Dogs And Ticks

 

Being dog owners, one of the things that we are concern about is making sure that our precious furry friend is not infected with known parasites such as ticks and fleas, but this article focus primarily about ticks, please read one of our article that talks about dealing with fleas in dogs.

 

Some states in the USA tend to have more ticks populations than others, but most dogs in different states can be infected with ticks because ticks can be found in different areas outdoors including our own yards, gardens, and wooded places. In areas where wild animals like deers are present, the possibility of having ticks are huge because deers are one of the major ticks carriers that transfers those parasites from their body to our living areas like gardens and yards where our dogs have access to, and dogs going outside will likely catch one of these parasitic bugs and ended up in their bodies. Although, we might not be able to completely eliminate the presence of ticks all together, there can be preventions to make sure that it will not multiply, spread, and cause health problems in our dogs.  Although, not all types of ticks carry deseases, it is better safe than sorry and be in a habit of regularly checking our dogs to make sure that there are no existing ticks sucking blood out of our precious friends. 

 

Ticks feed on blood of their hosts, in this case the hosts are either the dogs, deers, and sometimes humans. If left unknown or untreated, one tick can multiply to several ticks, and can you imagine all those numbers of ticks all sucking blood out of a dogs body in one time? Worse yet, if the tick they ended up with is known to carry diseases, then that will even create more health risks and problems for the dogs. Early detection is key, a dog owner can easily learn how to effectively remove a tick from a dog if ever you found one. Here is a great video i found at YouTube that guide you step by step on how to remove a tick from your dog: 

Tickless dog is better, but if you have to deal with it in your dog, atleast your dog is in safe hands knowing that you have some idea how to handle it or remove it safely out of your dog. We have more interesting articles about dogs here at www.DogsCircle.com browse below..

Dealing With Fleas

Nobody wants to deal with fleas, including our dogs. But when you have dogs, you might be facing some flea problems at some point, if not, you are lucky and keep it that way. Fleas are nothing but parasites to our dogs and if your dog is infected with some fleas, it is best to face the problem and not take it for granted because if you just ignore it, it will only multiply and make things worse.

There are different ways that a dog can get infected with fleas. She/he can get it from your yard or lawn, other dogs, or from your carpets or furnitures that may have some fleas in them. Your dog will not be able to tell you that she/he got fleas, but one major indication that your dog might be infected with some fleas is if you started to notice that your dog has been scratching and itching a lot. Fleas can go anywhere in their body, from head to toe. Fleas are little insects that are hardly visible by the human eyes, and it goes even harder to see when your dog have long hair or fur.




But dont go panic, there are several different measures that you can do to prevent fleas, or to remove fleas from your beloved furry friend. Since it is hard to control exactly where a dog can get fleas from, it can be from your own backyard or from other dogs that they associate with, it is best to keep your dog protected by putting a shield in your dogs body to keep the fleas away. There are several different flea prevention products that you can purchase nowadays inorder to prevent fleas in your dogs. There are flea control chemicals that you can apply to your dogs back to prevent flea for months, or even a flea control collar that your dog can wear.

But if you suspect that your dog has fleas already and you need to get rid of them and do something about it before they multipy. To manually control the fleas from your dog body, you can use a flea comb to remove some of the fleas. A flea comb is a specially designed comb with tiny teeth inorder to sweep most fleas out. You can also purchase a flea body spray that you can apply to your dogs body to kill any existing fleas.

If a dog is infected with fleas, chances are some of the fleas fly off to your carpeting, etc. If you think that some of the fleas are already present in your carpeting, you can also purchase a chemical spray that you can apply to your carpet to kill the fleas. And if you suspect that your dog get the fleas from your lawn, there are also spray products that you can buy to spray in your lawn to kill the fleas.

If you use any of the flea products, always make sure that you read the instructions, labels, and proper applications so that you will be able to get the most use out of a product and not encounter any problems due to misapplications and improper treatments.

Between you and your beloved furry friend, keep the love alive, but not the fleas!

If you think this is a helpful tip and want your friends to know, feel free to give them this website link.

This article is written by JazeVox of www.DogsCircle.com All Rights Reserved.

The Muddy Paws

For areas like California, rainy days are blessing from above. Rainy days in this side of US are usually limited, so when the rain comes, it is mostly benefecial because it adds more water to the ground and let the ecosystem going.

But for dog owners with dirt section in their yard, it can be a huge mess to let the dogs out in the muddy yard during the rainy days and let them back inside the house bringing with them a muddy suprise all over the floor.

We had green lawn in the backyard but it was overpowered by all kinds of weeds, so we recently prepared the yard for new lawn, but its been raining for days! Having dogs outside for their playtime and duty calls becoming a real mess because they track mud inside house. Tile flooring might be easier to clean, but we have wood flooring, and wood and water are not the best of buddies , nor is carpet and mud.







A dump towel rug place near the door can be handy item to wipe a dogs paws before they start walking around the house tracking mud. It is a temporary solution that we only do during the rainy days, but it helps a lot in minimizing the muddy footprints inside the house. We also spread a fabric sheet in the floor near the door to help soak some of the wet paws. We have a rug in our door that says Wipe Your Paws, wouldn't it be nice if they can really do that?!

Dogs Eating Grass

We noticed that our dogs eat grass leaves everytime they have an upset stomach. Although, basing on our observations, a lot of times, eating grass only worsen the situation of their stomach pain and suffering because the grass they eat literally cause our dogs to get choke and vomit or throw up due to the unchewed long grass, probably just as worst and bothering as a hair ball that cats have to go through every now and then when they lick they hair clean. So every time we notice our dogs suffering from stomach pain, we try to minimize their outdoor stay to keep them away from eating the grass. It is unknown to us if there are any specific grass that they eat, or they just eat any type of grass they could find in the yard. If you notice the same behaviour with your dog, eating grass and vomiting it afterwards, for safety of your dogs, if she/he is not recovering soon enough from the stomach pain, it is always best to consult your veterenarian about it, inorder to get the proper medications for it.



Written and Photo by JazeVox

Traveling With Your Dog

When we first adopted our dog, she was still less than a year old, we had a really hard time bringing her on our trips because she ended up vomiting during the car rides. It was never pleasant cleaning up messy pukes in a fabric material car seats, nor was dealing with the puke smell for the rest of our trip, and nor was the thought how bad the doggy must be feeling inside, probably feeling so sick!

But few years have gone by and our doggy started becoming more like a traveler. She enjoys car rides and traveling with us nowadays. It was not an instant change though. Instead of shocking our dog with long trips like we did in the very beginning, we decided to gradually bring her to shorter trips like going to the post office, or a short ride to the nearest grocery store, just so she get accustomed to the car environment at first and she get adjusted to it. We decided to gave her short but gradual travel training. We also try to avoid feeding her plenty of food and water before the trip. Just before a trip, if we needed to feed our dog, we usually just give her little portions of food, just so she will not starve and not too much food, so that she will be so full, she is more likely to vomit during the trip.



So if you have the same problems (puking and vomiting) with your dog during travels, try to practice your dog in shorter trips first. More preferably not more than 30 minutes drive, so that she will get use to the car environment, having an idea of bumpy and unstable position of being a car passenger and she will know how to react in those scenarios. Also try controlling the amounts of food that you feed your dog before each trip and during the trip. And for longer trips, try to make rest stops in between to relax and unwind the dogs stamina and stress during car rides.

Dogs that attack

Dogs that attack humans have a very strong possibility of being mistreated, improperly trained by their owners or by people around them. Dogs are known to be mans bestfriend, so if certain dog attack human being, chances are there are a traceable cause of his undesirable behaviour. Although, dogs attacking humans are very unfortunate encounter and contradicts widely of the phrase that dogs are mans bestfriend, it would be best to give the dog a second chance in life by turning him over a professional trainer. If you own the dog that attacked a human, dont take chances, turn him over to a professional trainer right away and see if there are still ways that such dog will change behaviour. If you dont know how to professionally handle these severe dog behaviour, trust your instint and let the professional do their job. Like humans, dog can change, they can learn with proper training and proper treatment. Originally, in life, to err is human to forgive is divine. Just as we give second chances to people who hurt us, its fitting that we should give dogs that attack humans second chances. I would not recommend doing the second chance training yourself, specially that you are not trained to handle such severe cases because it might do more damage than good, so it is best to let the professionals do it. Professionals dog trainer after thorough training and observation, they will most likely be able to determine whether an attacking dog is treatable or not, so putting down an attacking dog is more like a case to case basis in each attacking dog if such dog should be put down or not, depends on his chances to change or not change for the better.

What about you? What do you think should be the RIGHT and FAIR thing to do for dogs that attack humans?



Note: This article was first published in blog DolphinState, now called HonestlyFRESH.

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