Dogs & ticks

Once a while, we get customers who send in dogs for grooming with hidden ticks.  The problem is, they refused to admit that their dogs are infested with ticks simply because they do not want to have their homes labelled "dirty".  Often we hear excuses like we washed our house very thoroughly and I trust that my maid groomed my dog frequently.  What - maid again ??? sigh........

At many time, these doggies are so untouched and covered with thick entangled fur, our groomers felt so sorry for them.  Being a groomer, I can't wait to take away the tangled fur and rid the dogs off their sufferings.  When the layers of tangled fur come falling to the ground with the metropolitan of ticks, I can't hold back the feeling of "shiok" and sometimes the indulgence of the "shiokness" cause me to drool uncontrollably.

We happily send the doggies home and hope that the owners will enjoy the new clean look which they could have forgotten over past the months.

After a couple of days, the owner suddenly stumbled upon the doggy which he had neglected and spotted something on it's body.  Something so alien that he does not even know what they are until the "faithful" maid told him that those are "ticks".  The angry owner grabbed his mobile phone and started to dial the pet shop immediately.  He started shooting at the first voice he heard over the other side of the phone.  He blames the pet shop for "planting ticks" on his dog after the grooming session.

Now, ticks are scavengers.  They will go look for your dog and if that happens, it does not mean that your house is dirty.  It's like if you get stung by mosquito, it does not mean that you did not clean your house properly or you are dirty.  You do not need to bring you pet out for them to be infested with ticks.  It takes an unnoticed tick to lay eggs to infest your house with thousands of ticks.  It is quite impossible for the pet shops to cause your dog to have many ticks just over the span of a few days because the eggs take sometime to hatch.  Eggs could have been laid way before - by a single tick.  Pet shops always get the blame simply because human never like to admit mistakes.  Owners tend to point their fingers to others for causing things happening to their pets.  In my past 14 years of experience in this industry, I've seen too many of such cases.  I'm numb to it now.

Owners need not worry.  There are many products to eliminate fleas and ticks efficiently and quickly.  Products such as tick sprays and spot-on medications are readily available at many pet shops.  Just make sure the pet shop owners know how to teach you to use them correctly and the tick problem should be solved in about 2 months or so without having to engage pest control's services.