Removing a Tick From a Pet

Video Transcript

"Now we are going to discuss how to remove a tick from your pet. The first thing to know about removing a tick from your pet is make sure that it is a tick. There are lots of lumps and bumps on our animals sometimes that may look like a tick and actually aren't so make sure that that is what that is. They are little small insects with legs. They are generally going to be attached to the skin and be dark brown to black in color. Ticks generally just attach at the head through the skin. They do have barbs on their heads and so they are actually quite difficult sometimes to just easily grab and remove and so you want to have some sort of instrument like a tweezer or if you've got good fingernails sometimes that helps. What you want to do is identify where that tick is and grasp at the head of that tick, not the body, and at the head and then gently with firm type motion, remove it. Make sure you're not grabbing the skin and make sure you get the entire head. If the head is left in the body it can cause a little local infection and sometimes turn to abscesses."