Taking the Tick...

Has anyone any tips on removing ticks from dogs? I mean tips that actually work? Although Ozzie’s regularly plagued by the little blighters, they’re mostly of some small Brazilian variety which fall off of their own volition (well, helped by the tick lotion we apply monthly). However last weekend, after a visit to Naice’s parents, he picked up a tick which I suspect is just like your common or garden UK sheep tick. And it wasn’t in any hurry to fall off, so we spent 2 days trying to remember what I’d read about removing them. I tried the ‘smother it in Vaseline, and when it comes up for air just snatch it off’ trick, and when the only result was that Ozzie’s left hind leg became lovely and slippery, we resorted to the ‘touch a hot match to it, and when it recoils…etc etc’. All that happened was that we were left with a large pile of matches which were quite dead, unlike the tick.

Today Naice got frustrated with the thing and just whipped it off with a pair of tweezers, but now we’re not sure if we left the head in the wound or not. . So, any budding vets out there who have a FOOLPROOF methodology, perhaps you could let us know?