Tick Taxi

Boo is one of those dogs that seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time! If there's grass seed around, she's the one that'll get it! If there's a random splinter hanging off something, she's the one that'll get pierced.
So, I'm not sure why we were surprised when we collected the dogs from the groomer to be told Boo had two grass seeds sticking out under each arm pit (despite Bernie thoroughly checking her after every walk). 

Also, Lynley (the groomer) had discovered a tick. I didn’t know anything about ticks before this ... so when I was shown this little black thing attached to Boo’s inner thigh my instinct was to scrape it off with my fingernail – which I did – and then later learnt that was the wrong thing to do. When a tick is scraped away as I'd done, only the body gets removed, leaving the head attached, which can cause an infection.

Unlike fleas, ticks don’t have their life cycle on their host’s body. A tick will attach itself to an animal as it passes through long grass. Once on an animal it’ll feed off its blood for 3 to 4 days and afterwards detach itself and fall to the ground, where it’ll lay its eggs.

Photo supplied by google.

The vet was surprised Boo had a tick and told us sometimes dogs were called ‘tick taxis’ by vets because ticks travel around on a dog feeding for a few days until they're ready to jump off.

We were given an oral product called 'Bravecto' to rid the dogs of fleas and ticks. Two tablets (one for each dog) cost $130. But when I got home I thought I'd read somewhere about an oral flea treatment that had had bad reviews. After googling the product we decided not to give it to our dogs, as comments stated it had caused seizures and sometimes deaths.

 Thank you google, we will now look for a natural and safe flea deterrent.