Spring is here and ticks are waiting for your pooch to come strolling by! If you love being outside in nature with your dog, then ticks may be difficult to avoid between early spring and late fall.
Spending a great amount of time outdoors hiking or playing in the long grass during the spring and summer months can lead to an increase of tick attachment. This doesn’t mean you should smother your pet in chemical tick preventatives.
The truth is that the wide range of tick products are extremely harmful to our pets. Many manufactured tick repellants contain carcinogenic chemicals, with names too long to pronounce and ingredients most of us don’t know anything about. These harsh chemicals may also lead to many problems including skin irritation, diarrhea, vomiting, muscle tremors, seizures, and paralysis.
The other issue is that many pests are becoming resistant to these widely used chemicals, and they are not necessarily 100 percent successful in preventing tick attachment.
Prevention is always the best medicine
Building natural immunity makes your dog less attractive to ticks and a healthy dog that has a strong immune system is less susceptible to tick-borne diseases.
One happy medium is to use natural methods to repel ticks from your dogs. Essential oils, vinegar, garlic, and nutritional yeast are known to help repel ticks. A simple solution could even be to apply the essential oil geranium to your pet’s collar or bandana. Many scents that smell good to humans are highly off-putting to ticks. Lavender, peppermint, citronella, lemongrass, geranium, cedar, and citrus have all been shown to keep ticks away.
DIY Tick Spray for Dogs
You can mist directly on the fur, or spritz it on your hands and stroke the fur.
- 8oz water
- 5oz apple cider vinegar
- 10 drops neem oil (optional)
- 10 drops catnip oil (optional)
- 10 drops total of the following essential oils (pick one or two): lemon oil, lemongrass oil, geranium oil, eucalyptus oil, cedarwood
Shake well before applying. Store in the refrigerator. Apply every four hours as needed. This spray is effective, but you should still check for ticks!
Ticks are more than just the ‘Ick’ factor
Seeing a tick crawling on you or your wall is more than simply unpleasant, these pests are capable of transmitting disease. They take their time when they eat, and feeding for such a long period of time makes them perfectly suited for acquiring and transmitting disease. It only takes one bite from a tick to transmit a tick-borne disease, including:
Canine Lyme Disease:
Lyme disease in dogs is caused by ticks carrying the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi and is passed onto dogs (and humans) through the deer tick bite. These ticks thrive on deer, so the more deer you have in your area the more chances these ticks will be around. Although, to transmit the disease, the tick must be attached to the dog for 24-48 hours.
If your dog tests positive on the initial screening test for Lyme disease it doesn’t necessarily mean they need treatment. Most dogs successfully clear their own infections without needing treatment. Have your vet do additional testing to find out if your dog has only been exposed to these diseases or is actually fighting off infection. Quantitative C-6 test (Q C-6 test will differentiate a true infection to exposure. Only if your dog is infected should you treat him with antibiotics.)
Lyme disease symptoms generally start to appear two to five months after and can cause the following symptoms in dogs: fever, loss of appetite, reduced energy, lameness, vomiting, difficult breathing, swollen lymph nodes, and increased drinking and urination.
Canine Babesiosis:
Babesia is a rare and life-threatening disease that attacks the red blood cells in the body, causing anemia. This type of tick bite causes symptoms in dogs including fever, lack of energy and appetite, pale gums, dark urine, discolored stools, weight loss, and an enlarged abdomen, and occur within two weeks of a bite.
Rocky mountain fever:
Transmitted by lone-star, wood, and American dog ticks, Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a tick disease in dogs caused by the infection Rickettsia rickettsia. An infected tick must feed on your dog for at least 5-20 hours in order to transmit the parasite. Symptoms usually develop anywhere from two days to two weeks. These include loss of appetite, cough, fever, swelling of the legs and joints, pinkeye, skin lesions, vomiting, diarrhea, swelling of the face or legs, nosebleeds, and renal failure.
Canine Ehrlichiosis:
Ehrlichiosis is another common air-borne disease caused in dogs. Transmitted by the Lone-star tick, this tick-borne disease is caused by the Ehrlichia Canis bacterium and can progress into a chronic infection. Ehrlichia bacteria infect the dog’s white blood cells and reproduces inside of them. This can cause fever, loss of appetite, depression, shortness of breath, joint pain and stiffness, difficulty breathing, and swelling of the legs. Test – PCR blood test. You can also do a second PCR test to confirm infection.
Canine Anaplasmosis:
Typically transmitted by the deer and brown dog ticks, canine anaplasmosis in dogs is a bacterial infection that comes in two forms:
Anaplasma phagocytophilium infects white blood cells.
Anaplasma platys infects a dog’s platelets, which are involved in blood clotting.
Symptoms usually begin within two weeks on the initial bite and include joint pain, lethargy, fever, and loss of appetite. Ask your veterinarian to perform the 4DX test. A secondary PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test will confirm infection.
Prevention
Check for ticks daily. Especially in those hard-to-reach crevasses like the toes, ear flaps, and around the tail base. Most ticks have to be attached for 24 hours before the disease-causing bacteria can be transmitted to your dog, so removing ticks immediately is a huge part of prevention.
If you find a tick on your dog then remove it correctly. Don’t use your hands because you can become infected by crushing or handling an infected tick. It is recommended that you use a tick removing tool and make sure to remove the entire tick. By firmly grasping the tick to your pet’s skin, rotate the tick in a circular movement, making sure the entire tick is going around in a circular motion, then pull the tick gently from your pet, making sure the head has been pulled out as well. Wash the area with soapy water and then apply colloidal silver or betadine to disinfect the area.
Monitor that area. If you notice any secondary inflammation or irritation then contact your veterinarian.
You can have your dog tested 3 to 4 weeks after removing a tick. The type of test you should ask for is a Snap 4DXPlus test, which is a screening test. This test can also test for 4 different diseases: Heartworm, Lyme disease, Anaplasmosis, and Ehrlichiosis.
If you are not proactively screening for tick-borne diseases then closely watch your dog for the next several months. Keep an eye on his appetite, energy levels, fever, or intermittently limping. These are all indications of tick-borne diseases.
Note: If your dog has been hiking or walking in the long grass with one of our Happy Paws team members, we will check your dogs for ticks and remove them. It is also important that you thoroughly check them that evening just in case we missed one.