Why I love my vet & Lucy's first tick

What other vet would take a close look at Lucy's paw and site of a former tick and not charge? Well, my wonderful vet did that today! Dr Smith even told my mom, who was dog sitting Lucy, that it "was a pleasure to see Lucy." Gotta love Four Paws animal clinic!

The other night I did my first tick extraction from Lucy. I flipped through all my dog books I have but none of them had a section on "tick removal", only "tick prevention," so I googled the phrase, 'tick removal' and to my surprise came up with an amazing amount of results. I clicked on a few and found one that warned to wear clothes, get the tweezers as close as possible to the base of the tick, pull it out slowly, put the tick in a jar with alcohol and then possibly flush it. The article warned against sqeezing the tick, as it might regurgitate into the dog. Yuk. So, i was a little nervous about my first tick extraction. I gave Lucy a yummy flavored chew toy to keep her occupied and after one or two misunderstandings and having to chase her around the livingroom, I got her in the bathroom floor calmly chewing away. When I finally got the tick between the tweezers, I was afraid to pull too hard and worried I might pull some hair too and hurt Lucy. So I pulled gently, but nothing happened. I had to really put some muscle into pulling that tick out and maybe I put too much in. I had a tiny snap and realized that I did remove the tick, but left in it's sharp stinger thing. I exhaled and hurriedly put the tick into the glass jar that had some nail polish remover in it. I didn't have any rubbing alcohol so I used that instead. Then I swabbed the area with hydrogen peroxide to remove bacteria and tried to pull out the remaining part, but it was too deeply embedded in her skin. I decided to leave it and bring her to the vet in a few days if it looks infected. That online article warned that if left in the skin of the dog, that part of the tick can cause a secondary infection. I feel like I need a first aid class asap to take good care of Lucy.

Anyhow, Lucy was calm and collected about the whole tick extraction, which was great. I was relieved that we were able to have the vet take a look at her. She sprayed some anti-bacterial stuff on the site and said that Lucy's paw was alright, but that she might have some allergy. She told us to watch it and possibly give her some Benadryl (or generic in 25 mg) if it gets worse. I'm not a fan of taking meds if not absolutely necessary, so I think I'll pass for now.

I'm just glad that Lucy is alright. On my to do list is "first aid kit compilation" so that next time I have all the tools I need. A friend mentioned a "tick extraction tweezer for humans" that I could buy at Whole Foods. I might check that out.