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One puppy found near Regina is lucky to be alive after being found in the wild covered in about 700 ticks.
Tic Tac, as she was named by her rescuers, was found near a reserve outside of Regina on Friday evening.
According to Rodonets, this has been a pattern with rescue dogs recently.
“Last year we had many dogs with over 600-800 ticks on them. This year alone, we’ve had so many dogs that are just covered in ticks,” she said. “We brought four dogs in with over 1,000 ticks.
“This by far one of the worst cases we’ve ever had,” said Rodonets. “It’s the first case we’ve ever done a blood transfusion on a dog in a rescue.”
Marshall’s dog Kelso was the donor and laid still for 20 minutes as a transfusion bag was filled for Tic Tac.
“You need to grab them very close to their attachment sites in the skin and just kind of do a little twist motion to pull them out,” she said. “After, you want to kill the tick.”