Shih Tzu - FLEA and TICK WARS

FLEA and TICK WARS
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It's that time of year again - Flea and Tick Season! And if you've had no sustained cold weather to kill off the fleas you can expect a population explosion looking for dinner.

Frequent brushing and bathing is your first line of defense against fleas and ticks. Once you are in the habit of at least every other day brushing it will be very difficult for a tick to set up housekeeping on your Shih Tzu. If one does get attached, there are several ways to get rid of it. Please do not resort to the lighted cigarette. You may be steady as a rock, but if there is enough heat to discourage a tick there is enough heat to burn tender skin, even if you don't set fire to the hair! The simplest approach is to smother the tick with petroleum jelly or an antibiotic cream and then patiently wait for the tick to suffocate. When its hold has relaxed you simply pick it off with tweezers and flush it down the toilet. Be sure to pull the tick out of the skin parallel with the dog's body, not perpendicular, so that all of its mouth parts come out. You will know if you don't get all of it out because there will be a lump and a scab there the next day. Covering the area with antibiotic cream for a few days should be sufficient, but if the spot becomes red you might want to visit your vet who should be able to remove any bits still in the skin.

If you think that you are safe from fleas because your dog never goes outside, you're wrong. You can bring fleas in on your clothing; your cat may also be the villain. Sometimes your Shih Tzu will scratch but you will not find any fleas. All it takes is one bite, which injects the salivary juices under the skin and causes enough irritation to get your dog scratching.

There are Shih Tzu who never notice flea bites, but they appear to be in the minority. Be prepared with a cortizone anti-itching cream and you may save not only your dog's sanity but its coat as well. If you don't catch the scratching when it starts, a scab may form beneath the matted hair. This is the infamous "hot spot." Your dog will keep scratching this aggravating spot and it will keep spreading. You must remove the scab so that the antibiotic cream can heal the skin. Sometimes you may be able to soften the scab by running warm water over it. Most of the time you will find that will not be enough. Go back to the tick-smothering routine and cover the area with petroleum jelly or the antibiotic cream thoroughly, being sure to go beyond the edge. Work the jelly/cream into the scab; then take a wide-tooth comb and lift the edge of the scab, gradually working it off the skin and out of the hair. You must remove all of the scab. If you can't lift all of it, apply more jelly/cream and wait a few hours before going after it again. If your dog has long hair, you may have to cut off the hair in this spot down to the skin. Don't get carried away and remove more than necessary. When all of the scab is gone, apply an antibiotic cream daily until the kin has healed. These spots can appear anywhere on the dog so be sure to check thoroughly when you are grooming.

Of course you want to avoid this problem if you can by controlling any fleas that get into your house. There are pills you can give your dog that kill fleas that get on it when they bite him/her. But that's the catch. The fleas have to bite the dog to ingest the poison and die. And that's the other catch; it is poison you are giving your dog. In the past we have had flea problems so intense that our dogs were being bathed, dipped, powdered, pilled so many times it was a miracle that the dogs were alive. And the fleas were still alive, too.

Even though we employed a professional exterminator, we really had no success with flea control until four years ago when we discovered Pre-Cor. This is a chemical that prevents fleas from maturing. The flea that comes into your house on your pant leg or on your dog is intent on laying a few thousand eggs in the corner of the room even when it can't get a meal. These eggs hatch into larvae that eventually turn into fleas - like butterflies, but nowhere near so desirable. PreCor stops the transformation so that even if the fleas are setting up nurseries in your carpet or the rails of your sliding doors or in your pet's bed, the population explosion evaporates. If you combine PreCor with Dursban (which is a poison and must be used carefully) you can kill any adult fleas present and ensure no descendants. PreCor itself is not poisonous so it is harmless to animals and other pets. You only have to spray the perimeter of rooms frequented by your pets once or twice a year. However, since it can be washed away when you scrub the kitchen/bath/etc. floor, you will have to spray these areas a little more often. We also spray the dog run and the porches on a regular basis with the idea that even if the rain washes it away we have probably slowed down the flea takeover. Some people find that sprinkling diatomaceous earth (NOT the kind used in swimming pools) into their carpets will also control the larvae since its very fine particles are extremely sharp and break the skin of the larvae causing them to dry up.

Added Information on New Methods of Flea Control
The newest method of flea control is the use of products such as Frontline Top Spot or Advantage, which are applied monthly to the neck of the dog and are, according to the manufacturers, safe for use even on puppies as young as seven weeks. These new products kill fleas on contact (Frontline also claims to kill ticks), and some veterinarians have stated that they are more effective than anything previously introduced in greatly reducing overall flea populations.

The above is general information always ask your veterinarian about the care of your Shih Tzu puppy or dog!