Dog Ticks Invasion - Need Help !

[rainman]

Since a few weeks, I have a growing problem. A few months ago, my wife brought home a Shi-Tzu (called Gizmo). I'm fine with that, as I love dogs. Not a problem. But the problem is those ticks (check here if you don't know what they are). In the beginning, he had maybe one or two every week. But recently, it has been growing to the point where we're removing about 30-40, without exaggerating, per day. Yes, 30-40 per day.

He doesn't go outside the house a lot, if at all. Maybe 4-5 times per week for a few minutes and while there are plants outside, there's no dirt or anything, it's always very clean and just the driveway. I have never seen any of those ticks outside, but I'm starting to now discover them around the house, which is probably because they jump off the dog and that is really bothering me. I really don't want this growing to the point where I have a full blown invasion of ticks and I need to end up torching the house with a flamethrower.

We've been to the doctor, gotten shampoos, sprays, etc. It seems to help for a day or two, but then they're slowly coming back until the next morning he's full again. We cleaned extensively under every piece of furniture, including dry cleaned the sofa but they keep coming back seemingly out of nowhere. I've gone so far as to wash Gizmo with 3 liters of vinegar. Yes, vinegar. The ticks then jumped off like crazy, but as soon as the vinegar smell was gone they were back.

Does anyone know of a proven and working method to get rid of these ticks once and for all? I never had them before I got the dog, so I'm pretty sure they were not coming from somewhere in the house.

I'm going insane

[bingobongo]

Since a few weeks, I have a growing problem. A few months ago, my wife brought home a Shi-Tzu (called Gizmo). I'm fine with that, as I love dogs. Not a problem. But the problem is those ticks (check here if you don't know what they are). In the beginning, he had maybe one or two every week. But recently, it has been growing to the point where we're removing about 30-40, without exaggerating, per day. Yes, 30-40 per day.

He doesn't go outside the house a lot, if at all. Maybe 4-5 times per week for a few minutes and while there are plants outside, there's no dirt or anything, it's always very clean and just the driveway. I have never seen any of those ticks outside, but I'm starting to now discover them around the house, which is probably because they jump off the dog and that is really bothering me. I really don't want this growing to the point where I have a full blown invasion of ticks and I need to end up torching the house with a flamethrower.

We've been to the doctor, gotten shampoos, sprays, etc. It seems to help for a day or two, but then they're slowly coming back until the next morning he's full again. We cleaned extensively under every piece of furniture, including dry cleaned the sofa but they keep coming back seemingly out of nowhere. I've gone so far as to wash Gizmo with 3 liters of vinegar. Yes, vinegar. The ticks then jumped off like crazy, but as soon as the vinegar smell was gone they were back.

Does anyone know of a proven and working method to get rid of these ticks once and for all? I never had them before I got the dog, so I'm pretty sure they were not coming from somewhere in the house.

I'm going insane

try "K9 Advantix" or "Frontline", once a month topical solution

[Neeranam]

What do you do with the ticks that you find?

I put them in motor oil to kill them. They're hardy little bastards .

I think you need to get the whole garden and house sprayed.

[bingobongo]

K9 Advantix and frontline are 1 once a month solutions you put on your dog and it basically poisons/repels the ticks

http://k9advantix.petparents.com/aboutAdvantix.cfm

Edited March 11, 2008 by bingobongo

[rainman]

Where do you guys find that Advantix and Frontline? I haven't found it in Carrefour, Tops or Tesco/Lotus (didn't expect it there either).

My wife always puts the ticks in a little box. She says she'll use them to 'experiment'.

[twschw]

Your vet should carry it.

[bingobongo]

Where do you guys find that Advantix and Frontline? I haven't found it in Carrefour, Tops or Tesco/Lotus (didn't expect it there either).

My wife always puts the ticks in a little box. She says she'll use them to 'experiment'.

try your vet or order it online below, i bring it over from the west

www.1800petmeds.com

[rainman]

You guys are great, thanks for all the quick responses! I will go this morning to find the tick-killers mentioned above. I was seriously running out of ideas on how to get rid of them.

[Etrigan]

You need to do a little searching around too. The ticks are hiding in gaps between the windows and walls, under skirting boards, in fact any tiny gap or space they will hide. The female after feeding will hide and drop eggs (thousands). This is why the ticks return.

Thoroughly clean out the house. Chemical warfare. Take a lighter to the gaps and burn them out.

You can also get your dog injected. Regularly apply frontline or injection as the tick's life cycle means you won't kill them all at once.

Good luck, I sympathise as I have had exactly the same problem you have.

[bingobongo]

You guys are great, thanks for all the quick responses! I will go this morning to find the tick-killers mentioned above. I was seriously running out of ideas on how to get rid of them.

dont miss a monthly dose or the ticks will be back, once it is applied, you may see a large # of ticks as a result of them leaving/falling off your dog, good luck

[Aries74]

tick can have diseases your family and your dog can get. don't pull off the body of the tick and leave the head embedded in the dog.

Check your dog sleeping places.

[Neeranam]

Check your dog sleeping places.

Yep thats important.

[Mobi]

I have 2 Shih tzus and a Golden retriever who spend long periods of time outdoors and they never have ticks.

I use Frontline every month, and as far as I know is definitely the most effective and is has been recommended by many dog owners on this forum.

You can buy Frontline in any good pet shop or vet, but the supermarkets do not stock it.

As your dog is full of ticks, I strongly recommend you take it to a good vet and have them all removed properly (heads an'all), and also give it an injection. After 30 days you can start with the Frontline.

[cmsally]

My wife always puts the ticks in a little box. She says she'll use them to 'experiment'.

Breeding experiment?

They have a lifecycle so you need to cope with eggs, small ticks and large ticks.

A good start would be to get someone to spray the house and garden and at the same time wash the dog in tick control shampoo and then then apply the anti tick power . After a few days start with the frontline.

I find using a combination of the tick powder and frontline keeps them at bay.

You can sprinkle some powder where the dog sleeps too.

[Heng]

Frontline lasts my dogs about 7 months at a time. Depends on your surroundings. Probably no need to overdose your dogs on the stuff as it essentially makes their skin toxic to ticks.

Also, while motoroil might be more fun... drowning ticks in a bottle of water works just as good.

[sbk]

Moved to Pets forum

///MOVED///

[Asaf]

So is it common to find ticks in Bangkok? I can't say I have seen one at my house or on my dog.... I have frontline but I still have not used it becasue she has no fleas or ticks and I don't want to put chemicals on her if I don't have too.

[jayjayjayjay]

Since a few weeks, I have a growing problem. A few months ago, my wife brought home a Shi-Tzu (called Gizmo). I'm fine with that, as I love dogs. Not a problem. But the problem is those ticks (check here if you don't know what they are). In the beginning, he had maybe one or two every week. But recently, it has been growing to the point where we're removing about 30-40, without exaggerating, per day. Yes, 30-40 per day.

I'm going insane

Heres my comprehensive Tick War Guide............. buy JR.

Rainman, what others have offered as solutions will help, but your case is serious and you need a little more than Advantix and Frontline.

Here is a complete guide to what I would recommend. What you already have is a complete infestation. You will find tick everywhere, cupboards, window seals, coffee tables, your sofa, shoes, books, light fittings, ticks can even drop from the ceiling like BASE jumpers hoping to land on the dog when they sense (chemical smelling) the presence of the dog in the room. Sometimes they can land on your head!!! As much as you are cleaning, dog ticks will hide everywhere. I have been in your situation before, you see my mut Porsche as my Avator. I brought him in from Australia last Ausgust, and being an active pup it was an immediate problem given the temple and school dogs surrounding my house! The following is my program, ticks are not 100% avoidable with dogs that head outside from time to time, but you can pretty much ride house and apartment dogs completely of the problem. I know get one or two every week, I still check daily, but there will always be a high point when first rains occur after a dry spell. It will only get progressively worse as the rainy season goes on. It is a three prong attack. First the dog, second the adult ticks around the house and third, the dormant eggs you can't see, and believe me, they are there!

First of all, both Advantix and Frontline are good. But they are not the strongest controller of ticks. The best product on the market is Preventic. This is not an injection or a drop on the skin, it is a collar. Tech wise you might find yourself thinking it wouldn't be as good as ivermectim injections etc, but it is the most comprehensive killer of ticks you can get. The smell from the collar is reasonably strong, you might only want to use it for a month or so until the worst is over, but I highly recommend this in place of Advantix and Frontline while you are really hitting the problem head on. Also, Shih tzus have a lot of hair, so I know you want this issue nailed thoroughly. The Preventic collar is quite long, You can cut it in half with a smaller dog and use it twice if you can work out a way to fasten it. The collar doesn't have to stay on 24/7 once you've got over the worst, I like to put it on Porsche for a couple of days a week.

Second, you need to treat everything in and around your house for adults. Again, shopping for the chemical will be a little difficult, but you should find them at a reasonable agriculture chemicals shop. I have the locations for Chiangmai if you need, but I assume you are in the bkk, somewhere in Yaowalart I am sure you can find a good shop. Last resort, PM me and I'll get you sorted with a kit. You need to spray thoroughly your entire house, garden, light fittings, cupborads. Not an inch to be missed. Good luck when it comes to your gf complaining, but then it is her dog ..... lol.

1. treat for adult ticks use Trebon 20 produced by Mitsui Chemicals 2-(4-ethoxyphenyl)-2-methylpropyl 3-phenoxybenzyl ether 20% W/V EC. This is in a small plastic bottle 100 cc. You will need to mix this at 30 cc (or ml) per 20 liters of water.

2. treat for eggs in the surrounding area. Bayer HealthCare product Bayticol 6% E.C. comes in 30 cc and bigger bottles. You need to mix this at 15 cc (or ml) per 20 liters of water.

You can mix the two above and spray at the same time. I recommend buying for yourself at a chemical shop an 800 baht hand pump spray unit. You can fit 5 or 10 liters of water into them, make your mix and off you go. Just mix smaller amount to however big the area you spray is. A couple of liters will suffice for a small appartment and outside dining area, you might want to use 5 plus liters if you have grass and plants. Use a combination of fine and solid spray settings. Fine spray works well around grass, small bushes and in your house to cover ALL floor surfaces. You can spray a more solid stream of chemical treatment into and up and around window seals, ceiling areas, underwooded ledges etc. I recommend spraying every room in you house, and respraying the main areas your dog is moving around in weekly for the next month. Twice a month is most likely necessary in the rainy season in outside areas, and once a month inside, for the dry season, and when you are not seeing the ticks. If you completely ride youself for 6 months your clear to drop the program.

A couple of other points. The big fat ones are the females with eggs. Make sure they dont get a chance to drop from your dog. Once they are squashed they eggs will be ready to hatch from this location for another 6 months, making your control program a real hassle. Keep a small bottle around with water in it. mix a really small portion of the above chemicals into the bottle. When your picking ticks off, drop them off into this bottle rather than squishing them on the floor!!!!! Dont drink from the bottle 555555 lol........... best of luck, Porsche and Jay......

[Mosha]

I feed the big female ones to my fish

[Nienke]

So is it common to find ticks in Bangkok? I can't say I have seen one at my house or on my dog.... I have frontline but I still have not used it becasue she has no fleas or ticks and I don't want to put chemicals on her if I don't have too.

If you haven't found any ticks yet, you can first try alternative methods such as tea tree oil, lemon rinse or other herbal stuff. In Chiang Mai health shops they sell a herbal powder mix that seems to prevent ticks and fleas from jumping on the animal. Haven't tried it out myself, so don't know how good it works.

Unfortunatley when you are talking about a real investation, IME only the chemical way helps. That is chemical stuff such as Frontline on the dog, and spray in and outside the house and garden. There are special pest control agencies that do this kind of jobs. Make sure though that the will spray every crack in the wall, under the roof and furniture etc. They tend to do only the floor as they normally do when spraying for termites, but that doesn't work with ticks. It's important to have them come at least twice, such as twice a month.

Be aware though that ticks can bring over blood parasites, that can be fatal if symptoms go unrecognized. Frontline and any of the other prevention stuff, does not prevent dogs of getting tick disease! Sometimes ticks still can bite the dog and bring over the parasite.

Therefore, it is best to have your dog's blood tested and have a SNAP test done every half a year. Blood test inlcude red and white blood cell count, platelets, kidney and liver. The SNAP test shows whether the dog has anti bodies agaisnt one strig of the Erhliciosis canis (tick disease). Unfortunately there are two 'strings', and the second 'string' does not show on the SNAP test but shows thorugh the blood test (low platelet count and sometimes also low red blood cell count). If the disease is caught in the acute phase then treatment is good possible.

If you search for ticks and tick disease, then you can find quite some information on these subjects on this forum.

Nienke

[rainman]

An update to this problem. I went out, purchased and applied the Frontline as instructed on the package. Now there seem to be less ticks on my dog, but they're a lot bigger. I'm not sure if this Frontline makes the ticks eat each other or if it blows them up like a nuclear experiment. They're nearly the size of my small finger's nail which is really nasty now. They're easier to remove, though. I'm thinking maybe my dog's hair is too long and I need to get rid of it and apply it again? What's strange is that all the ticks are now concentrated on the neck which is where Frontline was applied.

jayjayjay, I will go and find those ingredients for the spray and also give Preventic a try. I think Siam Paragon has it, I've seen it there if I'm not wrong.

[Nienke]

Don't know why the ticks concentrate near the Frontline, but the big ticks sound to me they are the female that have sucked themselves full with blood. So careful with what you do with them after you have removed them.

As you already have applied Frontline, I would be very careful with also aplying the Preventic. As they are both chemicals, it increases the chance on side-effects.

IMO, it is best to spray the vicinities where the dog is as soon as possible.

Nienke

[sbk]

So careful with what you do with them after you have removed them.

I have a small plastic cup filled with dishwashing detergent (alcohol also works but evaporates alot faster) and drop the ticks in there, they die and cannot reproduce.

[dsfbrit]

We have an odd family I think.

My wife and I have a 'hobby' whereby we sit together on the floor with litle GipGip our half Pom/Papillon

dog andlook for ticks 'ha hep'. Ticks are called 'Hep' in Thai and GipGip recognises this phrase as much as bathtime 'Abnam' and Walkies 'Dernlen'.

He is long haired so they are quite hard to find.

This ritual takes about 30 minutes a day and involves both of us looking for them, then my wife using her long finger nails to remove them (she is an expert) and then I use a lighter to burn them.

This is great fun, since they tend to explode

Having read this thread I have decided though that this is odd behaviour and in future will follow the advice here. Much more practical I am sure.

[ignis]

I have a Shi-Tzu + 2 Poodles, never a problems, all the doors are open all days and they go into the garden when they want..

Yak is 11.... Dada is 8....... Charlie the Shi-Tzu is almost 3, had all from pups.......... I take all 3 to the Vet for the Tick injections every 3 months..... went last week cost 120 baht per dog.

I trust when you remove the tick you DO NOT just pull them off ?? If you have not then go buy 90% [here can only find 70%] pure alcohol….. soak cotton bud and dab on tick… the tick will more or less fall off within seconds + leaves Nothing behind.

We had the same problem with ticks 20 years ago in Portugal, did the same, every 3 months tick injection……… When I first moved here Vets did not have the injection so bought outside Thailand and injected the dogs myself.

DO be sure to check your dog every day…….. friend 4 years ago lost 2 pedigree dogs to tick fever….. check between there toes + there pads + check there ears and use GREEN Care ear lotion on a cotton bud weekly

[dsfbrit]

I have never had a dog as a pet before, so it has been quite a learning curve on just how much effort there is in checking for tics.

About a month ago, we were horrified (well I was anyway) to find a very large 'tic' on him. It was soft and unlike a normal tic as it was soft could be squashed quite easily. When I squashed it - it was full of blood

I looked it up on the Internet and it turned out to be a tic that lived on sheep (no sheep around here) or my wife thought around here maybe on cattle.

Saw a couple more after that in the house near where we eat !

Sprayed the whole house with standard insect spray and haven't seen any since!!

[ignis]

Sorry to sound alarming but having lived many years in Countries where there are ticks, Ticks are NOT something to take lightly + NOT only on dogs, If you get tick fever you get very ill, I know a number of people that got tick fever + loads of dogs that died from tick fever. For Human tick bites/fever look here

http://www.health24.com/medical/Condition_...-1855,14021.asp

For information:.. -ticks love low shrubs and grasses..........

If I remember rightly all the American German Shepherds taken to the Vietnam war died of tick fever.........

removing ticks.

• If it looks like some of the tick did not come completely out (the tick's mouthpart has a barb on it to make removal more difficult), use an alcohol sterilized needle to remove the remaining pieces.
  
• Cleanse wound with soap and water, and then alcohol.
  
• Save the tick in rubbing alcohol (the alcohol quickly kills the tick) for future identification and testing**, if necessary. Date the bottle. Drowning a tick in water does not work--they can even survive flushing down the toilet.
  
• Mark the date on the calendar; this could be useful information if the dog starts showing symptoms consistent with tick disease.
  
• Believe it or not, I keep an empty medicine bottle half filled with rubbing alcohol handy and drop the ticks in it to kill them.
  

There are many web site about ticks and tick fever most start with A Silent and Deadly Killer

[elfe]

most important that you PREVENT ticks. once a tick has bitten it might be too late already, even if you plug them off on a daily basis.

spray house and garden and use a tick collar or drop-on to keep ticks off your dog.

tick born diseases can be chronical with no acute signs and only that the dog seems a bit weaker, has skin problems, sometimes diarrhea etc. also destroying slowly inner organs. it can suddenly break out and cause lameness, anaemia, and other symtoms coming from sickness. you don't want to see your dog die like that

[Murgatroyd]

Can anyone reccomend a reliable exterminator for ticks in the home? We live in a town house in Bang Bo. About six weeks ago I found that our dog was infested with ticks. We used a commercially available tick shampoo, and as soon as Songkran was over we took the dog to the vet. The vet treated the dog and sold us a number of vials of a golden liqued which I diluted according to her instructions and sprayed all over the house. The problem seemed to be over...

The day before yesterday we found that the dog had ticks again... My wife got a frontline treatment from the vet which I applied to the dog. Then the real trouble started. Seed ticks started to appear everywhere in the house. The living room, the bedroom, (The dog isn't allowed in the bedroom), the front yard, everywhere was crawling with ticks about the size of a pinhead. From my research on the net this means that they have recently hatched from eggs that were presumably laid by the last batch of ticks about a month ago.

I understand that a single tick can lay anything between 1000 - 3000 eggs... and these eggs can be literally anywhere. Physicly destroying them on an individual basis is thus clearly impossible, though we keep doing our best. We have resprayed the floor but it is quite impossible to spray some items in the house... our wardrobes full of all our clothes, my computer, my library of well over 1000 books, our kitchen and food supplies, CD and DVD collection, etc. etc...

Even if we exile the dog to live in the front yard, and treat her regularly we still need to deal with the infestation in the house. I imagine that this will entail getting a professional exterminator in, and systematically spraying the house and all it's contents, and then doing this again and again every couple of weeks until every generation of tick is eliminated. Perhaps some sort of Bug Bombs will be required.

Can anyone recommend such a professional exterminator? Has anyone on thai Visa had this done before? What will such a service cost?

I've had no experience with this problem before, and frankly don't know where to start. My wife clearly considers it My Problem. HELP!

[Dave the Dude]

I was recommended this......

This 600ml bottle cost me about 500 baht, and has lasted for 3 months, and is still 3/4 full, so work it out. The main thing is you've got to wash your dog every couple of days. I do it coz the dog lives in the house. If you dont wash that often, at a minimum every 2 days you would have to tie the dog up and poor over the 10 liters of water with a half a coke bottle cap full of Ascend. See if you can take the very poor pictures of the torn up label into an agricultural store, even in Thai the name is Ascend, so pronounce it slowly. It is not Bayer as I thought, it is a BASF product. Good luck,