No clock jokes please.
Can anyone advise how to reomve a tick from the delicate groin area
of a dog, without leaving it’s head embedded? I have tried gin and vodka
on cotton-wool, and the hot head of a dead match but to no avail!
Have you tried tweezers?
If you can keep him from licking it off, put a big glob of vaseline or other greasy substance over the tick. They can’t breathe and will pull out on their own.
If you can keep him still ( maybe a difficult proposition ), the best way to remove a tick from any creature is to grab it by the head with tweezers, as close to the point where it is embedded as possible, and pull, steadily and firmly. Don’t YANK - that WILL separate the head. But the tick will disengage before it is decapitated if you don’t pull too hard or too quickly. If you’re worried about being steady enough, you can let your vet try.
All other methods are more hit or miss - Take it from someone who has Ticks of California sitting on his bookshelf 
.
- Tamerlane
I’ve seen a tick removed from a person by tapping its butt with a lit cigarette until it got too uncomfortable to stay in.
$.02
How to remove ticks by Yours Truly.
In my experience, tweezers, or even fingernails, if you can get a good grip on the tick, are the most expedient method. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of ticks I’ve removed, only three times have I failed to extract the head. Twice the ticks were between the toes and getting a grip in that tight space was incredibly difficult. The other time, Buster moved his head while I was removing one from his neck.
Having a large dog that spends lots of time in the woods means that I have extensive experience with this method and I have tried others. Matches, fingernail polish, mineral oil, gasoline, vaseline, paraffin, et al. None are nearly as effective. Always be sure to wash your hands after touching ticks. I have been told, though I’ve never bothered to verify, that tick-bourne diseases like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever are not only passed via blood but can be passed via skin contact.
I wish Frontline were more effective. Since I started using it on Buster, I’ve found that it does seem to keep the greater part of his body pretty clear, but now I’m seeing more on and about the face and between the toe pads and knuckles, areas that are hard to keep effectively treated.
Thanx y’all. I sterilised some tweezers and got back to the dog…Good news ~ the tick had dropped off…Bad news ~ I can’t find the bloody thing! Ho hum.
Forgive me for bumping a ten year old article, but it has great health advice and I do feel I have something to add to it.
I went hill walking with a bare legged hippie girl in Skye, and she came down with six ticks inside her. I gave her my best advice to remove them, and explained why, but she decided to ignore me and tried putting a drop of essential tea-tree oil on the ticks, before pulling them out with tweezers. All the ticks were dead seemingly instantly, and I was able to see the tick’s heads hadn’t been left in her body.
Always keep the ticks you have removed because you can test them for Lymes Disease.
Just got back from a mountain bike ride and an doing the tick check - horrible creatures.
You can get a specific tick-remover (glorified pair of tweezers) for a couple of quid - very useful thing to have in the first aid kit if you’re an outdoors type.
The lighted match / ciggy idea is terrible advice and should not be done - always use tweezers.
while a hot match tip might get a tick to back out sometimes, it also might kill the tick. more likely the tick will puke into to you infecting you. much better off with a tweezers at the jaws.
Same goes for slathering various stuff on the critter. Just get it with the tweezers as close to the skin as possible and pull it out.
You needn’t obsess THAT much about the head, either. It’s better if you get it, but the serious diseases they carry, like lyme disease, are harbored in the gut, not the head. You want to pull it out before it has a chance to puke bacteria into you. If you didn’t get the head, you might get the sort of infection you can get from any foreign object embedded in your skin, like a tiny splinter. It might cause some irritation, but without the body it isn’t giving you tick borne diseases.
If you get it tested, don’t put it in alcohol. It dries them out, and makes it difficult to test. I recently had one tested (the county lab does it for $15). They told me to just put it in a ziploc baggie in some plain tap water.
I highly recommend the Ticked Off tick removing tool. It is a plastic spoon with a thin wedge cut out of it. You just slip the spoon under the tick into the slot, and pull the tick off. Haven’t lost a head yet.
I saw those on the counter at my vet’s office the first time I went there. I thought it was a joke but the vet and her whole staff vouched for the spoon, saying it was the best removal tool they used at the office.
I just pull them off with my fingers, and have never lost a head in cat, dog, horse or myself yet.