Tick are out and about. Are your pet's protected?
Tick come is all different sizes. Ticks have 4 main life stages: eggs, larvae (equivalent to a grain of sand), nymphs ( about the size of a poppy seed), and adults (about the size of an apple seed).
Ticks crawl up! They live on the ground and crawl up from grass blades onto a host and migrate upward. They like to feed on the head, neck, and ears of a their hosts, where the skin is thinner.
Winter doesn't bother certain tick species. Adult stage deer ticks become active every year after the first frost. While some ticks go dormant, deer ticks will be active any winter day the ground is not snow covered or frozen.
Ticks carry disease causing microbes. Scientist are finding more microbes transmitted by ticks due to increases in deer populations and increasing geographic areas of ticks.
Tick bites are painless due to anesthetic properties in their saliva, so most hosts don't know they were bit. If you start to show flulike symptoms in the middle of summer see your physician. Fever chills, aches, and pains are the common symptoms of a variety of tick-bone diseases.
The easiest way to remove a tick is with pointed tweezers. Other tick removal methods such as hot matches, vaseline, dish sop and cotton or various key-like devices don't work. Just grab the head of the tick and pull straight out.
Tick bites and tick-borne diseases are 100% preventable. There are several medications available to help prevent tick-borne diseases and kill ticks. Just ask your veterinarian for their recommendation. It only takes one bite to make your pet sick, so prevention is best.
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