Don’t worry, it’s at a dose too small to cause harm to your pet or any people in the home.
Topical tick medications work because the product is deposited into the oil glands of your pet’s skin and released regularly throughout your pet’s coat. These preventatives kill and repel ticks, so ticks do not need to bite your pet for the medication to work. Topical tick medications are ones that you put directly on your pet’s skin. You may want to look into topical tick medications instead. If your dog or cat has a sensitive stomach when you give them anything new, then an oral tick medication may not be the way to go. Here are a few good oral tick medications, which are all by prescription only: Once the tick starts feeding, they will ingest the medication, die, and fall off before they have a chance to transmit any diseases. Oral tick medications work by making your pet’s blood poisonous to ticks. In fact, a tick must bite your pet and eat their blood before it will be killed. With oral medications, ticks can still get onto your dog or cat and bite them. However, there is a newer medication called Bravecto that lasts longer and can be given once every 12 weeks. Most of them need to be given every month. They usually come as a tasty, chewable tablet. Oral tick medications are ones that you give to your pet by mouth. Of note: Most tick medications also prevent fleas, so it’s a double whammy! Oral tick medications Let’s go ahead and dive right into the tick prevention products available, how you give them, and how they work. Ask your veterinarian if you’re not sure what’s best for your pet. When deciding on a tick prevention medication, pay attention to how many kinds of ticks each product is labeled to kill. Not every tick preventative kills every type of tick. The effectiveness of any tick medication depends on your ability to administer it correctly.Īlso, there are many different kinds of ticks. Generally speaking, it really depends on what type of tick medication is easiest to give your dog or cat. There are a variety of tick preventative medications out there, so it can be confusing to know which is the best one for your pet. It takes less than 24 hours for ticks to transmit the organism that causes ehrlichiosis to your pet. It takes about 24 to 48 hours for the black-legged tick (also known as a deer tick) to transmit the bacteria that causes Lyme disease to your pet. If the tick has an infectious organism, they may have already given it to your pet. Once a tick starts feeding, they begin to “engorge” - the term for when ticks fill up with blood - and you can then either feel or see them. When ticks first latch onto your pet, they are small and hard to see. Oftentimes you won’t notice a tick until it has been feeding on your pet for hours or days. Tick medication is so important for your pets because it can be difficult to even know if your pet has a tick attached to them underneath all of their fur. You can only get a tick-borne illness if you are also bitten by a tick. So if your pet becomes sick with a tick-borne disease, they will not transmit it to you or other animals. We call these “tick-borne diseases” because they are typically transmitted through the bite of ticks. Ticks do more than just take a small blood meal from your furry companion. Why is tick prevention important for my pet? In this article, we’ll cover why pets need tick prevention in the first place as well as your medication options to keep these pests away. But even if your pet spends most of their time in the city or indoors, ticks can bite anywhere.
If your pet lives on a farm or near wooded areas, they are more at risk of getting ticks than if they live in a very urban environment. Ticks are blood-sucking parasites that can easily hop a ride on your dog or cat, or even on you.