Once upon a time, God made Man and Woman. Then he created their companion Doggie. Man, Woman and Doggie spend many happy days frolicing in the Garden of Eden, occasionally getting carried away and forgetting to scoop up Doggie's bowel movements. God noticed this unsanitary trend in dismay and decided he need to create a third kind to keep them in check...
Thus born The Insect Rulers! They are given the blood-sucking power to rule over all men, women and dogs with the constant threat of having their lives sucked dry whenever these rulers please (especially when there's poop laying around).
And we, despite of the fact that we NEVER leave Bryson's poop around (eh hem...), experienced the Wrath of the Insect Rulers first hand yesterday as we set off to discover a new trail, the Arroyo trail, in the Tilden Regional Park at dusk. We quickly discovered that summer has quietly sneaked up upon us, when the cloud of nats engulfing our heads steadily grew to the density of the summer fog over Golden Gate Bridge. I could barely see Bryson over my constantly swiping hand, but when I did see him, I spotted trouble- he was covered with numerous black dots, all appeared to be creeping and crawling into his fur, and when I got closer, I discovered in horror...
Ticks, ticks, and more ticks! Big and small, looks like the entire village came out to have a picnic at Bryson Park to feast on dog blood pudding. Ugghhh!!! We quickly picked off as many as we could but we knew there must be so many more where we couldn't see. Even though I knew these enounters of the third kind are unavoidable when you engage in outdoor activities with your dog, witnessing all these sinister-looking creepy-crawlies ready to suck your innocent pet's blood and possibly transmitting them god-knows-what-horrible-disease-they-harbor is still quite unnerving.
When we finally got home and got the rest of the ticks (we found what looked like fleas too) out of him, we counted dozens of them (*shudder*). I admit that I freaked a little bit, and proceeded to a frenzy of linen-washing, vacuuming, showering, scrubbing, calling the vet, bathing Bryson, applying K9 Advantix (we used Advantage before which apparently did nothing for ticks). And only when it was all done that I felt I could relax. We couldn't find any trace of flea/ticks (or any suspicious black spots for that matter) around the house for now, but my scalp still itches whenever I think about it.
Now thinking back, we should have listened to this K9 Advantix commercial and used this product to begin with (the puppy clearly told us it works on mosquitos, fleas and ticks, how stupid were we not to pay attention?):
