Tag Archives: ticks

Summer Bites

Backyard barbeques, picnics in the park, swimming, sunning, and swinging with friends until sunset; there’s so much to love about summer—minus the bugs. Despite the use of expensive sprays, fancy candles and other popular pest deterrents, my 8-year-old is covered with bug bites.  Living in northern Wisconsin, which is blanketed with forests and other havens for flying blood suckers, doesn’t help; however, this summer’s battle against the bugs seems to be a bit fiercer than in years past. Currently, my mom radar is set on mass insect detection.  I am on especially high alert for deer ticks, which can spread … Continue reading →

Ask a Pets Blogger: Why Flea and Tick Prevention Fails

I treat my cat regularly with Advantage, but she keeps turning up with fleas! Why won’t they go away? You’re not alone with this problem — flea and tick management can be a constant battle. Here are some things that might help turn the tide in your favor. Make sure you are applying the medication correctly. The liquid needs to go on the skin, not on the fur — hair won’t absorb the medication. Make sure you place the medication in a place your pet can’t reach to lick off. Be sure to apply ALL the medication! Make sure your … Continue reading →

Unwanted Passengers Delay Flight

Remember the blog I wrote detailing my daughter’s alleged mouse sighting during our flight to Hawaii earlier this year? That post also contained information about an actual mouse sighting made by flight attendants on a plane bound from Des Moines, Iowa to Atlanta, Georgia. Well, critters have struck again. Not Mickey and friends; rather some smaller but equally unwanted pests—ticks! And take note: The bloodsuckers were found on a United Airlines flight from Denver to… you guessed it… Des Moines. According to United officials, the wayward bugs delayed Flight 1178 for nearly six hours on Tuesday after a passenger informed … Continue reading →

Treating Your Home and Yard for Fleas and Ticks

Most of the time, treating your pets for fleas and ticks with a monthly preventative is enough to keep an infestation out of your home and yard. Most of the time. If the critters are out of control, you may have to take action to evict fleas and ticks from your home. This doesn’t mean you should stop the monthly flea and tick preventative for your pets, either! The absolute best way to keep fleas and ticks off your pets (and out of your house) is to use a preventative all year round. In some areas, where winter temperatures drop … Continue reading →

Flea and Tick Prevention Options for Pets with Sensitive Skin

I mentioned recently that Lally seems to be having trouble with a new flea and tick preventative we tried. Hopefully we won’t have any more skin problems if I switch back to Frontline… but I wonder if she’s just getting more allergic as she ages. That got me thinking about alternatives to the insecticide-medication-on-the-skin type of flea and tick prevention. Traditional flea and tick collars. You might remember the narrow white collars that dogs and cats used to wear before medications like Frontline and Sentinel came along? Since the medication doesn’t get soaked into the skin, it might be an … Continue reading →

Pet First Aid: Tick-Borne Diseases

Ticks are dangerous for pets and people. A tick’s saliva can transmit microscopic organisms into the person or pet getting bitten. Some of the same diseases that are dangerous to humans are dangerous to pets, and vice versa. The good news is that ticks don’t generally hop from a person to an animal or from a pet to an owner. Once the tick is feeding, it will usually stay with the host. And it can take up to twelve hours or more for a feeding tick to transmit one of the following diseases to a pet. Babesiosis causes severe anemia. … Continue reading →

How To Remove A Tick

Posted on by

Though we refer to them as “tick bites,” ticks don’t exactly bite. They burrow into the skin head first and get stuck there if you don’t remove them correctly. Why are ticks dangerous? Several different types of tick can cause Lyme disease — so they need to be removed quickly and they need to be removed correctly. Try not to touch the tick with your bare hands; wear gloves if you have them available. Grasp the tick with tweezers as close to the skin as you can get them. Pull gently, using constant pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick; … Continue reading →

Lyme Disease: Symptoms

Posted on by

Medical literature has evidence of Lyme-like symptoms dating back to the beginning of the nineteen hundreds. The disease itself was pinpointed and named in the 1970s when researchers found serious symptoms coming from tick bites in and around Lyme, Connecticut. Ticks all over the United States, Europe, and Asia can transmit Lyme disease. Deer ticks are perhaps the best known culprit, at least on the East Coast of the United States. Adult deer ticks feed on deer; deer tick larvae and immature ticks (called nymphs) feed on rodents and other small mammals. Both nymphs and adult ticks can spread Lyme … Continue reading →

Dealing With Ticks

Posted on by

Springtime means tick time for many parts of the country. There are more than 800 different species of ticks out there; about a hundred of those are capable of transmitting diseases to humans and pets! If you walk in a high tick area — like a forest — be sure to check yourself and your pet thoroughly when you get home. An engorged tick that has latched onto your dog or cat will look kind of like a kernel of corn. The little tick will be swollen with your pet’s blood. An engorged tick can be removed by hand, or … Continue reading →

Frontline

Since it looks like winter is pretty much on the outs (at least here in New Jersey), I gave my dogs Frontline today. Frontline is a flea, tick, and lice control for dogs and cats from drug maker Merial. Given once a month, Frontline controls (okay, that’s a nice word for “kills”) fleas, several types of ticks, and chewing lice. The main ingredient is fipronil, which actually collects in the natural skin oils and hair follicles for a continuous release. So even after the dose dissolves into the skin, it keeps working for a month. Here in central Jersey, I … Continue reading →