How to Safely Remove Ticks

Whether your pet or family member gets a tick, it is never fun to remove them. The fear of the tick's head breaking off in the skin is high, and your hands shakes as you grab the tweezers to try and pry them off. Do you use a lighter around the dog to try and get the tick to come out? What if the dog moves? There is a safe and effective way to remove ticks.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Tick

1. 
    

   When I heard a natural and effective way to remove ticks, I was floored! Here is it, take a cotton ball and squirt a dime-size blob of liquid soap onto the cotton ball. It doesn't need to be a high-quality soap, even the $1 soap will do.

2. 
    

   Take the cotton ball and apply direct pressure onto the area that the tick is in. Hold firmly in place for five seconds and then release. Nine times out of ten, the tick has backed out of its cozy hole and right into the cotton ball. Apparently the liquid soap makes the tick not be able to breathe properly so it has to back out in order to survive.

3. 
    

   However there is always that stubborn tick that gets stuck in thick fur or buries himself right back in once the cotton ball has been removed. Know they do not completely burrow in and be quick with the tweezers. His head is already out so all you need to do is take the tweezers, firmly grab onto the top of the body and you will also grasp the head, and pull back. Then look at the tick to ensure all feet, body and head are in place trapped in your tweezers.

Tips & Warnings

• If you feel you can not take a tick out properly (and the soap on cotton ball fails with that pesky tick), have someone else remove the tick for you. Better to even pay a veterinarian or doctor to properly take out the tick than risk having to have the skin cut open to retrieve the tick's head.

[konakai]

on 8/4/2009 Oh my, I don't live in tick country and would not want to deal with removing ticks. Removing them Safely and with dish soap sounds easy enough. Thanks for the tips. 5*

[uniquechoices]

on 7/6/2009 Wish I had this article on how to safely remove ticks 6 weeks ago. I will know better next time then the way I went about it. Still itching after 6 weeks think his head hung around a little longer than his body.

[jerryb1]

on 5/11/2009 'How to Safely Remove Ticks,' offers a tic removal trick so simple you wonder why everyone does not already know how to do it safely.

[Coach4U]

on 5/11/2009 Thank you for the good information about getting rid of ticks. "5"

[wltw]

on 4/13/2009 Good information - I'll bet ticks don't like soap. I read somewhere they only breathe once every five hrs so it was useless to smother them with vaseline - but if this works, who cares how. I'm going to try it!