Joined
·
19,451 Posts
Can someone tell me what it looks like when a tick JUST gets on a dog?
For the past few days I've been grooming my Coke, learning to do it myself since the groomer makes him look really nice but never cuts enough off for it to be practical for a hot summer. Coke's not a GSD. He has an extremely thick coat, like a Malamute, but also has the long, sleek outer coat like a Golden. But he's black and red, colored like a Rottweiler. So I've been trimming his ears, belly, tail, pants, and feathering on his legs and then working through it with thinning shears to even it out. I brush him almost every day and he still gets tangles plus he gets so hot now I'm just trying to make it more manageable. I'm trying to avoid an actual cut or shave so I'm trimming the areas where there is more long hair than undercoat and thinning it out. Anyway, tonight was my last night working on this trim and I cut all the hair from between his toe nails and rolled him over to work on his privates area. The hair here gets very long and is more coarse so it tangles and mats easily. Obviously he loathes having this brushed. Since you can't see it, I decided to hack it all off (would shave if I had a shaver). I found a few small mats near his anus and cut all that off, plus cut everything from his penis backward. I left most of the "pants" (trimmed and thinned that), just hacked off all the hair that was dead center, the stuff that gets matted and is impossible to brush.
He was a very good sport for this and I got off what I wanted to remove, but in the process I noticed three spots right by his penis. They looked like TINY black dots under the skin, hardly inflamed. I assumed "ticks" (he IS on Frontline Plus...) so I went and got my tweezer. I picked the spots open and tried to grab what I thought were ticks but they don't *seem* to actually be bugs. I've never seen a tick on a dog or person and only know what it looks like once they've been eating and get big. The skin over top the tiny black spots scraped off easily and it was almost like a tiny scab underneath. I got a few little chunks of black, but no actual bug. I thought I was digging pretty hard, also squeezing the area between two fingers trying to squeeze out a bug, but nothing.
How can I tell if this is really ticks? I plan to have DH help me by holding Coke still for me b/c Coke kicked me in the face a few times already (he doesn't struggle against me, but always kinda flails around, even when we are just giving a belly rub), but DH is working double shifts so that would have to wait until the weekend. Would they get big by then?
For the past few days I've been grooming my Coke, learning to do it myself since the groomer makes him look really nice but never cuts enough off for it to be practical for a hot summer. Coke's not a GSD. He has an extremely thick coat, like a Malamute, but also has the long, sleek outer coat like a Golden. But he's black and red, colored like a Rottweiler. So I've been trimming his ears, belly, tail, pants, and feathering on his legs and then working through it with thinning shears to even it out. I brush him almost every day and he still gets tangles plus he gets so hot now I'm just trying to make it more manageable. I'm trying to avoid an actual cut or shave so I'm trimming the areas where there is more long hair than undercoat and thinning it out. Anyway, tonight was my last night working on this trim and I cut all the hair from between his toe nails and rolled him over to work on his privates area. The hair here gets very long and is more coarse so it tangles and mats easily. Obviously he loathes having this brushed. Since you can't see it, I decided to hack it all off (would shave if I had a shaver). I found a few small mats near his anus and cut all that off, plus cut everything from his penis backward. I left most of the "pants" (trimmed and thinned that), just hacked off all the hair that was dead center, the stuff that gets matted and is impossible to brush.
He was a very good sport for this and I got off what I wanted to remove, but in the process I noticed three spots right by his penis. They looked like TINY black dots under the skin, hardly inflamed. I assumed "ticks" (he IS on Frontline Plus...) so I went and got my tweezer. I picked the spots open and tried to grab what I thought were ticks but they don't *seem* to actually be bugs. I've never seen a tick on a dog or person and only know what it looks like once they've been eating and get big. The skin over top the tiny black spots scraped off easily and it was almost like a tiny scab underneath. I got a few little chunks of black, but no actual bug. I thought I was digging pretty hard, also squeezing the area between two fingers trying to squeeze out a bug, but nothing.
How can I tell if this is really ticks? I plan to have DH help me by holding Coke still for me b/c Coke kicked me in the face a few times already (he doesn't struggle against me, but always kinda flails around, even when we are just giving a belly rub), but DH is working double shifts so that would have to wait until the weekend. Would they get big by then?
