An Extra Pet

It turns out we brought home another animal with our new Great Dane puppy.

"Freddy" tick showed up today on Diesel's back. We're familiar with ticks since we live in the woods, but it caught us by surprise because we don't have ticks around here during the winter. A little web search, however, revealed there are such things as winter ticks, and they are abundant in Oklahoma, the breeder's state. The good news is that winter ticks don't seem to carry diseases like those nasty deer ticks around here.

We removed the tick easily. First time ever, I think. After mutilating a tick that had embedded itself into Jim's arm last year, I finally learned how to properly remove a tick:

• Use tweezers.
  
• Grasp the tick as near to the host's skin as possible.
  
• Pull straight back.
  
• Do not twist the tick or squeeze it.
  
• Do not use heated tweezers or try to heat it with a match. (These things can cause diseased secretions to enter the host's skin.

Now the little bugger is encased in a double wrapped, sealed sandwich bag which is tacked to my cork board above my desk--you know, just in case we need him for anything in the next week or so:

vet inspection...

science experiments...

flush trials...

kid scare tactics...