Leeches & Dogs

[imported_Cassie]

I just found this so neat, I take my dogs for a walk down to the nearby lake daily. Yesterday it was soooo hot I decided to wade in and go for a swim with my dogs. I no sooner got in the water than I was covered with leeches :evil: and I will admit, I am a squeemish person when it comes to leeches and spiders...I just about freaked. I did manage to get all the suckers off my body, although gross they didn't have that good of a hold on my body. I went back up on the shore and continued watching my dogs in the water and really envyed them for not getting leeches. Even my Dobie Beau does not get any leeches on him...the thing which surprised me the most is the fact that I shaved off one of my female bitches legs for some medical treatment she was undergoing and she did not even get a leech on her leg. I was getting a little puzzled as I have never once had any of my dogs get a leech, even on the some what bare belly of my Rottie.

Come to think of it, I have never heard of a dog actually getting a leech attached to it. I just find it weird. especially when the dog has an area which has been shaved off. Has any one here ever had a dog which had a run in with a leech which actually attached itself to the dog.
I guess I am just curious...

[courtnek]

y'know, that's odd now you mention it. I've had them on me, but can never recall finding one on any of my dogs. BTW, the easiet way to remove them is with simple table salt. just sprinkle it on them, they curl up and fall off.

[imported_Kat]

I think its something to do with the fur and they can't attach or navigate as easily as they can to skin, and also to do with carbon dioxide levels in the blood which leeches can sense. I know thats not a very scientific explanation but I can't remember the exact details of it all.

[imported_Cassie]

Kat, I understand that a leech could not get through the coat of a dog, and the coat protects the dog. I was just a little surprised that my Newf which I shaved her leg, and I mean shaved to the skin...and she did not get a leech. She had some work done to her leg (she is a post cruciate dog :wink: ) and we had to have some additional surgery done to her leg...her leg is bare, no fur at all, not even stubble. Her leg would make a waxing parlor envious :lol: and my Rottie has very little hair growth on her belly...just wispys here and there. I guess it was my Newf with the shaved to the skin leg which surprised me the most. She was wading through the same area I had gone into and did not have one leech on her. I just waded in for a couple of seconds and was covered with the horrid little creatures. Normally I would not be surprised due to the dogs coat, but, this did make me wonder.

[Guest Anonymous]

That is bazzar!

Kat - try to remember! :lol: I wana know about the whole blood thing you said. That would be for sure interesting!


Guh, Leaches suck, I am so freaked of them. I hate ANYTHING that will attach itself to my body, ESPECIALLY IN it :o I'm so freaked of ticks like you wouldn't believe, I couldnt' even sit through the part on "the Mummy" where those bugs crawled under the guys skin, UGH! :-? :drinking:

[imported_Cassie]

Hazelnutmeg,
I also am freaked out by leeches and ticks. I think I'll start carrying around packages of table salt as Court suggested.

They have these new pads you can buy for removing ticks. You just press it onto the tick and it kills it. You then can remove the tick with no worries. I believe Dr. Fosters and Smith sell them. It would probably be a good thing for some one such as your self who likes camping with your dog to have some of them :wink:

[Guest Anonymous]

:lol: :lol: Might be a good thing!

I don't normally go swimming though. I can't swim, DEATHLY afraid because I almost drown twice :lol: :roll: so never learned how. (both times were people who thought they could teach me by throwing me in the deep end :roll: ), so I don't have to worry about leaches much. If I go in, I don't really swim, and usually only in the clear waters because I'm, freaked of leaches :lol: But I will have to find those pads or cary around salt with me from now on :lol: :lol:

[courtnek]

[quote]both times were people who thought they could teach me by throwing me in the deep end[/quote]


GOD how I hate people like that. I know they always tell you, for instance, if yu fall of a horse the best way to avoid the fear is to get right back on, but you got on the horse VOLUNTARILY in the first place!!! being thrown in a pool is not going to teach someone to swim, or get them over their fear of water. ***smacks these people upside the head***

Leeches, while extremely gross, dont bother me nearly as much as ticks.
I learned the table salt trick at a cabin we were staying at. The Leech is nothing but a big absorbant ball. As soon as the salt hits it it dies.
Never had seen one before, and tried to pull it off. MAN did that hurt.
The guy who owned the cabin told me about the salt. This was in Michigan, I think. I was a kid and my parents rented the cabin for the summer.

Ticks on the other hand, are harder to remove (thanks for the pad suggestion. I will definitely get some) and they are known to carry disease, which I have never heard about leeches.

yuk....

interesting piece of trivia. Long before modern medicine people used to use leeches as blood disorder treatment. They thought that there was something bad in the persons blood and the leeches would suck it out.
like on snakebite, if they got to it right away. Sometimes it actually worked! or at least, appeared to....

:D

[Guest Anonymous]

[quote name='courtnek'][quote]both times were people who thought they could teach me by throwing me in the deep end[/quote]


GOD how I hate people like that. I know they always tell you, for instance, if yu fall of a horse the best way to avoid the fear is to get right back on, but you got on the horse VOLUNTARILY in the first place!!! being thrown in a pool is not going to teach someone to swim, or get them over their fear of water. ***smacks these people upside the head***[/quote]
Yeah, one was my uncle, the other my two "best friends" :roll: Meh, I do fine without swimming. As far as Coal's concerned, I don't need to swim because since I'm taller then him, we can still play games in the water without me swimming, but he can still swim :wink:

[quote name='courtnek']Leeches, while extremely gross, dont bother me nearly as much as ticks.
I learned the table salt trick at a cabin we were staying at. The Leech is nothing but a big absorbant ball. As soon as the salt hits it it dies.
Never had seen one before, and tried to pull it off. MAN did that hurt.
The guy who owned the cabin told me about the salt. This was in Michigan, I think. I was a kid and my parents rented the cabin for the summer.

Ticks on the other hand, are harder to remove (thanks for the pad suggestion. I will definitely get some) and they are known to carry disease, which I have never heard about leeches.

yuk....

interesting piece of trivia. Long before modern medicine people used to use leeches as blood disorder treatment. They thought that there was something bad in the persons blood and the leeches would suck it out.
like on snakebite, if they got to it right away. Sometimes it actually worked! or at least, appeared to....

:D[/quote]

Isn't it like, Osmosis, or deffusion or something that kills them? Because they have more open cells or something like that, bigger pores anyway, so whole grains of salt can come in, and the body tries to have an equal ammount of water and salt, but when the salt enters the body, there's no water on the outside to try and even it out, so their cells just fill with salt and shrivel up and die :D 8)

Ugh, I honestly could have gone without hearing about ticks carrying diseases :o

And the medicine thing, they still do that! :D When people have a limb that is like... falling off and rotting and stuff :drinking: something about leaches get the blood flow back to that limb, or something like that. I saw it on AP or something before, but was too squirmish to actually pay attention :lol:

[imported_Kat]

....and of course they still use the old traditional methods of leeches and maggots :P

[courtnek]

yea Shara, I think that's correct. the salt gets in and sucks up the water and then the leech dies, something like that.

Ticks (here at least, not sure about Canada) carry Lyme disease, which can be very dibilitating if not caught and treated in time. it is often mistaken for arthritis. it requires massive antibiotics to treat. it's common here, because we have a lot of deer, so a lot of deer ticks.

I think Lyme has been found to be mostly from deer ticks.

[imported_Cassie]

Here is an interesting article on ticks. On the bottom of the page it lists the different diseases and breeds of ticks the diseases come from. Very interesting article...if you like to read up on ticks :lol:
[url]http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=2&cat=1588&articleid=603[/url]

Shara, that is horrible that you were thrown into the water to learn how to swim :evil: that is horrible. I used to teach swimming years and years ago. We never let the children into the deep area of the pool until they had learned to use floatation devices and once they could float and tread water without them...then they could move to the deep end. What a shame for you.

Well, I guess those creapy little leeches do have their uses. I don't think I would have wanted to live back in the day when they used leeches as a cure all be all. Yuk!
I find them disgusting for the way they move through the water, and the fact they latch right onto your body. I can't describe it, its basically the same way I fear spiders...spiders are quite the good insects...but, once again its the way they move and all those legs. If they were put her for being a good insect why couldn't they have been made to look like lady bugs or butter flies...some thing pretty. :lol: :wink:

[courtnek]

well, if it makes you feel better (I dont object to spiders) they have legs like that to enable them to cross their own webs without stepping on the sticky parts that trap prey. the strands of the web are divided between sticky and non-sticky. the spider knows which is which, but needs those legs to get around the sticky parts and keep moving across the web to the sticky parts where the prey is.

ok now, to gross everyone out (sorry) I had a major problem in my basement with flies, ants and other bugs. we have a lot of "tree bugs" who move intot he basement over the winter to stay warm. I was spraying, battling, and fighting all the time to get rid of them. One fall, it appeared to just STOP. of its own accord. I went down there, and found two VERY FAT centipedes (thousand leggers) who had been feasting ont he bugs all summer. I let them stay. they live under the bookcase. they capture and eat all bugs that manage to get in there. I spent tons of money on "bugs-be-gone" the centipedes resolved the issue in one summer.

so they stay.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Guest Anonymous]

[quote name='courtnek']yea Shara, I think that's correct. the salt gets in and sucks up the water and then the leech dies, something like that.

Ticks (here at least, not sure about Canada) [b]carry Lyme disease, which can be very dibilitating if not caught and treated in time. it is often mistaken for arthritis. it requires massive antibiotics to treat.[/b] it's common here, because we have a lot of deer, so a lot of deer ticks.

I think Lyme has been found to be mostly from deer ticks.[/quote]

OMg, I'm such a loser. The second I read that I started hyperventalating and crying :lol: :oops: I have this really bad problem with my knees mainly, but all my joints that the docs don't know what it is, but they use to think it was arthritus at one point, so yeah... that's just... no... not good to read :scared:

Cassie, I don't think I'll be reading that artical any time soon :lol:

[courtnek]

Shara go to the doctor. It's a simple blood test to determine if it's Lyme disease. do you have a history with getting ticks on you? they can start you on antibiotics. if its not too far progressed it could clear it all up!

[Guest Anonymous]

[quote name='courtnek']Shara go to the doctor. It's a simple blood test to determine if it's Lyme disease. do you have a history with getting ticks on you? they can start you on antibiotics. if its not too far progressed it could clear it all up![/quote]

No no, never! :o :o God, if I had ever had a tick on me, I'd end it all right now :o I couldn't live with knowing that :o :oops:
I've had test after test after test for my joints. All they could come up with was "osgoodshlaugheters disease, which will go away when your 16" I'll be 17 next month and nothing's changed :roll:

[TDG]

i just figured some people here would find this article interesting:

[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5319129/[/url]

[kendalyn]

You can only get Lyme disease from Deer Ticks. I'm guessing most of you have found wood ticks on you. Deer Ticks are super small and hard to find. Wood ticks are the larger more common ones. I don't know of anything you can get from Wood Ticks.

I get Wood ticks on me constantly. I find probably 7 or 8 a summer and usually they are already attached. I've never had a problem with them. I just pull them off. Same thing with Buck.

Leeches are also really common around here. They don't bother me at all. It's kind of fun to pull them off because you look like you're bleeding to death for a minute. It's a good time to get very dramatic :lol: I'd take Leeches over Mosquitos and flies anyday. At least leeches don't hurt when they bite you.

[imported_Kat]

Hey Shara just to make ya feel better, I was diagnosed with osgoodslaughters disease too in my knees when I was about 13. Now my right knee is forever dislocating so advice that my physio gave me , keep your joints flexible and mobile. Simple bends of your knee to stop any swelling or locking does wonders as well as vitamin E and glucosamine. :wink: I have bilateral posterior cruciate ligament tears in my right knee which will eventually require surgery but so far I've managed to hold off by keeping up with my own physio and activity.

[Guest Anonymous]

Kendayln - garh! :lol: :lol: I duno how you can do that, I have tons of respect for you now for opening discussing about getting ticks on you and actually pulling them off :lol: :lol: :P :wink:

[quote name='Kat']Hey Shara just to make ya feel better, I was diagnosed with osgoodslaughters disease too in my knees when I was about 13. Now my right knee is forever dislocating so advice that my physio gave me , keep your joints flexible and mobile. Simple bends of your knee to stop any swelling or locking does wonders as well as vitamin E and glucosamine. :wink: I have bilateral posterior cruciate ligament tears in my right knee which will eventually require surgery but so far I've managed to hold off by keeping up with my own physio and activity.[/quote]

Arg yes, I not only have my own pair of crutches, but use them frequently :o Just got off them maybe a month ago... Was rough housing with Jared and hit it on a chair and POP :o :-? Was VERY painful, not only that, but caused a huge fight with Jared and I, making me lose my ride to get home, and I was stranded at school for a while :-?

I would love to go see a specialist about my knees, because I don't trust the doctors here, they've given me way too many different answers, and medications :-?

It sucks! :bad-words: