Parker puppy came in the other night and A1 noticed he’d picked up a tick in his ear. I HATE ticks, hate hate hate them. Not as much as snakes or spiders, but they’re def a close third. Anything with more than 4 legs or no legs at all just kinda creeps me out.

I have dealt with ticks before, I usually paint them with nail polish to suffocate them so they’ll pull their little tick heads out and then flush them down the toilet. I started the same process with Parker, but apparently that was not quite going fast enough for A1, so he decides to burn the tick out. Logically I know this is most likely not the best plan of attack, but it is his dog and he’s the one who wants to set the tick on fire so I figure sure why not.

He takes one of the big stick grill lighters and he’s holding parker between the couch and his legs with one hand holding parkers ear up and the other holding the lighter. I choose to sit a little bit back and basically just watch the magic unfold. The first pass with the lighter A1 stays fairly far back and not much happens. The next pass in though he gets a little closer and some of parker puppies ear hair (which is very long even on the inside of his ear) singes. There is nothing like that smell. At this point a logical person probably would have stopped and trimmed the rest of parkers ear hair to prevent further smell and such. We apparently were not feeling like logical people.

The next pass A1 is bound and determined to get the tick. He goes in even closer, parker puppies little nail polish doused hair goes Poof! we’re blowing it out, parker is freaking out and the tick is finally dropping out all at once. It wasn’t actually a big flame or anything and we did get it blown out well before it ever got to Parkers actual skin but now he has added the stick lighter and for a little while A1 to his list of things he is afraid of.

I think perhaps next time we’ll just stick to the nail polish.