Ticks

Someone posted an email at work in the break room that talked about a new way to remove ticks. Seeing as how Chelsi gets them some, and it is always a long song and dance to get it off her (which usually involves a trip to the vet because she won't hold still for us), I was intrigued. The theory is to take a cotton ball soaked in liquid soap and swab it over the tick for about 15-20 seconds and the tick will fall off on it's own. Sounds easy.

Well, I was able to make my first attempt at this just a few minutes ago. I saw a tick on Chelsi and so I grabbed a cotton ball and dipped it in my new Pomegranate pump soap (you know, gotta get the good smelling stuff!) and held it onto the tick. It was in a sensitive area, so I didn't want to do a lot of swabbing and of course she was resisting, so it was best to just hold it there. I am not sure if the liquid soap actually worked or not, but I think it may have at least loosened the hold, because then I took my fingernails (of course covered with a tissue) and pulled it out. The nasty booger was there head and all with the legs still moving. YUCKY!!! I know you should supposedly hold onto them in case there is an illness that needs to be detected later, but I flushed that booger down the toilet real fast!

Then, being the google guru that I am, I immediately came downstairs to see if my new found theory had any negative reports. Well, as with anything, there are always two sides to the story. I found a link that said that this "old wives tale" is actually bad because it encourages the tick to release additional saliva and/or regurgitate their guts, which means more of a chance of passing on harmful pathogen's.

Brandon hates that I do this, because of course I start bugging him and worrying if I did the right thing as he is trying to get out the door.

So, my question to the blog-world is, what is the right thing to do!??? I mean, if you have a dog that makes it impossible to remove a tick with tweezers while also trying to make sure you pull at the right angle and get the head, or is it worth the risk to have them regurgitate by using the soap on cotton ball method? The soap way was much much easier and a lot less traumatic. Bottom line, I just have to use my best judgement and do what works best, and for the Inscore's the soap method appears to be the way to go, at least this time.

Check out this link to see what I read:

http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/tick.asp

Bottom line, I don't like bugs of any kind, but TICKS are especially icky!!! They just have nothing but bad news written all over them.