I Found a Tick and Lost My Mind for Twenty Minutes

I want to walk you through a Tuesday morning in April 2024, in which I discovered a tick on my chihuahua Bella and proceeded, over the next twenty minutes, to handle the situation in approximately the worst possible sequence of decisions. The tick was, in the end, removed without complications. The twenty minutes of structured panic that preceded the removal were, on retrospective review, mostly avoidable, and I am writing this column with the full benefit of having been the household I am about to describe.

Bella was on the couch in her usual morning spot. I was doing the routine ear scratch I do most mornings. My finger encountered something round, embedded, and not part of the original ear. I removed my hand at a speed that, in retrospect, may have alarmed Bella more than any subsequent intervention. I then sat very still for a moment and tried to think.

Minutes zero to five: the initial response

The first five minutes consisted of, in order: a careful visual inspection that confirmed the tick; a small involuntary statement directed at the ceiling; a phone search of the term "tick on dog what to do" that produced approximately fourteen million results; the opening of the first three results, which gave somewhat conflicting advice; a small additional involuntary statement; and the realization that I should probably have called the vet first.

I then called the vet. The receptionist, a person named Karen who has, in my experience, the calm professional manner of someone who has fielded this exact call many times, said something that was approximately "you can remove it with tweezers, here is the technique, and we are happy to see you if you would like, but it is not an emergency." Karen's tone, on retrospective audio inspection of my own memory, was the calm professional tone of someone who has fielded this exact call many times, which it is.

Minutes five to fifteen: the false starts

The next ten minutes consisted of locating fine-tipped tweezers in a household that turned out to have, by my count, three pairs of decorative kitchen tweezers and zero pairs of fine-tipped medical tweezers. I considered driving to a pharmacy. I then remembered that I had actually bought fine-tipped tweezers two years ago specifically for this scenario and had stored them in a small Tupperware container marked "EMERGENCY" on the third shelf of the bathroom closet.

The Tupperware container, after a brief period of additional searching, was located. The fine-tipped tweezers were inside, alongside a small bottle of saline, two gauze pads, and one expired tube of antibiotic ointment. The 3 a.m. version of me from a previous era had, on a small available margin of foresight, prepared for this exact moment. The morning version of me had not, in any way, remembered the preparation. There is a column to be written about this, but it is not this column.

Minutes fifteen to twenty: the actual removal

With the fine-tipped tweezers in hand, the actual procedure took approximately three minutes. Karen had walked me through it on the phone, and the technique is approximately what every reasonable source describes:

• Grasp the tick as close to the dog's skin as possible, with the tweezers oriented so that the pull is perpendicular to the skin.
• Pull straight up with steady even pressure. Do not twist. Do not yank.
• The tick releases its mouth parts in a few seconds; the head should come out intact.
• Place the tick in a small sealed container or sealed bag. If signs of disease develop in the dog later, the saved tick can be identified.
• Clean the bite area with mild antiseptic.
• Watch the area over the following days for redness expanding, target-shaped rash, or other signs.

Bella, during the procedure, was calm. Bella, for the entire previous twenty minutes, had also been calm. The structured panic in the household was, on a careful review of the evidence, entirely on the human side.

The sincere paragraph, planted on schedule

I will plant the sincere paragraph here, because the column requires one and because Bella deserves it. The thing about the twenty minutes I have just described is that the dog, during the entire interval, was perfectly fine. The tick was not yet engorged, suggesting it had been attached for a relatively short period. The risk of disease transmission in the first 24 hours of attachment is, on the available data, low. The actual procedure was well within the home-management category and would have taken three minutes if I had calmly retrieved the tweezers, performed the removal, and called the vet for follow-up advice.

The structured panic I generated was, on the evidence, entirely about my own internal state and not about anything happening to the dog. This is, I have come to think, a useful distinction in many small-dog households. The dog is often calmer than the human about her own situation; the human's calm is more useful to the dog than the human's competent panic. A separate piece on chihuahua anxiety covers the related point that owner anxiety is a meaningful variable in dog anxiety.

The prevention question, briefly

Bella was on monthly flea-and-tick prevention at the time of the discovery. The prevention does not necessarily prevent ticks from attaching; it kills them after attachment, usually within a few hours. The discovery of an attached tick on a dog on prevention is therefore not necessarily a prevention failure; it is more often a tick that had not yet been killed.

The parasite primer covers the year-round prevention case in detail; the flea-control piece covers the related external-parasite work.

What I did better the second time

A tick was discovered, several months later, on Bella's shoulder. The household-management protocol for the second time:

• Located fine-tipped tweezers in their established location (the previously mentioned Tupperware container, now relocated to a more accessible drawer).
• Performed the removal in approximately three minutes.
• Cleaned the area with saline.
• Saved the tick.
• Called the vet to schedule a follow-up tick-borne disease test for several weeks later.
• Total elapsed time: approximately twelve minutes from discovery to completion, including the two-minute hold-and-pet that Bella appears to enjoy after being held still for any reason.

The end of the column, briefly

If you are reading this in advance of your first tick discovery on a chihuahua, the practical advice is small. Buy a pair of fine-tipped tweezers. Put them somewhere accessible. Call the vet's number into your phone contacts. The Companion Animal Parasite Council guidelines cover the technical removal in more detail; my version above is the household-management version. The actual procedure is straightforward; the household's performance during the procedure is mostly about the human's calm, not the dog's. Bella, during my own twenty-minute structured panic, did not, by any honest accounting, require the panic. The system, on the available evidence, runs better at three minutes than at twenty.