If you regularly hike or hunt with your dog there’s a very good chance that they could be at high risk for ticks. Getting rid of dog ticks with home remedies can often be one of the best ways to protect your pet and prevent them from becoming hosts for ticks. Eliminating ticks from your yard and even making sure that your pets are protected from ticks and the chance that they might latch on, can be quite helpful. In this article we will go through some of the best home remedies that you can use for getting rid of ticks and preventing ticks with your dogs.
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What Are Dog Ticks?
Dog ticks, like other kinds of ticks, are parasitic arachnids that are related to mites. Like other ticks, dog ticks can bite and attach themselves to you or your dog. These ticks are usually twice the size of the deer tick, so it’s pretty easy to spot them on y our dog. Adult females are most likely to bite in the spring and summer.
These ticks carry many diseases, including the following:
- Ehrlichiosis
- Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
- Tularemia
Each of these diseases can be life-threatening.
Dog ticks are a reddish brown color, with a white shield (females), grooved shield, eight legs, and a narrow shape. They are a bit smaller than a quarter of an inch; however, they are larger than some other ticks.
These ticks are predominately found east of the Rocky Mountains, and along the Gulf and Pacific coasts. They can live indoors during their entire life cycle. However, you can find them in natural areas that are free of trees, on walkways and trails, in dog beds, and other places dogs like to sleep and in kennels.
Dog ticks are most active from April through August, during the summer months. But be aware that it’s possible to find dog ticks living in your home any time of the year. These ticks are known to go through “questing” periods. This means dog ticks behave in specific ways to increase their odds of finding a host. So, it’s essential to take precautions when you’re outside with your canine companion.
A tick bite can widely go unnoticed in many pets as ticks will automatically secrete an anesthetic that can block out the pain of the bite. Until it kick starts to expand they can be very difficult to spot but there are some signs of a bite or the presence of a tick with your pets. If you happen to spot the signs of redness, itching, burning, swelling or rashes over time this can suggest that your pet has experienced an issue with a tick. Searching this area can often reveal a tick if it is still feeding.
By learning how to get rid of your dog ticks with home remedies you can help to protect your pets and reduce the chances that they could contract a serious health effects from ticks like Lyme disease. Here are some of the top five home remedies that you can use to illuminate the chance of a dog tick and to help with the removal of ticks:
How to get rid of ticks naturally with salt
The first home remedy that you may want to try out is using baking soda and salt together as a tick remedy. Pouring baking soda and salt into your lawn can often damage the grass fibers but it’s particularly useful to spray directly on your dog before you go out into long grass or before they go outside.
Mixing together a remedy that includes baking soda and salt with some water and a dash of vinegar in a spray bottle will create a powerful tick repellent. This can be easily sprayed across your dog to help get rid of ticks and to prevent ticks from latching on. The salt has a tendency to actually dry out ticks and make it more difficult for them to latch onto your dog so that they can be more secure in almost any type of environment.
The mixture is completely non-toxic to dogs as well and it can be applied many times over without leading to any kind of negative effects
Using apple cider vinegar for ticks
Apple cider vinegar is one of the most popular solutions for ticks not just for spraying on your pet, his collar and your property. Apple cider vinegar can be extremely useful for reducing the number of ticks on your property, as a supplement for your pets and for a spray repellant as well.
Making Apple cider vinegar spray is one of the easiest initial starting points. To begin you just need to pour out 1 cup of apple cider vinegar into a bowl and then dilute it with 4 ounces of warm water. If you add in baking soda and salt this can also improve the potency of the entire mixture.
Apple cider vinegar can also be used in conjunction with lavender oil to apply a much stronger spray to your pet. Mixing together 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and 15 drops of lavender oil can produce a topical oil that you can easily spread over your pet that will be extremely long-lasting. If you find that some of the spray on solutions with apple cider vinegar do not last an extensive amount of time, this can be an excellent option to choose instead. The lavender oil in apple cider vinegar also come together to produce quite a pleasing scent for pets too.
Spraying on your property with apple cider vinegar that is diluted with water will also help to remove the threat of ticks from tall grass. Regularly spray down the area that you let your pets out into with this mixture and you can prevent many ticks from wandering onto your property and becoming a threat for your pets. Just be sure not to get any type of un-diluted vinegar directly onto plants. Apple cider vinegar often works as a better solution here because it can be less harsh.
Apple cider as a supplement in your dogs food can also help to prevent ticks from latching on. Make sure that your pet is continuing to drink plenty of extra water and generally a veterinarian recommends only adding 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to food for every 15 pounds that your dog weighs. This means that if your dog is around 60 pounds, you should add roughly 4 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar to their food or water each day to see these benefits.
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Ask a Vet Live NowHow to use white vinegar for dog ticks
White vinegar is another common tool that can be used for repelling ticks. Using white vinegar for dog ticks has long been one of the best methods for removal. If you happen to spot a tick on your pet, using white vinegar that is on dilute it is often one of the easiest ways to remove a tick.
The vinegar does not directly kill ticks but it works to provide an irritant that will actually make them unlatch from your pet. Filling up a cup with the un-diluted white vinegar, soaking a cotton ball and then touching it to the end of a tick will cause them to back away from the bite site entirely. Apple cider vinegar and white vinegar is commonly used as a tick repellent and it’s a great way to cause the tick to loosen for removal.
It’s very likely that even with white vinegar you will still have to use fine tipped tweezers to steadily pull a tick out without twisting it. The process for removing a tick often involves quickly using find tipped tweezers to grasp at the tick as close as you can get to the surface of skin. This can often be quite difficult with pets and their hair, but nevertheless you need to try and get as close as possible. After making sure that you have the tick well grasped, be sure to pull upward with an even pressure without twisting and then make sure that the tick is removed including the head.
Dropping the tick in white vinegar and letting them soak after removal will make sure that they drown
The best way to dispose of ticks afterwards is to simply drop them down the drain or flush them down the toilet. Treating your pets skin after tick removal is also crucial. It’s usually recommended to treat the area with soap and water after the tick has been removed or to use rubbing alcohol in order to make sure that the site is completely sterilized. After using rubbing oil or some type of sterilization technique you should consider the idea of retreating your pet with repellent if you have been regularly using some type of natural remedy to prevent against ticks.
This remains one of the best and most natural ways to completely remove ticks. You should never consider using harmful remedies like painting the tick with nail polish, using petroleum jelly or any other technique that involves waiting for the tick to detach. Removing the tick as quickly as possible is one of the only ways to prevent infection or other serious effects that could change the health of your pets.
Vegetable oil mixture
An excellent topical treatment that you can use for your pet involves the use of vegetable oil as well. Most types of vegetable oil contains sulfur which can work of the natural tick repellent. Mixing together two teaspoons of vegetable oil with 10 drops of peppermint essential oil will create the topical treatment that you can spread along your dogs back and along its legs to create a long lasting repellent. Most pet owners recommend using this vegetable oil mixture at least once a week but it remains quite effective over the long term especially when matched up against items like a spray style bottle.
By keeping up the regular vegetable oil mixture and a routine of reapplying it every week, you can work at getting the best level of support for your pets over time. You can prevent ticks as an ongoing solution in this way.
How to use garlic for dog ticks
Garlic is an additional supplement that you can add into your pets food that is known for its tick repellent ability. It is important to remember that adding too much garlic into a pets diet can actually be quite harmful. Adding around 1/8 of the teaspoon of garlic into pet food alongside Apple cider vinegar can often create a powerful supplement that a pet will have in their system.
With garlic, as soon as the tick bites into the pet, it’s fairly likely that they may actually detach because of the repellent that is available within the blood system of a pet. The ingredient in garlic can also come out in your pets hair and this can act as an ongoing deterrent over time too.
If you want to make sure that you can prevent your pets from getting ticks, you should strongly consider some of these top five natural remedies. Any of these tick removal or prevention methods could come in handy and will not pose the same risk to your pets as expensive chemical tick prevention methods!
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Julie
Julie is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she studied Animal science. Though contrary to the opinion of her parents she was meant to study pharmacy, but she was in love with animals especially cats. Julie currently works in an animal research institute (NGO) in California and loves spending quality time with her little cat. She has the passion for making research about animals, how they survive, their way of life among others and publishes it. Julie is also happily married with two kids.
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