These are the CDC's steps. They are written for people, and they are the same for a dog or a cat.
Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible with clean, fine-tipped tweezers.
Pull it away from the skin with steady, even pressure. Do not twist or jerk. Twisting is how the mouthparts break off and stay in the skin.
If the mouthparts do stay behind, take them out with the tweezers if that is easy. If it is not, leave them. The skin pushes them out as it heals.
Clean the bite and your hands with soap and water, rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer.
Get rid of the live tick: in a sealed container, wrapped tightly in tape, flushed, or in alcohol. Keeping it in the sealed container with the date on it lets the vet identify it later.
Do not use petroleum jelly, heat, nail polish or anything else meant to make the tick let go. The CDC says this can agitate the tick and force infected fluid from the tick into the skin.
Write the date and where on the body the tick was in the log on My Pet. The vet sheet prints it, and "since Tuesday" beats "recently".
If the animal is not itself in the weeks that follow, that date is the first thing to tell the vet. The parasite council notes that the Lyme bacterium can need 24 to 48 hours of feeding before it passes to the host, which is the whole argument for a daily check: a tick found the same day is a tick removed before it has done much.
What a tick can carry
From the parasite council's tick guideline, by the tick:
The black-legged tick, also called the deer tick: Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis in dogs; Lyme and anaplasmosis in cats.
The lone star tick: ehrlichiosis and rickettsiosis in dogs, and cytauxzoonosis in cats.
The American dog tick: Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
The brown dog tick: ehrlichiosis and babesiosis. This one lives indoors and stays active all year, which is one reason the council wants dogs on tick control year-round and for life.
The CDC adds that vaccines are not available for most of the tick-borne diseases dogs can get, and that a pet carries ticks from outside into the home, where they then bite people.
The daily check
The CDC says to check pets for ticks daily, especially after time outdoors, and lists where to look on a dog: in and around the ears, around the eyelids, under the collar, under the front legs, between the toes, between the back legs, and around the tail. Run your fingers against the coat; a fed tick feels like a small bump.
For cats, the CDC's line is the one that matters: cats are extremely sensitive to a variety of chemicals, so no tick product goes on a cat without asking the vet first. Reducing tick habitat in the yard is the other half.
A tick is not an emergency. These are
A dog or cat that cannot breathe, has collapsed, or has pale or blue gums. Call now. The emergency page lists the rest.
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