Candi with her shooTAG

I was reminded today that it’s the beginning of flea and tick season when my youngest dog came up to me for some lovin’ and he had a tick above one of his eyes. I felt very guilty because I knew a couple of weeks ago that it would soon be warm enough for the pests to come out and the dogs needed new shooTAGs.  I already had them, just hadn’t put them on. It only took a few minutes and the dogs were setup with new shooTAGs on their collars. [I'll talk more about them in a minute.]

However. . . that didn’t get rid of the tick that was already on Lucky. There is a great way to get rid of those nasty little critters without using something toxic on your pet. It was a 2-person operation, but we held Lucky’s head and too a bottle of rubbing alcohol and turned it upside down against his head covering the tick and held it there for just about a minute. The tick was still there when we were done, but I know it will be gone within a day.

Basically, we drowned the tick with alcohol. You could see that the tick was no longer swollen when we took the alcohol off. If it isn’t off by tomorrow we’ll do the same thing again. Usually, the alcohol will make the tick back itself out of the animal’s body, thus insuring you get the head out unlike using tweezers and breaking the body off the tick and leaving the head inside to cause infection and damage. The secondary benefit of the alcohol is that it will help keep the pet from getting an infection where the tick comes out. We’ve done this with our outside cat when she gets ticks too.

I know lots of you use products like Frontline to prevent fleas and ticks. . . however I gave that up several years ago. There have been so many complaints about Frontline and similar products by pet owners that last year I ran across the EPA investigating the affects of spot on products for animals. Several years ago my vet explained to me that the chemicals are put along the animal’s spinal column and it is absorbed through the skin and can affect the pet’s central nervous system and in many cases can do to you pet what it does to fleas and ticks. UGH! So I was on a mission to find something to replace Frontline with that would not be toxic and harm my animal.

Luckily, my vet was trying out shooTAGs about 2 years ago and suggested I consider it. We had fantastic results. Finally I’d found something safe that worked! I’d tried spraying the dogs with essential oils before they went out and that worked for fleas but not ticks. This worked for both. The cost is comparable to using Frontline and you have to put new tags on your pet about every 3 months. The very cool thing is that they work for dogs, cats, horses and even PEOPLE. I have a neighbor who is allergic to chiggers. They even have tags that will protect you from those critters (but I don’t know if she’s tried these yet or not).

Now my pets are set. Within 36hrs we’ll be ready for the worst of the flea and tick season that usually happens here between April and June. Shoo ticks shoo!