Product Review: Revolution

Once in a while, my lack of knowledge about certain things amazes me. For example, during our vet visit yesterday, we were asking the vet about how we are still finding ticks on the dogs even though they are on Revolution. The vet then said that the reason is that Revolution is not a tick preventative.

Let's just say my response was along the lines of WTF?!?! So I am the terrible mother that's been sending Ender out to run around in wilderness without tick prevention. Is this what it feels like when you find out your kid is the one with lice?

Anyway, I remember reading up about Revolution when Ender started coming home with ticks and I DISTINCTLY remember reading something about how Revolution is a tick preventative. Reading their website again, it seems that Revolution controls the American Dog tick, which DOES ME NO GOOD because they are commonly found on the eastern side of the US where I am currently not residing.

Which explains why the vet said that Revolution doesn't control ticks.

We are now back on Frontline and a generic version of Heartguard.

What I understand so far is:

Revolution covers fleas and heartworms, but not ticks for us.
Frontline covers fleas and ticks, but not heartworms so we need generic Heartguard.

We asked the vet what else we could do and she told us about the tick collar but she also said it was highly toxic. Um, okay. That was not a great sell.

Ticks Round 2

Two days ago, I found a HELLA big tick on Ender. I noticed it on his morning walk when I was picking up his poo. All I saw was a giant round blob on his side and upon poking at it and looking at it more carefully, I realized that it was a gigantic bug of some kind. Below is a photo with my thumb for reference - intentionally slightly fuzzy for the faint of heart (ahem, bf, ahem). It is currently chilling in some of bf's scotch. (Note to self, buy rubbing alcohol for more efficient tick drowning.)



Apparently when ENGORGED (full of blood), ticks can increase to size GINORMOUS. Randomly, besides tweezers, another awesome essential tick removal item is antiseptic wipes. When I first started yanking ticks off the dogs, the bite would be super lumpy the following days. But with the antiseptic wipes, the bite is usually less lumpy the next day. Go modern medicine.

Besides finding this ginormous beast, I've had to pull ticks off of Ender and Barksdale's butts. I'm pretty sure that's the closest I will come to playing russian roulette.

Doctor, Doctor!

In writing the title of the post, I realized I have many doctor or doctor to be friends that treat humans, but no vet friends! What a travesty. I need to add that to my future friend list.

During these past two days we have discovered that Barksdale has come down with ticks. *Shudder* Well, I'm actually more "oh, eh" and the bf is the *shudder**shudder*head in palm of hands*shudder**shudder.* I actually find things such as ladybugs and butterflies way more terrifying.

Anyway, I have spent the past two nights pulling ticks off Barksdale. Last night, I found a tick on Ender so I ended up pulling that sucker off too. So before two days ago, I've never encountered a tick in my life. Which meant it took me a while to figure out that black spot on Barksdale's underside was NOT crusty dirt but a bug. It also meant that the bf and I spent some time on google trying to figure out what to do which translates to deciding whether or not we wanted to pay the vet $50 to remove them or if we should just remove them ourselves. (This would have been a situation where a vet friend would come in handy.)

So far our plan of attack is to watch the dogs more carefully over the next week to ensure there aren't any secondary tick after effects. We have both the dogs on Revolution so I don't know what what is up with this recent tick development.

And to make up for the fact that I mostly mention Barksdale only when something bad happens, here is a photo of her looking cute.