We all know how dangerous ticks can be for dogs, they are capable of transmitting diseases and even killing them in the most extreme cases. Ticks are parasites that feed on the dog’s blood, weakening it and making it sick.
Having our dog free of this type of parasites is essential, so we will explain how to remove a tick from a dog correctly, since if we do it wrong, the head of the tick could remain inside the dog’s skin causing a serious infection. .
Ticks are about the size of a grain of rice, but when they start to feed and grow they can grow larger than a giant bean. Many of them carry viruses, smaller parasites and infectious diseases that are very harmful to dogs.
We will explain how to remove a tick from our dog, whether it is lodged in its ears, head or in another part of the body. Removing it is very simple, you simply have to follow these simple steps and your dog will be free of it.
Index of contents
- 1 How to remove a tick step by step
- 1.1 1st step to remove a tick from a dog
- 1.2 2nd step to remove a tick from a dog
- 1.3 3rd step to remove a tick from a dog
- 1.4 4th step to remove a tick from a dog
- 1.5 5th step to remove a tick from a dog
- 2 Home remedies to remove ticks
How to remove a tick step by step
The first thing we must do is locate the tick, for this we will examine our dog thoroughly. Although ticks prefer to lodge in the dog’s ears or head, they sometimes stay between their toes or in their hindquarters.
Once the tick is located, we must simply observe in which position the head has sunk into the dog’s skin. The ticks they never stick their heads at a right angle, but do so at an angle.
Knowing where they have nailed is essential because we will have to pull to the opposite side once we have it attached, in this way we will also start its head avoiding it to remain inside the skin of our dog.
4th step to remove a tick from a dog
Observe the angle at which it has entered the skin, grab the tick with the tweezers at head height (or as close to your dog’s skin as you can) and gently pull the tweezers back into it angle, so that the head of the tick also comes out.
Do not squeeze the claws too tightly or pull too quickly, as you could decapitate the tick and leave the head inside the dog’s skin. This would cause an infection. Do it gently and fearlessly, ticks don’t eat anyone.
5th step to remove a tick from a dog
Kill the tick once you have removed it and heal the small wound it has left on your dog’s skin. A gauze pad with a little betadine (iodine) will be enough to disinfect the area.
Once the process is complete, check your dog in depth for more ticks. Although it is possible that there is only one, the usual thing is that there are more scattered throughout the body of the dog. And finally, you already have your dog completely free of ticks.
The easiest thing is to remove ticks from the dog’s head or ears, when they are between the fingers or elsewhere we must be more careful to remove it completely.
Home remedies to remove ticks
Although there are many urban legends that indicate that using a daily product can eliminate ticks, it is false. With home remedies we can prevent our dog from becoming infected with ticks, but if it already has one, we must remove it as we have explained.
A homemade technique in which we will not use tweezers will be the one that appears in the video, which consists of rotating the tick until it is released and catching it as soon as it is done to kill it. But we do not recommend this technique because it can split the tick’s head and lodge it in the dog’s skin, something that we obviously want to avoid.
To remove a tick from a puppy we must be more cautious because normally they do not stop moving, therefore it is recommended that one person hold the puppy and another is dedicated to removing the tick from its body.
You can get more information on how to protect your dog against ticks using home remedies from: Flea and tick home remedies.