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Canine Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia (AIHA & IMHA) - Found a tick on Wiley last night.
| Hi everyone, Last night we found an engorged tick on Wiley. We removed it and put it in a jar. He is going Thursday for his blood check. Should we have the vet do any additional tests? Is this cause for concern? Thanks, Lisa |
| Lisa Severino CT |
| Lisa, How did you remove the tick? Sometimes by pulling it out the mouth parts can break off and will keep burrowing into the skin. If you have the tick take it to the vet with you. Since you already have an appt it wouldn't hurt to ask. Ask if there is a lyme disease issue your area with regards to tick bites. We have a very low instance of lyme disease here, so it usually isn't a problem. The best method for removing ticks is to light a match, blow it out, and hold the hot tip on the tick's back. It will back out on it's own. I don't like this for dogs, myself. Another method is to cover the tick in a thick layer of dish soap or vaseline. The tick can't breath and will back out on it's own. Here are the early signs of lyme disease to watch for: A classic initial rash raised and resembling a bull's eye (but not always) within days to weeks of the tick bite. The redness of the skin is often accompanied by generalized fatigue, muscle and joint stiffness, swollen lymph nodes ("swollen glands"), and headache resembling symptoms of a virus infection. Hope this helps. Jessi & Toqua |
| Jessi BC |
| Lisa, I am not an expert with tick diseases, Patrice clearly is, but I would play it safe and get it tested. Especially since you have blood drawn very soon anyway. There is apparently a pretty simple test (Snap) that can be done fairly inexpensive right at the vet. If you send the blood to a lab, they could do a test that would be more conclusive. I don't think they would need the tick, but since you have it might as well take it. Just make sure the sucker is dead!!! Don't freak out! if a blood born tick disease has been transmitted, you caught it very early and it is very treatable. I am sure Patrice or the vet can advise if Wiley should be treated with antibiotics to be on the safe side. Best wishes, Brigitte & the poodle boys |
| Brigitte BC Canada |
| Don't light a match to the tick. It will make them spit everything in them into your dog. |
| Penny Lytle Creek Calif |
| AGhh, don't annoy the tick with any of these methods. It will most likely regurgitate all the stuff into the wound. Here is a link to Gil's webpage on removing these things. I highly recommend everyone bookmark this website for future reference. There are other pages on this site that will tell you what to do with the tick, what to expect in the way of infection and how to test for that and when. And finally she has comprehensive treatment information. Gil is a consummate researcher and I trust everything she has put up on her site. http://sites.google.com/site/blackgsd/tickremoval I am cutting and pasting everything on this tick removal page for use right now. But any of the links won't work from here so you will have to use her page to get to those places. my best patrice from Gil Ash's website: "tick removal off! off! off! What NOT to Do People have thought up a lot of innovative ways to kill ticks, from putting nail polish or Vaseline on them in the hope of suffocating them so they'll gasp and fall off (which is hardly likely to work since ticks breathe only a few times an hour) to touching their little rears with a hot match head. Never, never do that. There is no better way to make sure you cause the tick to vomit infected saliva right into the dog. Don't even handle them with your bare hands. Restrain the urge to just yank one off. If you have an unhealed cut or abrasion on one of your hands and any of an infected tick's body fluids get in there, you could be infected, too. If your hands are just fine, you still run the risk of squeezing the tick's saliva into the dog. A tick that is not engorged has probably not had a chance to infect the dog. Male ticks, however, cannot swell up as impressively as females because their anatomy makes it impossible; as a result, they sip instead of gorging themselves. So, don't assume because the tick isn't huge that it hasn't been dining. The Right Way to Remove a Tick Use a tool specifically made for removing ticks, a pair of sharp tweezers (not blunt ones) or a small pair of curved forceps. Grab the tick right behind the head, i.e., as close to the skin as you can get, and PULL SLOWLY - STRAIGHT OUT. Don't twist the tick, it isn't made to unscrew. The tick's hypostome, the part that penetrates the dog, has barbs like fishhooks, so slow, easy and straight out is the way you want to go. The Australian Paralysis Tick webpage is a great place to learn about the tick's anatomy. You'll find out there that the tick doesn't really have what we would call a head; it has mouthparts attached to a basal ring. You can take a look at them over there to the right. Get the head out if you can. Use a needle much as you would to remove a splinter. There's some evidence that there are antigens in the cement plug that anchors the tick so remove the tick as soon as possible, even if it's not engorged, and the cement plug with it. Images of, and recommendations for removing, the Paralysis Tick are here on the Tick Alert Group Support (TAGS) website (Australia). See also their page on Tick Removal Tools. Evaluation of three commercial tick removal tools was done at the Ohio State Acarology Lab. "Three inexperienced users randomly removed attached American dog ticks (Dermacentor variabilis ) and lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum L.), from laboratory rabbits in a university animal facility. Tick damage occurring from removal and quantity of attachment cement were compared. No tool removed nymphs without damage and all tools removed adults of both species successfully. American dog ticks proved easier to remove than lone star ticks, whose mouthparts often remained in the skin. Nymphal ticks were consistently removed more successfully with commercial tools when compared to tweezers." |
| Patrice NYS |
This thread was discussed on 12/06/2010
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