stray pup crawling with fleas and ticks, need help.

Hey guys,

My flat-mate picked up a crying puppy from the street. Its very adorable and cute. But the poor thing is crawling with fleas and ticks and what not. We do not have disinfectants right now, so we just gave him a normal bath and wrapped him in sweaters so he can get some sleep for the night. Tomorrow we will take him to the vet and get him de-wormed, disinfected and checked. However, what I am getting rather freaked out about right now is more about my own health. Are ticks and fleas contagious. The puppy has been practically walking all around the house. I am getting rather paranoid. Do ticks or fleas get into human hair? I have also started psychologically feeling as if something is crawling in my hair and I constantly keep scratching it :s

If you used soap/shampoo it probably killed most, if not all of the fleas. However, the ticks would be another story. I've luckily not had a lot of experience with ticks, so cannot help you much there.

Bless you two for helping the little pup!

Ticks can and will attach themselves to people. Check yourselves good near your sock and underwear lines, back of knees, armpits, nape of neck. Basically anywhere damp and dark. However, they will attach to just about anywhere. Fleas will bite you and can live in the carpet for quite sometime. Not to mention on your kitties. If your kitties haven't had a flea treatment they should have one if exposed. Like said before the bath probably helped a good bit with the fleas, but ticks won't fall off with just soap.

Thanks for the replies! Okay, so now I am even more paranoid. How do I get rid of ticks from my own body?

Marinewife : My kitty is not staying with me right now so thats a huge relief.

At least with ticks you can see them easily, unlike fleas. They attach themselves to you using their powerful jaws and suck your blood. If you find one ( it looks like a small oval button) do not pull it off - you may leave the head in and it can cause infection. You can get hold of it, twist it and pull gently. Or better still, get a tick tweezer from a pharmacy or vet and use that to slide under the tick, then pull it out. It sounds disgusting, and it is, but if dealt with properly will not do any permanent harm. I have had to remove a few off me in the past.

To get rid of ticks you can also light a match, let it burn for a minute and then blow it out. RIGHT after you blow it out, put it against the tick and it should back out. I grew up on a farm and I always just pulled them out.

One more thing - if/when you do pull out a tick you need to put it in a bit of water with rubbing alcohol (about 1" of liquid, usually more alcohol than water, doesn't matter how wide of a container - we used to use baby food jars), then flush it down the toilet wrapped in TP. The darn things can swim. They will drown in alcohol, though. They can also crawl up pipes. So you drown them in alcohol, then put them in TP so they flush all the way down the pipes to the sewer. Nasty little devils!

One thing to look for in the pup is if he's anemic or dehydrated. Ticks, especially, will make little critters anemic pretty fast. (My Annie, in the signature, was found in the woods and had just 3 ticks on her and she was anemic when we rescued her.) Check for being anemic with the color of his gums - if they are a happy pink he's OK, if they are whitish or blue he's anemic. If they are blueish, he needs to get to the ER. Anemia means he needs more iron, so get a good puppy food for him until you can get him to the vet. Dehydration can be checked with the "pinch test". Gently pinch up a bit of skin at the scruff of his neck, if it takes more than a couple seconds to go back down into place he's dehydrated. Pedialyte works for rehydrating kitties and puppies too.

If he's playing and romping around, he's probably not either anemic or dehydrated, though. They get pretty lethargic.

Just to add to the rest - thank you for taking the little guy in and taking such good care of him!

Thanks for the replies everyone. The puppy however is gone. We had kept him in the garage to give him a bath, by the time we came back from our room, he was gone. I really don't understand where he could have gone. Just disappeared. We tried searching for him, for hours and hours, but it was futile. In the evening we were able to hear his meek yelps and cries coming from a neighbouring apartment's balcony. It seems some one else took it away. We are still not able to trace the new owner though. Wherever he is I hope he is doing fine.

Thanks for the tips on the tick removal procedure. I did find two giant ticks behind my knees. Instead of going through the entire rigmarole of getting tweezers and everything, I just got them removed from a nearby hospital.

Please do pray for the puppy. Hope we are able to find him, if nothing, atleast I wish he has found a new happy house.