Hi although i have a dog I have alway treated her with frontline and never had a problem, i went to visit a friend tonight and noticed a bluish round thing just under her dogs neck, Kind of looks like a big brown mole but was a kind of a blue/grey colour we tried to pull it off but it would not budge so i told her to leave it till tomorrow and have another look? could this be a mole as she had took them over a big field yesterday or something else, we are both at a loss because we have never seen any thing like it before.. all advice welcome Lou

sounds like a tick to me ugh! hate those things...DONT try and pull it off!!! if the head gets left behind then it can cause infection. there's several things to do concerning ticks..one is to burn them and they should 'let go' and will either fall off or be twisted out easily. apparently rubbing alcohol works to? rubbing butter on the tick smothers it and makes it easy for them to be removed also (remove by twisting them out in a quick motion)

Frontline will only keep ticks off if you use it monthly , for fleas you can use it every two months I seem to remember :)

One of ours picked up a tick from somewhere recently, fortunately one of the others was due a frontlining, and a wee drop of frontline on the body of the tick had it dropping off with all its bits attached within 12 hours. They are pretty gross though, lol. Glad it dropped off by itself, I'm always worried to pull them out after I've killed them in case I leave a bit in, eurghh!

the only thing that freaks me out about letting them drop off is;

1) how do you know where it is?
2) I would not be able to bring myself to cuddle my dog
knowing that beastie is on them

just talking about this makes me itchy!

YUK!

i've been told that you should twist them anti-clockwise to remove the whole tick,or smothering them in something like vaseline stops them breathing then they drop off.
mel:)

A dab of frontline spray (which is for ticks and fleas) on them usually does the trick.

I've had a couple of problems with ticks or so i think. They've never got to the blown up size ? because i use Frontline regularly.
What i want to know is, when a tick first attaches are they buried under the skin then get bigger due to their feeding off the dog. I ask because on the two occasions which i thought was ticks i only felt small pimple like bumps on him. The fist time i accidently picked it off and left head in.(eventually got it out which left a little hole in Buddy's back).
Budmag

The tick is tiny when it first attaches even smaller if it is a nymph rather than an adult. Only the head and legs dig into the skin. It grows daily as it sucks blood. UK ticks only feed once per year. When they fall off the nymphs mature or the adults lay eggs then die, so a tick does not transfer from one animal to the next. Only the females suck blood.
Frontline doesn't stop ticks from biting but will kill them within 24hrs.

You should be able to get tick removers from your vet and possibly somewhere like pets at home. It looks like a plastic hook which you hook around the head and twist off. I then stamp on it outside, becuase they are such hideous things!!!

Hi, Thanks for all the advice i am off back round there again very soon so i will tell her all that you said but it has made me feel very sick just reading these post!!!! I have some front line so i am going to take that with me and kill the b@\'\'#\', yesterday mind i would only hold him while she touched it and looked at it!!! So is it normal not to see any legs on it just a thing hanging out of her poor dog? makes me cringe just talking, and reading about it!! Well i will put the frontline on it tonight and let you know what happens!
thanks for all your advice Lou

Yes, it's head will be buried in the skin, and the tick's legs are immediately behind its head, so you may see a little 'fringe' of legs right at the dog's skin, then the large swollen body behind......yuck, they're horrible and make me shudder......

Damn this makes me so sick, Damn all i can see is the little fu@ker has probably seen the last piece of day that will ever see lmao!!!