Ticks : three different dogs, two tick treatments and a control...

[bunn]

I gave Brythen a Bravecto tablet, which is supposed to offer three months defence against fleas and ticks.  It upset his stomach a bit.   Rosie would not eat hers, even when it was chopped up and mixed with lamb, although I think she may have eaten a tiny bit of it, she definitely didn't get more than a small dose.

Because of this, I got foster Carlos a Seresto collar instead. Seresto is widely used in southern Europe where ticks are much more of a problem than they are here, and is supposed to be very effective.

I had to knock a couple of crawling ticks off Brythen the other day, but generally he seems to stay tick-free.  Carlos, on the other hand, is a magnet for them: the other day in the woods, even with him wearing his seresto collar,  I ended up knocking more than 10 crawling ticks off him (they are very visible against his pale fur) and he still got one that attached and had to be removed with a ticktool.

 Rosie, also with pale fur, without any tick protection at all, continues completely tick-free.  I'm guessing this is why Science makes all that fuss about sample sizes...

I am fairly sure that it's not that Rosie is taking different routes or jumping more than Carlos -- although she is faster and covers a lot more ground. But the ticks appear on Carlos even on-lead when we are all walking along the same path.

 My current theory is that Carlos, being entire, and from the look of him, probably with some GSD and staffie in his mix to go with the majority greyhound component, is just that bit smellier than Rosie (Saluki/whippet/grey, I think), and so the ticks are attracted to him more than they are to her.

The happy tick-magnet himself.


And being surprised by younger, swifter dogs...



I don't think it's *just* that ticks fall off Rosie because of her sheer velocity.... :-D

Comments

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine de-ticked her dog by feeding him vast quantities of garlic. She says it worked, in that they all fell off, but then she had a very strongly garlic-smelling dog. It didn't bother her, she's Chinese and cooks with garlic all the time.

Sample size of one, and totally anecdotal. Also the dog was a Default Dog, the kind of indistinguishable brown mongrel that you get all over the world. from Australia to Africa.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I do make dog treats with garlic, but not vast amounts of it. It's usually recommended to be cautious about feeding dogs (and cats) onions, garlic and so on, as alliums can cause serious anemia in those species.

I don't think it's likely to be a problem given that my dogs are quite big and don't get a lot of the stuff, but I am cautious.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't think she did it regularly. But her dog got a particularly nasty infestation, so she did it as a one-off. The dog went on to live a long and generally healthy life.