Spotting a tick on your four-legged friend can be a stressful situation for any pet-owner but a Hampton veterinarian is offering up some tips on how to remove it properly.
Dr. Elisha Dickinson-Mills of Dickinson & Baird Veterinary Hospital says you should always check your pet over whenever they come in from outside even if they’re on a tick preventative product.
You should remove the tick close to the skin at the base and she recommends using a tool specifically designed for tick-removal, however, you can use tweezers.
Things you shouldn’t do include trying to smother the tick with anything like peroxide or petroleum jelly or burning the tick. She says the risk in upsetting the tick is that the tick becomes stressed, and it regurgitates what’s in its stomach directly into the pet which increases the likelihood the pet will have a reaction at the site and also increases the speed at which Lyme disease is transmitted.
Dr. Dickinson-Mills says ticks aren’t going away so it’s just one of those things that we need to adapt to.
