Im A Horrible Person

Hey,  I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I am sure it's not a tick infestation...ticks are actually easier to get rid of and it's rare that they overpopulate the inside of a house. Fleas I could understand...it happens to me too once in a while..well, not me but my dog..then again...but seriously a tick infestation would be easier to eliminate, if there are ticks on you or your daughter you would have found at least one latched onto you, pulling them off can be difficult..and they swell up with blood to quite a large size.

Frontline and all of the other topical or oral flea and tick killers kill or neutralize the buggers that bite your dog, not the ones travelling on your dog or in the house. I use Adams flea and tick shampoo (not the one containing carbaryl) but you have to follow the directions on the bottle as it can be harsh on a pup. (I'm not endorsing Adams but it is what I use and have used it for many years so no flames please). Wet the dog down, lather it up and leave it on fer about ten minutes. I shampoo my dog with the garden hose..she loves it, then  she gets to run around the yard for a while and after ten minutes I rinse it off. Then get your dog on one of the oral or topical flea killer products.

This is what I did when my place got infested badly. Flea bomb the house, wash ALL of the bed linens whether they are used or not, all of your clothes whether clean or not...I know it's a pain but fleas literally hide everywhere. Then I used a direct spray for the furniture (I actually used Raid brand). After the house has aired out vacuum everywhere and throw out the vacuum bag...not in the house but in an outside trash can. Then you and all of your family members take a good shower or bath to rinse off any fleas or egss on you. I repeated this whole scenario a week later although I showered sooner. No real bad problems since.

Getting rid of the dog won't solve the problem, it's there now and fleas can just as easily come in on you as the dog, though more likely on the dog. It isn't really as much work as it sounds, but it'll take most a day to complete it.
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I come from a tick-heavy area so I know a lot about them... and there is no such thing as a tick infestation. Ticks do not lay eggs on your dog and reproduce all over your house the way fleas do... basically the dog goes outside and as he's walking through tall grass or underbrush the ticks just off a bush/grass and "hitch a ride." Then they feed on his blood.

This is a really, really, simple problem with a really, really simple solution. Flea and tick preventative. You don't have to spend a lot of money if you buy it online and you only have to apply it once a month. As cyclefiend pointed out, $10 a month is less than what you probably spend on dog food. Hell, it's less than what I spend on coffee in a month. Unfortunately though you probably also have to pay for a vet visit, because finding engorged ticks all over your dog means she has a chance of having contracted a tick-borne disease, which can be very dangerous and even fatal in some cases.

I do believe that getting a dog means committing yourself to caring for that dog all its life. However, if you are not willing to spend money on a tick preventative than perhaps this dog would be better off in another home.
 
Edited to add - I would not flea bomb the house. I'm not even sure you can do that with ticks. But once you clear your dog of ticks and apply a preventative they're not going to keep appearing in your house. Just be vigilant about checking your body and your child/children's bodies every day... give everyone a once-over before they bathe. Ticks especially like to hide in areas that are hidden are covered in hair so pay special attention to your heads, ears, armpits, and where the sun don't shine.

I get the feeling it could be fleas as well...though obviously I can't say for sure since I can't see the dog.
 
Our dog was given up and the primary reason given was a flea infestation. Our dog came to us having already been Advantage'd once, but she was still coated in flea dirt (it was disgusting and sad, the first time bathed her the water was a dark, rusty red) and it has taken us almost a full 2 months to completely get rid of them. We are now "in the clear", it seems (fingers crossed!!)
 
We've kept up with her Frontline applications (it was really not so very expensive, and it is so easy to use,) we keep her brushed and keep her fur washed. We were lucky to not ever find fleas in the house independent of the dog (so far,) but there are products you can buy for your house to help protect you and the dog. Oh, and vaccuum alllllll the time. I would think this helps regardless of if it's fleas OR ticks. And throw out the vacuum bag or empty out the canister OUTSIDE right away.
 
Please try to persue all options before just deciding to give your dog away. Lady fortunately got to come live with us, but because she is already an adult dog, the shelter was very worried they would have to euthanize if no one was willing to take her on and clean her up. []

I am sorry but to me if you took as good care of that pup as you claim, and trained her and houseroke her, she would not hav become infested with anything.  She would have been in the house and you would have seen them early enough on that they would not have infested your house. 

Ruffian, that's unfair. If you live near a beach you can get a house infested with fleas without ANY animals even being around!

Go easy. []

Argh, for the last time there is no such thing as a tick infestation in a house!!! Ticks do not lay eggs in the house, on your dog, on you, or anywhere in doors. They lay eggs in leaf litter. If you don't believe me look it up.
[linkhttp://www.stopticks.org/ticks/index.asp]http://www.stopticks.org/ticks/index.asp[/link]

Ruffian - wow! that's a bit harsh I think! Are you suggesting that Ed, leslie's parents, Niki_Burr, LizzieCollie, Sooner, Marty and ILUVJRs do not take care of their dogs either?

Hmmm, fleas or ticks? OP says 100% ticks. Any tick I've ever seen doesn't look like a flea. OP makes reference to infestation. Are they all over the house, or just on the dog (and 1 on daughter)? I think she needs to clairify.

We live in a rural, woodsy area with a deer family in our backyard.  We treat our yard ourselves twice a season, and use Fontline Plus on Kato.  He gets an occasional tick and I take it off.  Both he and my husband have had Lyme's disease and we are very dilligent now about looking for ticks. They are there and we deal with them.  Kato had the vaccination and it didn't serve him any purpose in the end. 

However, I have never, ever seen ticks multiply or cause infestation.  They don't do it.  My only guess is that her dog has long hair and they were hidden until they all became engorged and became obvious.  I've never seen a tick anywhere else in our house, just on the dog and then we pull it off and burn it in the ashtray.  This is a confusing story and the ending seems so dramatic over ticks.  I'd love to see a picture of what is on her dog.   

Depending on where the OP lives, if they're deer ticks, it wouldn't surprise me at ALL if she missed them when they were still in the small stage....  I've pulled ticks off of my dogs that, completely honestly with no exaggeration, were not much larger than the period at the end of this sentence.  Baby deer ticks are AWFUL.  And no, I don't think ticks can cause an "infestation" in the same sense that fleas can, but there certainly can be a heck of a lot of em in one place at one time.  I remember walking Nikki once and she stuck her head into a patch of long grass to sniff something for a few seconds and when we moved on I pulled 4 ticks off her head/neck that were aboslutely NOT there before.  So it doesn't surprise me that the OP can have a problem with having a large number of ticks in the house, but it is of course, no reason to give up the poor dog.  Heck, even her kids can be bringing some of these kids in!!  And that's nothing to take offense at - we all can get ticks, and little kids tend to love playing outdoors in wooded areas, hiding in bushes, etc etc.  I did it all the time as a kid.  My mom's gotten Lyme disease from a tick she got out in the garden...so it may not just be the dog here.

I have a sticky question. I haven't seen in this thread where you went to the vet.
 
Question ( sort of):
You can afford a new (new or used) house but you can't afford to go the vet?
 
Just wondering.
 

Ticks are so easy to take care of, compared to fleas! I just had a flea breakout - I had to strip and wash all the bedding, throw rugs, curtains, etc - wash, vacuum and treat the floors, and bomb the main areas where the dogs were. Plus I used Capstar on all the dogs and then Frontline PLUS on them all, including the cats. I'd never had to use anything but regular Frontline before because I'd never seen a flea on any of my animals until moving here! []

For ticks you just need to use the Frontline or a tick detach collar (Frontline is better around children). I'd treat the yard, too, but ticks can be killed so much easier than fleas it's ridiculous.

You can buy a single treatment of Frontline for about $12 from your vet, or you can order it online for less than $10 per treatment, including shipping.

I just don't understand this. I agree with your own assessment of you character, in the title of this post. If your dog came down with kennel cough or worms, I guess you'd dump her in that case, too?

I'm sorry if that was offensive, but you have to understand what you just came and said to a bunch of dog lovers. "My dog has ticks, so I want to get rid of her." Nothing you can say can sugercoat that fact.

Someone several doors down from my mom's house left for one summer and did not have anyone take care of their yard. There were no animals living in that yard, but there were animals in all of the surrounding yards. The entire side of the street became overrun with ticks relatively quickly. The dogs were covered and enough ticks dropped onto people and into the houses to make it appear they were infested. People took care of their houses and dogs, pitched in and had someone come clean and treat the original yard... problem solved.

When I was in elementary school we lived on a lake, on wooded property, and it wasn't uncommon to sit down at the end of the day and pull 20 ticks off the dogs. When I went riding my four-wheeler through the trails around the lake I'd come home and have to sit on the deck while my mom combed me for ticks, sometimes pulling 20 off me, usually in my hair and off my shoes and socks. It's gross, (and I probably couldn't handle it now) but it happens and it is managable.

I don't think anyone could mistake a flea for an engorged tick...

Good thing your parents didn't give you away because you had ticks.
 

I'm sorry...but I've seen it first hand.  My parents had a tick infestation in their house.  They were on the dog, in the carpet, on my year-old nieces, on me, on my son's face.  The house had to be treated twice to remove all the ticks.  It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.