How do you tell a tic from a small spider?

How on earth do they get under your belt line with everything tucked in?

 

Really small teleporters

 

Thanks, appreciate your care.

 

With a lot of determination.

 

A friend's dog started end of November /into December scratching Brown patches on his pads and legs by 20th Dec he was biting his leg ending up with
Bleeding sores.
She bathed and kept it clean. .o one of her other dogs got a rash on his tummy which irritated him.
Before Christmas the vet gave them some antibiotics,a lotion to bath him in and steroids.. Today the remaining dog had her breakfast and in her empty dish friend found a tiny insect.this under a magnifying glass showed a spider like insect with 6 legs and still alive.
Said it looked like a very small seed without being enlarged.
I said it sounded like a tic. I advised of these dogs were mine is be going to a different vet. Mainly as the vet just looked at the sore ,gave her 2 clear collers and the above medication.he didn't give them chance to explain the symptoms leading up to it or the rash he had now developed by now on his tummy.
I think it could be the larvae that was in the food dish..if that was me if have wanted the vets opinion. Though he did say rather than taking swabs and sending them off he would try the steroids.. He now has just finished his second lot of antibiotics.
Does this sound like ticks to you?
Will appreciate any info/experience of this same symptoms please.

 

Mites, spiders and ticks are all Arachnids and have 8 legs. Insects have 6 legs. Newly hatched spiders, ticks and mites look like miniature adults. Without a picture it's difficult to say what your friend found.
Next time your friend goes to the vet they need to ask what the vet thinks the problem is and how they are treating it.

 

I've no real experience of ticks but they get quite big once they a full of blood and pretty unmistakable.

 

Horrible things, had to remove loads from our rescue greyhound when we brought her home. They walked them in a long grass field and it was clearly infested. Whats worse is cleaning out the pond and finding a small leach on your arm

 

You should have checked what sort of leech it was. Apparently some are rare!

 

I've seen one on a cat once - it was pink roundish. I read that you should cover it with vaseline so that it suffocates and drops off. Otherwise if you pull it off the head may get left behind and go infected.

I always wear jeans and thick socks in long grass as I am always getting bitten by horseflies. But I never think about myself getting bitten by a tick. Sounds horrible.

 

I presume it was a slimey one.

If the dog or cat is up to date with the spot on treatment the ticks should just fall off.
I don't think all spot ons kill ticks though.

 

Didnt know we had leeches in the uk. never seen one

 

Our cats are regularly treated with the spot on stuff which is said to kill tics too. So far I haven't seen any. A tip I heard was that if you don't have a tic remover you can smother them with vaseline which stops up their breathing holes. they eventually drop off.

 

They are small, not like the big tropical ones and are found in ponds and streams.
Leeches are still uses in medicine to keep blood flowing through eg. reattached ears! Special medical leeches that are bred in labs.

 

Where I volunteer, we had a visit from a NRW wildlife specialist. We were standing looking at a pond discussing fish, when she suddenly strode into the water and returned with this little brown leech, about the size of a finger. She was disappointed it was the common leech. How she noticed it in the murky water, I don't know!
As for the medical leeches, they bred them near here, and my cousin used to work there looking after them. She brought some home for "show and tell"!