A Natural Tick Repellent for Dogs

What is the best way to keep nasty parasites like ticks and fleas off your dog's coat? It isn't difficult to find a simple, cheap mass-market products that will poison all those pests, of course.
Many pet owners though are beginning to become concerned. Even if the poison used in tick repellent isn't powerful enough to do anything to a dog right away, it certainly can't be healthy. Many dog owners now look for a natural alternative.

It isn't just concerned pet owners who think this way. The EPA a couple of years ago, issued an advisory about the chemicals that you apply to  a dogs back to help keep ticks away. The advisory says that there are thousands of cases where dogs react with skin irritation, and even seizures or worse. In the year 2008, tick repellent for dogs killed about 600 pets.

There are a few things that you learn about how these toxic pesticides work when you look closely at the EPA directive. They've found that small dogs – ones under 20 pounds – are the ones that have most of these reactions.

Especially, they've found that chemicals like cyphenothrin and permethrin are very poisonous for small dogs.

In short, you don't want to use any mass-market toxic chemical-based repellent for dogs.

When people search for a natural tick repellent for dogs, they usually have some kind of natural herbal juice or something in mind. They hope that they can spray this stuff on, and it will work. There's a much better way though, and it works very well.

But it takes a few minutes everyday. All you need to do is to do is to give your pet a thorough nose-to-tail search using your hands and your eyes, to find if there are any ticks that are present. If you find any, you just have to pluck them off. If you do this every day, it takes no more than 5 minutes.

There's an important reason why you want to do this. You want this because nothing works well, and ticks aren't just capable of attaching themselves to animals. They come to humans too.

It isn't a bad idea to try to keep tick infestations away, by making sure that your dog doesn't go to places where ticks are usually to be found. Keep your dog away from old, neglected wood or piles of fallen leaves. That's where these creatures live most of the time.