Poor Ruby. I have been torturing her severely the past couple of days.
First we went off to St. Louis for a couple of days and Left Her. No matter that there was a dog sitter who came to visit her and feed her, and took her on walks and all. She refused to eat.
Then I got home and almost as soon as I touched her I discovered that she was absolutely covered in little tiny seed ticks. On Sunday we went for a walk out at Bennett Spring, and when we got home I found quite a few tiny ticks wandering around on me, so I showered them off and didn’t think much of it.
Stupid stupid stupid human. If you have 50 ticks on you, you can bet your dog has 500. At least. So yesterday almost as soon as I got home I sat my exhausted self down on the kitchen floor with the flea comb and the vacuum cleaner and began to remove tiny ticks from the dog. Every time I ran the comb over her, there were dozens in it. We are talking arachnids that are about 1mm in diameter now that they are all full of dog blood. This is why I could not see them in her coat before they had fed, at that time they are the same color as she is. Once they have their blood meal, they are ready to fall off and detach fairly readily at the touch of the comb. They look black then, and show up just fine.
I could not believe how many ticks there were in between her toes, all over her feet and legs. After I worked her over for over an hour, I thought I had probably gotten them all. So I vacuumed the house to death to make sure I got any that had already fallen off her out of the carpet.
Boy, was I ever wrong. I spent ANOTHER hour and a half today, combing more ticks off of her. I got just as many today as there were yesterday, I guess those were the ones that were not ready to come off yesterday. I had no idea I had missed so many.
So I vacuumed the hell out of the house AGAIN.
Now I have a client waiting for me, so I will give him his massage, and then I am going up to Bill’s Farm and Home and I am buying flea and tick shampoo and I am going to torture the poor dog some more and get the rest of those little parasites off her and dead.
I HATE TICKS!
Y’all have a parasite free day, ya hear?
