You see your dog scratching frantically at all hours of the day and night. Caring for a dog means ridding them of the cause of the scratching: pests like fleas and ticks. Take pity on them so they can enjoy their life and you can enjoy them. Take action!
Your dog is not the only being affected by those ugly little pests, but your home and its human inhabitants can be a place where a pest can infest and potentially choose humans as their host. If you’ve had children come home from school bearing news of lice infestation, you might remember having to comb through their hair. This is not a happy memory.
Make Man a Dog’s Best Friend
Dogs ask very little of their humans. A safe place to sleep, food and water, activity, and taking walks constitute most of what dogs require.
On one of your dog’s exploratory walks, your pet could stray off the walkway to high grass, or sniffing around trees, or wading through a wet area. They could encounter fleas or ticks. If they bring the flea or tick home, you now have a situation you’ll want to take care of quickly. When your dog is scratching with great determination, your pet has been attacked by these pests.
Be a good pet owner by taking care of your pet and your environment fast to prevent the fleas and ticks reproducing and spreading.
Steps to Save Your Dog From Misery
One of the ways to remove ticks includes applying medications to the dog’s coat. If small children are around, protecting the child from ingesting the medication is important.
Giving your dog an oral medication might rid your dog of ticks and fleas. The medication would be given monthly. With this approach, children would not be affected.
Removing ticks can be just as arduous as lice removal can be for humans. Combing through your dog’s coat to locate the invaders can take time. Wearing gloves and using tweezers to remove the ticks from your dog’s coat must be done carefully and completely. Grasping the tick by its head with the tweezers, the tick is collected in a jar with rubbing alcohol. Disinfecting the site where you removed the tick from your dog is important to prevent spread of disease.
Pet collars are also a respected way to keep fleas and ticks from taking up residence on your dog. The chemicals in the collar come in contact with the dog’s skin, but some space should be allowed, about two fingers worth. Also, to prevent the pet from chewing and ingesting the chemicals, keep the collar trimmed so the dog cannot reach it to chew it.
Sprays, dips, and powders are also approaches to killing the fleas and ticks topically. Keep humans away from these products.
Control the Environment to Prevent Fleas and Ticks From Taking Over
Make things easy for yourself and your pets. With a little work and a little help, you can prevent your dog from being attacked by these blood-sucking creatures. Lawn care and pest control services can spray the yard and your home with safe substances that will kill the fleas and ticks.
Your family and pets might need to vacate the premises for a little while until the spray settles or dries, but that is a small sacrifice for ridding your home and yard from ticks and fleas.
Cleaning up, both outside and inside is very important. Wherever there is dog waste and moisture for pests to settle and multiply, you have a potential tick and flea problem.
Washing your pet’s bed and all of the loose items out, including children’s toys, might be required to clean up breeding grounds for the unwanted visitors.
Cleaning Up the Great Outdoors
Outdoor cleanup is also an important part of eliminating fleas and ticks. Trimming lawns, shrubs, bushes, and trees to lessen places for the fleas and ticks to reproduce is essential.
If this all sounds arduous, get some help so you and your dog can enjoy your time together. Just remember when you’re scratching your dog behind the ear, that if your dog has been sniffing about outside, they might need to be protected from fleas and ticks.