Two Standard Poodles (3.5 and 2.5 years). I usually tie their leaches together when we go to the field to make sure the younger one does not take off. So they are in the same areas.
One gets tons of ticks. Always, even on our daily walks. He is the older dog, well-bred, white, has Addison’s disease so on very low dose of daily pred.
One gets 1-2 ticks if any. Apricot, puppy mill rescue.
What gives?
Anything that I can feed my white Spoo to keep him from getting so many ticks.
Both get Advantix.
Don’t know, but we had several dogs, from little to big and all in between and only one, a sheltie, was a flea magnet.
That was almost 40 years ago.
Somehow, just walking close to rabbit dens, she would come back covered with fleas, none on the other dogs.
She was from a puppy mill, had coccidiosis when we got her at three months old.
Is also the one that was super nervous and was blind by eight months and just not quite right.
She kept hitting walls like she didn’t notice she did hit them, very sad.
Everything the vet checked seemed to come up normal, must have been some kind of brain disease or defect.
The vet could not find what was wrong, finally euthanized her, never had a good diagnosis.
I wonder if sometimes when the dog is not quite right in certain ways, they become more susceptible to parasites?
Fortunately, except for the Addison’s, the tick magnet is wonderful. Brightest dog I have ever known. Understands sequences of requests, figures things out, learns tricks almost immediately, even watches planes in the sky. Just a tick magnet.
Oh, and probably because of the tick attraction, he has hot spots.
In the summers, our dog club building got very hot, so we held classes outdoors in the nearby city park.
There were many mosquitos there and, with our vet approval, we used to spray Off on the dogs (and on ourselves, of course).
Why don’t you ask your vet if you could do that for that dog, a light spraying around the lower legs and sides and see if that helps?
May do that. I have some Neem-based dog fly spray, but so far, that is not that effective.
Ticks and fleas are parasites, and just like most parasites they tend to pick on the weak, infirm, old, sick, etc. Your dog with Addisons falls into this catagory. The meds he is on may make him more attractive to them. You need to make sure you are applying the Advantix correctly. If applied correctly you should not be having this problem. Ask your vet, groomer, or vet tech to show you how to do it properly. If his/her coat is very thick it is more difficult to get it directly onto the skin. If you do not get it directly on the skin it does not migrate properly and is then completley ineffective. Garlic added to the food works in a certain percentage of dogs. You wont know if it works on this dog until you try it.
[QUOTE=tradewind;6394649]
Ticks and fleas are parasites, and just like most parasites they tend to pick on the weak, infirm, old, sick, etc. Your dog with Addisons falls into this catagory. The meds he is on may make him more attractive to them. You need to make sure you are applying the Advantix correctly. If applied correctly you should not be having this problem. Ask your vet, groomer, or vet tech to show you how to do it properly. If his/her coat is very thick it is more difficult to get it directly onto the skin. If you do not get it directly on the skin it does not migrate properly and is then completley ineffective. Garlic added to the food works in a certain percentage of dogs. You wont know if it works on this dog until you try it.[/QUOTE]
My understanding is that the ticks need to bite him to die. The ticks that I am pulling off have not even embedded themselves yet. Since he is white, I go over him every time he comes inside. I clip him with a 7F, then I dig deep with the applicator, and apply in several spots along his spine, just the way that the vet showed us.
I hope that the ticks don’t know something that we don’t…His blood tests are good so far, and he is acting like his old pre-diagnosis self.
I think some individuals are just tastier than others.
I hardly ever get ticks, even when in the same location where other people may have picked up several. I was at one park where two of my friends had 10 ticks each on them… I had 1.
I also don’t get bitten by mosquitoes very often, even when others are smacking them off by the dozens.
Why? Something in my blood, sweat, smell? I don’t know.
i read something a long time ago about how a certin human blood type is more attractive to mosquitos…whatever that type is, my mother HAS it…lol…we checked to verify it, but i cannot recall her blood type…so, could it be the same thing in animals?..do animals of the same spieces have different blood types?..i know one of my older horses, a chesnut, was COVERED in ticks in his mane and tail…i mean COVERED…,all attached…we could clean him of ticks twice a day, and get hundreds off…used to put them in old juice bottles with soapy water so we could be amazed by the amount…i figured it was because he was old…thinner skin, etc…or chestnut…we didn’t have any other chestnut horses, so couldn’t do a comparison
I don’t know why, but I have noticed that my white dog and gray (white) horses pick up ticks WAY more than their darker colored friends.
My poor white guy. At least I see them right away on him. It is extra incentive to keep his coat super short in the summer. Luckily, he doesn’t burn.
I will have to see if garlic is contraindicated in Addisonian dogs.
I don’t know but my hound dog, Lucy, is a tick magnet also. If she goes running throught tall grass she’ll come home with twice as many ticks as the other dogs. She has a tick borne disease, hepatazoonosis, but I think she got that as a result of being a tick magnet. One good thing about our hot, dry weather is we don’t seem to have as many ticks, fleas or mosquitoes.
Ticks and fleas are parasites, and just like most parasites they tend to pick on the weak, infirm, old, sick, etc.
that makes no sense to me- if you’re a parasite shopping for a new home, you’d pick the healthiest one you could find to live off of. Why drink sick-dog blood when you can drink yummy nutritious healthy-dog blood?
Ticks are attracted to white.
[QUOTE=saxony;6397590]
Ticks are attracted to white.[/QUOTE]
So just the slight apricot tint protects dog #2?
Haha! I don’t know, maybe? It could also be the meds he’s on. I’ve just heard that ticks are attracted to white;-))
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