Ticks are out earlier this year because of the warm start to spring, and in greater numbers. So vigilance is key.
Ben Facchin has owned dogs all his life. In all that time, he's only had one tick on one dog until now.
“We found three ticks in about two days,” he says. Facchin and his dog Ruby had been out for a hike in the woods in an area around Kanata a few days earlier. Wednesday evening, he took Ruby to the Carp Road Animal Hospital to get her tested for Lyme disease after discovering ticks on her. Facchin found the ticks on Ruby after noticing a couple of bites on his own body.
“I saw them on me,” he says, “They looked like a little bump on my skin and upon a closer look you could see the little legs and abdomen sticking out so I got pretty grossed out once I saw that.”
He managed to pull them out, even stuck one of them in a bottle. Ottawa Public Health encourages people to bring those ticks that have been them in Ottawa to get them tested for Lyme disease, something which is on the rise across Canada and here in Ottawa.
Some timely news for any Canadian friends on the forum here. If you want to read the full article just search the title of this thread in Google or your preferred search engine!