It’s the season for ticks

The dogs in our street are out of action.

First there was Slater, the way­ward wolfhound cross bull ter­rier that ran amuck one too many times on a long suf­fer­ing neighbour’s prop­erty by killing a pet duck and was promptly picked up by the pound.  He’s now resid­ing at a nearby pet chalet (sans his morn­ing rit­ual of Veg­emite on toast), while his own­ers are away on holiday.

Next, Leo, the grumpy King Charles Cav­a­lier who trudges up his long dri­ve­way each morn­ing, bypass­ing his own ten acres to squat on my lawn, was ren­dered help­less by an Aus­tralian Paral­y­sis tick.

Usu­ally pro­lific from the months of Octo­ber to Decem­ber, this year has seen an out­break sec­ond to none. Blame it on an unsea­sonal hot August, or a soak­ing June, but Aus­tralian Paral­y­sis Ticks are rife in Queensland.

My first encounter came after a par­tic­u­larly ener­getic removal of lan­tana weed that threat­ens to take over vast areas of land if left untended. After show­er­ing that night, I found four tiny ‘thorns’ on my stomach—I called my son to fetch his mag­ni­fy­ing glass and had a closer look – they were not thorns at all but ticks.

They left a painful bite that swelled and itched for weeks but worse was yet to come. I found a larger spec­i­men behind my ear and my son screeched with hor­ror from the shower one night that one had attached itself rather close to his nether regions. My hus­band dis­cov­ered one on his head after work­ing in the gar­den (they favour sweaty, shel­tered places) and another at the base of his neck. Glands swelled but still no last­ing ill effect. It did occur that before long, the entire fam­ily would be wear­ing tick col­lars. We were indeed under siege.

Con­trary to local folk­lore, the ticks don’t sim­ply drop off trees as ‘drop ticks’ onto their unsus­pect­ing host, sens­ing warm blood, but sim­ply climb up veg­e­ta­tion, grab­bing onto pass­ing mam­mals and attach­ing them­selves. Bandi­coots and pos­sums are com­mon car­ri­ers as they have become immune to the poison.

The first instinct is to imme­di­ately pull off the par­a­site but accord­ing to my infor­ma­tive Wildlife of Greater Bris­bane man­ual, removal should be with ‘fine for­ceps’. The idea is to grip hold of the head and ‘ease it out’. Squeez­ing should be avoided as ‘this causes the tick to inject a large dose of saliva into the host body in its attempt to detach’.

My dog had been wear­ing a tick col­lar ever since mov­ing to our acreage prop­erty.  It was, the vet assured, merely one of sev­eral deter­rents includ­ing a two-weekly appli­ca­tion of costly tick and flea repellent.

I watched anx­iously as grumpy Leo became a help­less invalid. Paral­y­sis sets in after sev­eral days of the tick feed­ing on the poor unsus­pect­ing mutt. Our own dog seemed to have sur­vived a tick one week prior—a dose of anti venom tick serum seemed to pull her through.

Then the next week, she failed to rise from her bed. Usu­ally keenly inter­ested in catch­ing our chick­ens, or bark­ing at the noisy early morn­ing mag­pies that steal her food, she couldn’t even muster the energy to lift her head. Even breath­ing seemed difficult.

We headed off to the vet once more and our fears were realised—another tick, this time found large and engorged at the base of her back. I berated myself for not find­ing it but her thick coat had made my mis­sion near impossible.

Ticks can be totally elu­sive. A pre­vi­ous neighour’s dog became increas­ingly ill, and the vet couldn’t find the obvi­ous cause—there were symp­toms of paral­y­sis but no tick could be found. Blood tests and expen­sive treat­ment was admin­is­tered, all to no avail. The pooch was close to death. Finally, the vet searched one last time for a tick and found the offen­sive par­a­site in the gravely ill mal­tese poodle’s nose. Lit­tle Max mirac­u­lously sur­vived but he was pretty close to death when the tick was discovered.

So nox­ious is the poi­son injected by the tick’s saliva, that it attacks every mus­cle in the body includ­ing the heart, blad­der and bowel. On our first trip to the vet, a farm cat­tle dog—normally a robust breed—was lying immo­bile, unable to move a mus­cle.  The vet didn’t hold out much chance at all.

Our own dog con­tin­ues to slowly recover—it took five days for her to empty her blad­der on her own – prior to that she had to be car­ried and lit­er­ally man­u­ally assisted. We anx­iously await her first bowel move­ment. And there was great excite­ment when she gave an attempt at a hoarse bark early this morning.

Mostly, she lies inside sleep­ing on her bed, with the com­fort­ing lull of ABC Radio for company.

Dogs of her size are said to take six weeks to become active once more.

I take heart, how­ever, that when I returned to the vet a week after the cat­tle dog’s admis­sion, it had returned home.

“He survived—I really didn’t think he’d pull through,” admit­ted the vet, adding, “he sur­prised us all”.

Promis­ing news—I hold out hope for our beloved pooch.

Just don’t warn the magpies.