help! found a tick on my dog

[IMP]

i was petting my dog last night, and i felt something strange in her coat. at first glance, it appeared to be a hair knot, but as i inspected further, i discovered it was a tick! burrowing in head first. OMG!!! i use frontline...and had just put it on her about 10 days ago! OMG!!! it looked like this:


so after i got it off and killed it (and i will say, it was easy to get off, so maybe the frontline worked some), i noticed my dog has a blood spot where the tick was and a slight bump there. i have never noticed a tick on her before (and i've had her for over 7 years). i am worried about lyme disease or some other infection she may get. please help this worried doggymomma out! =/

[IMP]

Originally Posted by Grrover

Head-first is the only way ticks will burrow. I survived some so I'm sure your beloved non-cat pet will too. Even if your beloved non-cat pet gets Lyme disease, I'm sure you won't be able to tell the difference.

so am i over-reacting? i'm just freaking out cuz first of all, it's nasty. second of all, i know ticks can carry disease. and third, it's never happened before.

[Lucy]

They can carry disease, but dogs and cats get ticks all the time. I used to routinely pull ticks off one of my cats. (For some reason, one of them was a tick magnet, and the others just got a few.) The vet initially didn't recommend any of the tick insecticide treatments for cats, because cats usually groom ticks off on their own before they cause problems. But my cat got so many (mosty on the face and neck, where he couldn't remove them with his teeth) that we started using something.

Anyhow, yes, you are over-reacting. Unless the incidence of lyme disease is really high where you live, odds are he wasn't infected. If you are likely to have removed it within a day, odds are, he isn't infected. (It takes a while for the tick to pass the spirocite.) Some study of dogs in a heavy lyme area showed that something like 70% of them had antibodies to lyme, but very few had any symptoms, so lots of dogs seem to successfully fight off the infection even if it is passed.

Keep an eye on him and see if he gets a rash or gets a "flu-like" illness in the next couple of weeks. If yes, call your vet. Otherwise, stop worrying about it.

[Examinator]

[bg23516]

That looks like a dog tick, and dog ticks do not carry lyme. Deer ticks (smaller and black/brown, not the grayish color) carry lyme, and even then, pretty unlikely.

Also, Frontline takes 24-48 hours to kill a tick, so its possible that this one hasn't been on long.

I wouldn't worry.

[Roto]

Originally Posted by IMP

i was petting my dog last night

"Dog" = IMP's pet name for me.

"petting"! You call that "petting", darling!?!?!?

That was "heavy petting".... minimum.

BTW, that wasn't a tick... thought you should know.