Ticks and fleas thrive in warmer weather so this is always the time of year that the question comes up of how to deal with them.
There’s a lot more to this topic than you might think so we’ll break it down into a series of articles focusing on different areas, with this first one covering nature’s delightful, disease spreading, spider vampire – the dreaded tick.
What Are Ticks?
They’re members of the arachnid family that survive and reproduce by crawling onto warm-blooded hosts and sucking their blood. They carry nasty parasites that can infect humans and animals with a variety of diseases.
The two main species in South Africa that affect dogs are the yellow dog tick and the brown kennel tick.
These respectively carry two forms of tick bite fever, babesiosis and ehrlichia. Those diseases kill thousands of dogs in South Africa every year and there is no vaccine so your best defences are awareness and early treatment.
Where Will You Encounter Them?
Both species are found all over South Africa,
Yellow ticks prefer warm moist conditions and will generally be found in tall grass and undergrowth. They need rodents and other small animals as hosts in their early life stages, overgrown sections of larger suburban parks, nature trails, undeveloped plots and rural settings are places you could encounter them.
The Brown kennel tick hosts almost exclusively on dogs and prefers urban settings, but they can survive outdoors and are highly adaptable. They could thrive in overcrowded poorly managed kennels, or more impoverished communities where stray dogs roam freely, or dogs are kept chained up in poor conditions.
How Does My Dog Get Tick Bite Fever?
Not all ticks carry the tick bite fever parasites. Ticks become carriers by feeding on a host carrying the disease. Infected ticks can also transfer the parasites to their offspring. If an infected tick gets onto your dog it can transfer those parasites into the bloodstream while feeding. It’s estimated that the tick has to feed for at least 24-48 hours before the parasites are transferred. Other secondary infections can happen around the bite if the tick isn’t removed properly (more on that later)
What Does Tick Bite Fever Do?
The parasites that get into the blood will begin to multiply and attack the blood cells. The disease can take 10-14 days after infection to show symptoms, which will usually start with signs of fever, lethargy and loss of appetite. You can read more about the two forms of tick bite fever here and the full range of symptoms, but please remember any loss of appetite, energy or significant change in your dog is a cause for concern and warrants a checkup at the vet. Do not wait to see if more serious symptoms develop!
Should I Use Pesticides?
Over the counter pesticides are effective, to varying degrees, against ticks. They may be topically applied to your dog’s skin, fed to them in a pill, or infused into a slow-release collar.
Recently I’ve come to believe that those pesticide-based products are not actually as safe for our dogs as claimed on the packaging (A topic for a separate discussion, which we will cover later in the series),
This leaves us with a difficult choice. Rely on vigilance and non-pesticide based strategies (which I’ll outline below), which may increase the risk of your dog contracting tick bite fever, or put your dog at the risk of an adverse reaction to the pesticides, which potentially range from skin irritation, to upset stomachs, all the way up to seizures and organ failure in extreme cases.
That’s not an easy decision to make and the best advice I can give is to make sure that whatever choice you go with, make it an informed one. Don’t blindly follow marketing and package guidelines, research the products you are using on your dog, consider if you would feel comfortable taking them yourself and weigh that up against your risk of exposure to ticks and tick bite fever, depending on your environment and lifestyle.
If you are removing multiple ticks from your dog on a monthly basis then you obviously have a higher exposure risk than the person removing 1 tick a year.
Natural Tick Repellents
If you aren’t comfortable using pesticides and your exposure to ticks is regular enough to need a solution a natural bug repellent might be the solution for you.
As with the pesticides, the efficacy of these remedies will vary and it’s unlikely you will find anything foolproof, but any deterrent that makes your dog a less attractive target for ticks will make it easier for you manage.
There are various essential oils noted for their bug repellent properties:
• Khakibos Oil, extracted from the khaki-weed, or African Marigold is a popular natural bug repellent used in South Africa and is said to be effective against ticks and fleas.
• Rose Geranium, Peppermint, Cedarwood, Tea tree oil and Neem oil also appear in various natural repellent recipes.
This article at ecolife.com provides is a good starting point, with some basic recipes and application methods, including instructions for making herbal, instinct repellent collars.
Please remember that natural does not automatically mean safe, so we once again urge you to please do your own homework and proceed cautiously when using any home-made solutions on your pets. Many of these oils can be harmful, if not sufficiently diluted and the majority are not suitable for use on cats.
Checking For Ticks
Whether you chose an organic solution, or pesticides you should work on the assumption that they are not going to be 100{fe0e8ce8726e8da838b95da7f6690c8120e01b783db1db61d1e2f88ef030fefd} effective so you need to check your dog for ticks after an outing into a tick populated area. If you live in constant proximity to ticks (perhaps in a more rural setting) Remember that as rule of thumb ticks take 24-48 hours to transmit disease carrying parasites into your dog’s blood so you should be checking at least every second day.
Being able to put hands all over your dog is essential for a thorough tick check as you will need to feel under the fur and check, all the soft skin areas – including the unmentionables!
If your dog doesn’t fancy this then you need to start a regular bodywork routine which we outlined in our top 5 tips for healthy dogs.
After you’ve checked the dog you should probably check yourself too – there are ticks that will host on humans and dogs and their saliva contains a sort of local anesthetic so you won’t even notice if you’ve been bitten.
How To Remove A Tick
Some disgusting things that you need to understand about ticks before removing them:
Ticks have a barbed feeding tube that gets inserted below the skin, the tube also has a channel that transfers small amounts of tick saliva into the blood. Additionally they excrete a cement-like fluid that helps holds them in place.
Remember earlier we said that ticks need to be on the host for some time before they will transfer any parasites into the blood.
That’s because those parasites live in the ticks guts. They become active when it starts to feed and need time to transfer into its blood stream and then into the saliva.
That’s important to know because popular methods for removing ticks which claim to make the tick let go – like smothering with petroleum jelly, nail polish or burning with a match
actually increase the risk of infection as distress will cause the tick to grab on tighter and possibly ‘throw up’ injecting stomach fluid and blood back into the host and significantly increasing the risk of infection.
Also twisting, or yanking the tick off too fast will break off the mouth parts inside the host. This doesn’t increase the risk of tick bite fever directly, but leaving part of the tick behind creates a risk of skin irritation and secondary infections in the bite.
There is only one safe method to remove a tick:
Grip the tick with a fine, pointed tweezers as close to the skin as possible and pull straights upwards with steady even pressure. Once it’s off do not squash it as the blood splatter can also spread parasites.
Put the removed tick into a small plastic bag, or wrap it in paper towel for disposal.
It’s not a bad idea to wipe down the bite area with an alcohol swab after removal, especially if you suspect some mouth parts may have gotten left behind.
Last but definitely not least. After removing a tick, or ticks you need to keep an eye on the bite sites for a few days for signs of inflammation and local infections, and if there are any signs of your dog not feeling well, and showing possible early symptoms of tick bite fever err on the side of caution, go see your vet and have your vet do a blood test.