Purple and Paws I’ve only been a pet parent for four years and I’m proud to say I haven’t had too many pet parent fails. But, as other dog owners will tell you, life is not entirely smooth sailing when you have a dog. Mistakes are made and accidents happen.
Read on for my worst dog mom moment with Socks so far.
Before I adopted Socks, my family owned two dogs. Misty, a mutt found roaming the street near my dad’s work, and Patch, a purebread Jack Russell we adopted from a rescue group. In all the 15 and 11 years of their living, we never found a tick on either of them. To be fair, ticks are attracted to dogs with long and thick coats. Patch had short, thin hair while Misty’s hair was also relatively thin. We also live in Arizona where, I naively thought, ticks aren’t a big issue (newsflash: they are).
A few months after I adopted Socks, I started to notice little brown spots in his coat and on his fur. While I found this weird, Socks wasn’t behaving differently or acting like they bothered him so I brushed aside my concerns and continued about our normal routine.
Then I noticed one on his ear. I tried to brush it off, but the thing wouldn’t budge. So I left it. And, to my astonishment, I watched the little brown speck morph into a bulbous gray mole-like apparition during the course of one day.
How or why would a little brown speck grow so big?
I turned to Google.
And realized the little brown speck was a tick. And it was growing because it was slowly sucking Socks’ blood.
Horrified, I read up on the proper way to remove ticks from dogs and the proper medications to give. I also discovered that Arizona was having a big tick problem and that they latched on to dogs who liked to shove their noses into bushes (Socks’ m.o.) and enjoyed burrowing into the fur of dogs with thick, heavy coats (which Socks has).
I discovered ticks bury into carpets and lay eggs and I took a long, hard look at the carpets and found that yes, ticks were indeed happily living in my carpet.
After six months of inspecting Socks every day and pulling ticks off him and killing them, topical treatments, and house treatments, the ticks finally disappeared.
Every month I apply a gel to Socks’ coat which so far has held off the ticks.
But I still feel guilt over the fact that it took me so long to realize what was happening.