For some of you, this post will be such old news, and you'll be all yeah, yeah heard about it ad nauseum, but for some of you, it might be new, so here goes. Back in September, we had our downstairs carpet and old school tile removed and replaced with tile in the kitchen and bathroom and hardwoods in the living and office areas. We thought it best if Jennie, our dog, wasn't in the house while all the work was going on. It would have been stressful for her - all those strangers coming in and out of the house, plus it would have driven us mad with her being so stressed out. We were stressed out enough being confined to the upstairs portion of the house. So, we sent her to doggy day care at the same facility we board her when we go out of town. Little did we know how that one seemingly "no brainer" of a decision would do, for what Jennie brought home with her would impact our lives to this very day. Yep, she brought us ticks. Not just one or two ticks, but an army of ticks that we can't quite seem to conquer no matter how hard we try.
Now I'll admit that we lapsed in putting the tick preventive on her each month, so we might not have anyone to blame but ourselves. The first one we noticed was not on Jennie, but on our couch. It looked like a gray plumed up raisin, so I thought it was just something the kids left behind from a snack or something, but on closer inspection I realized it was a tick. We immediately put the tick preventive on Jennie, but we were a day late and several dollars short on that front. From that day on for quite some time we would find ticks on the couch. Each morning there would be a tick parade on both couches, and we'd have to remove them and dispose of them. We also had to move the couches and vacuum under them each morning. At first, we just used Kleenex to pick them up and pop them, but then Brent had the brilliant idea to use masking tape. It made it so much easier to pick them up and it was quite gratifying to watch them struggle on the tape trying to get away.
These were not typical dog ticks, they were soft ticks (see image below). Of course, we called the exterminator and he came out and sprayed twice leaving time in between, so that we would catch all the life cycles. It was not a pleasant experience. I had to leave the house for 4 hours so the poison could dry and then I had to lightly mop the floors and couches, so the kids wouldn't come in contact with it. Thank goodness for nice neighbors like Wendy and Mark who let me work from their dining room table while my house aired out.
After a while, the soft ticks finally went away and we thought, "Whew" that's over, but NOOOOO. We started noticing another type of tick in the house. This time we had Brown Dog Ticks (see picture below). They weren't as civilized as the soft ticks who kept to the couches (and probably Jennie). These seemed to be every where we turned around. We later found out these new ticks were Brown Dog Ticks. Brenna has become an expert tick spotter. She has a very keen eye, so we don't doubt her when she says, "Tick!" So again, we had the exterminator come out and spray the house again. This time he amped up the poison, but it didn't seem to phase the Brown Dog Ticks one bit.
I called the vet and they recommended that we switch to a new tick preventive - Parastar Plus. At this point, we'd try anything to get rid of these things. We decided to shave Jennie down and get her dipped before we put the next round of preventive on her. We felt like with her longer coat, we couldn't see what was going on under all that fur. When she came home from the groomer, I pulled over 30 ticks off her. Good times, right? After the first application of the new tick preventive, I thought surely things would improve. Not at all. We made a practice of checking Jennie two times a day, and every time we'd find at least 3-4 ticks on the poor thing. I had an hour long conversation with the makers of Parastar Plus, and she felt like our situation was overwhelming the product. We had done everything correct in the application and in getting the house treated. A few days later I got a call from our vet offering to refund us for the Parastar Plus and to go back to Frontline Plus.
The ticks were even attaching to us. You can imagine my panic when one morning I dropped Austin off at daycare and noticed something on the back of his head. I combed his hair away from the area and sure enough it was a tick securely attached to my baby. I removed the tick (head and all) and swabbed the area with alcohol and put on some Neosporin. I immediately called the doctor's office to ask if there was anything I needed to do about the situation. The nurse I spoke with said I should definitely bring him in - that she had been bitten by a tick and had to be on medication. Well, that was a fun few hours to sit and stew while I waited for our appointment time to arrive. Turns out that the ticks in our area are generally not disease carrying ticks, and we shouldn't worry unless he started showing symptoms. Well, that would have been nice to know a few hours earlier. My blood pressure could have stayed at a normal level, but I guess better safe than sorry.
Turns out Brown Dog Ticks are the most difficult to get rid of, for they can go through their entire life span on one host. Most other ticks need a new host of a different type of animal to move onto the next life cycle. We're so lucky, aren't we? About 3 weeks ago, I pulled an engorged tick off of Jennie and instead of popping it inside of masking tape like normal, I decided to put it in a sealed container to see a) how long it could survive and b) if it was full of eggs. Until this past weekend, it was still alive and you should see all the eggs it laid in the container. It must be the biology gene I got from my mother, but I'm going to see what happens to the eggs. I'm curious to know if they can survive in that kind of environment and how long it takes for them to hatch.
It's now four and a half months later, and we still see ticks on the baseboards and walls every now and again, and we still pull them off Jennie. She has been a trooper through all of this. She patiently lays on the floor while we go over her every day. I'm hopeful that there may come a day when we can safely say, "Hurray! We're tick free!"
