Ticks

Today I discovered, much to my horror, a large bump on the back of my dog’s head. I am almost certain this bump was not there last night. This mass turned out to be 8-10 ticks in various stages of engorgement, all attached to one spot (an area about the size of a pencil eraser). It was awful. Of course, I removed all of them and cleaned the area w/alcohol, etc. but why would they group like that? I just put frontline on this dog about a week ago (indoor dog, btw). We occasionally see ticks here, and I’ve always lived in areas where they were present, but I’ve never seen this. I looked her over and didn’t find any ticks anywhere else on her, or the other dog. Has anyone ever seen anything like that before? We’ll be spraying the yard today, of course.

It may be that this just happens to be a location where the dog has most trouble grooming or scratching itself.

General tick info: Ticks can be grouped into two main categories: Hard and soft .

Hard ticks, like the ones you found, attach to the host for a long period of time getting disgustingly large. Soft ticks, by contrast, live in the animal’s den, and feed very briefly while the animal is sitting still. Then they leave and wait to feed again later.

According to Merial , the company that makes Frontline, the active ingredient is Fipronil. More information about fipronil can be found here . Apparently, fipronil can be absorbed either when the parasite bites or directly through the outer body layers by contact.

So, my best guess as to why you found ticks on your dog even though you applied the Frontline a week ago is that the buggers hadn’t absorbed enough toxin yet to shut down their GABA receptors and send them into tetnus-like paralysis and death. In my limited experience, Frontline does work pretty quickly, but the bugs at least have to touch your pet before it can start to kill them.

Other possible reasons for failure of the medication include: wrong dosage for the size of your animal (more likely if you got the stuff when he was a pup), incorrect application (not likely, but I gotta put it on here), that the drug has lost potency (also not likely), or that it really has been longer than a month (I lose time constantly, so I suspect others do too).

As to why they all chose the same spot, well, you’ll just have to ask them.

Enough with the scientist. More puppy pictures!

I wonder if maybe she had a scratch or something there–the dogs play pretty rough . Maybe they were drawn to blood or something in an otherwise poison (frontline) covered dog. They weren’t just in the same area (fleas tend to congregate at the head of the tail, for instance) they were all in the exact same spot. Very strange. And gross.

It’s quite possible that your dog stuck its head into someplace, under a bush or something where there were several ticks, and they all attached to her head.

Also, dogs & cats remove ticks by scratching and biting. The back of the head is indeed one place where they have a hard time doing that.