laura who was recently rescued by a dog. 

 “HELP – it appears Candy has managed to get a tick or two – how do we take them out?????” 

So I calmly told her what she needed and how to remove the tick.  Candy update, they had to give her a Benadryl to calm her down but did manage to remove the ticks.

Flash forward to this morning as I’m singing Sampson his morning wake-up song and giving him his rubbies, I come across an engorged tick on his chest, and I panicked!  Eeeuuuh, this is gross.  I ran around trying to gather all of the items I needed to remove the tick.  As soon as I ran out of the bedroom they ran after me, thinking…yipee she’s going to feed us.  That didn’t happen, at least not right away.

I gathered the necessary items (my first thought was to put the tick into the alcohol, but then I thought it would be better to put the tick in a plastic baggie in case it required testing.)  In my blog about having a “tick kit” I mentioned the “Ticked Off” and I said, it works very well.  Truthfully, I’ve NEVER had to use it to remove a fully engorged tick; I’ve always caught the ticks early and removed them BEFORE they blew up.  I was a little nervous about taking the tick off and of course Chet had already left for work.  There was nothing else for it; I needed to take this sucker (literally) off.   Ok decision made, breathe.  I took my little Ticked Off tool and removed the tick!

Look at that fat, nasty S.O.B!

I am here to tell you “Ticked Off” is the best thing EVER invented!  That sucker came off with ease.  He/she (really do they have a defined sex?) was so fat and bloated from sucking on my dog that it could barely move.  It looks like a small jelly bean…with legs.  (Ok, so now I can’t finish the jelly belly beans that I got from Stephanie’s baby shower. )  I transferred the tick to the plastic bag and then I took one of the little ticks (unbloated) from our last tick episode and put them side by side for comparison.

Seriously, look at that fat, gluttonous bastard! It's at least 25 times its normal size!!

Didn’t the alcohol preserve the little one nicely? 🙂

In order to be proactive, I called the vet.  I was assured that while this tick may transmit some types of diseases, it is a common dog tick and does not transmit Lyme Disease.

It’s still gross though; and I don’t know that I can ever eat another jelly bean!

Wash, Wash, Wash The Dog…Day One Hundred and Thirty One

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There’s a little brook that runs along the side of the field where we take the dogs to play; it’s a dirty little brook but the dogs love it.  They love to run through the brook and occasionally Sampson lays down in it.  I’ve been trying to catch it on video but have been having a hard time with it until today.  I uploaded it to youtube tonight, but let it buffer for a minute or so before watching it; because I’m pretty new to this youtube stuff. (I also got Delilah’s agility run up and the video of how excited Delilah gets when she gets her dinner.

The problem with the dogs running through the brook is they get absolutely filthy!  So every time they go in the brook, we have to wash them off when we get home.  What I started doing was washing them outside.  I take an empty dog shampoo bottle, fill it with warm water and put a squirt of shampoo in it.  We then use the soapy water to wash them quickly and rinse them off with the hose.  Then we dry them off and let them in the house. 

I’m happy that the warmer weather is coming so they aren’t outside freezing, but the water from the hose is still cold!  Although as Chet pointed out, the brook isn’t warm water and they willingly go in there. :-0  Still I am calling the plumber to see how hard it would be to get an outside shower.

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