In this video,
you're going to learn how to take a tick off of your dog with a recent increase
in the tick population and the increased danger of tick borne illnesses.
It's really important that if you find a tick on your dog,
you know how to remove it and there are all kinds of misconceptions out there
about how to remove them.
So instructor Shannon recently found a tick on her Nova Scotia duck tolling
retriever named Ned. And rather than quickly removing it,
she grabbed her camera and wanted to turn it into a learning opportunity.
So if you are really creeped out, grossed out by little tiny,
creepy crawly bugs, and this maybe isn't the video for you,
but in today's video you're going to see a realtime removal of a tech as well as
some important aftercare. You need to keep in mind.
I'm Ken steep and welcome back to McCann Dogs.
The Nerd has it tick.
So there we go.
We were having a little head pat despite all of our tick checks.
We came across a tick a couple of days after an outing,
so it's still alive. I can see legs.
It's slightly and gorged it's probably been on there 12 to 24 hours or so.
So I've got a tool here. It's actually four tick removal.
It's called a tick ease. It's like a big elaborate tweezer.
So when I'm going to do here is get as close to the skin as possible with this
critter and without twisting,
just put steady pressure and I'm not pulling really hard.
We don't like the methods of a dish,
soap and peroxide on cotton swabs, et cetera.
Simply because good boy netty,
they actually cause the tick to regurgitate toxins back into the host.
That's why they let go is because they have to vomit.
So we definitely do not recommend that method.
Just steady pressure and weight.
You don't want to put too much pressure on the abdomen of the tick because then
of course it is likely to rupture and those toxins will go back into the dogs.
So
I am fairly amateur at removing ticks. Um,
I'm sure vets can probably, yeah,
these out much quicker. But I do worry about detaching the head.
Um, it's generally not recommended to twist the tick. I'm going,
as I'm seeing here,
I can see that there's a little bit more of this critter showing up.
We've got a little bit of hair caught in there too,
so that can sometimes cause things to stop happening because you're pulling on
the hair rather than the tick. Good boy ned. Good.
Well and there we go.
It's not super lively but still alive,
which means the, whoops, I'm sorry,
I didn't realize it was out of frame, which means the head is still intact.
It's not been left in the dog.
So you can, um, you can see that took a little while.
I'm kind of creeped out here holding this,
but it's a good educational opportunity and I want everybody to see that the
tick is still alive. It's sort of a fat and happy tick there.
There was a leg movement there, sort of a fat and happy tick. So there's not a,
not a ton of movement in there. However it is alive.
It is intact. And you saw, how long was that?
Just slight steady pressure it took before I was able to actually get that tick
to detach, you know, little aftercare from the tick site.
I've got a little cotton pad and I've got some hydrogen peroxide and I'm just
going to clean up that area just to make sure that there's no toxins still
sitting on the skin. I'm just going to, um,
sanitize the site itself so that hopefully there's not going to be any issues of
infection. I will check that site frequently for the next week or so,
and then maybe once a week,
once every couple of weeks after that and hopefully it'll just fade out into
being nothing. Um, hopefully we have that luxury.
I know from ticks in the past on my dogs,
there generally have been just a little bump left behind and there is the tech
wandering around still very much alive.
So that puts my mind at ease that I haven't left the head in my dog. Um,
what I've found out about that though is that it doesn't mean hoard infections.
It doesn't mean you need to panic.
It simply leaves a bump with your dog. I actually, um,
had one in Reggie that I accidentally pulled the head off and left it in the dog
and I went searching for answers and called my bed and what do I do?
And they basically said, you know what, just wait and see. Keep an eye on it.
Likely your bought the body will expel it on its own, but if not,
it's okay. It usually doesn't cause a huge problem,
but the toxins may be part of the issue with pulling off the head, et Cetera,
et cetera. So there can be some extra dangers with that.
But if the head remains in your dog,
it's not like that is going to cause or necessarily cause some horrid issue to
happen.
Check with your vet if you see it being red or really raw or starting to get
bigger or anything of that nature. Of course, pay attention.
You may need to go into your vet and have them lance it and take that out or do
something ridiculous to help you out. But it's not, um,
it's not a death sentence.
It's not as terrifying as I initially thought it might be.
If you want to learn a systematic approach for checking your dog for ticks,
then click that video right there. If this your first time on the channel,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
We publish new videos every single week up here to have a well behaved four
legged family member. On that note, I'm Ken. I be training.