We had a terrible infestation of dog ticks. Sadly, it's the one species of tick that can complete an entire life cycle inside our home. It was my own fault. With everything going on that I couldn't control, I chose for months to worry about outside events instead of focusing on keeping things I could impact in line. We've never had to worry about ticks before. Our dogs don't go into fields or woods and, with the large amount of dangerous dog packs roaming our area, they really only go outside to relieve themselves. With such a limited outdoor experience, I never even thought to check them.
Then, one day, my husband jumped back from his computer where he was studying at his desk. A huge bloated female tick had been crawling on the ceiling, lost her footing, and fallen right onto his keyboard. Sadly, it took this to get our attention. I had also noticed some small beetle-looking creatures on our ceiling. They didn't move around, and since our entire house is open with slats and no screens, and keeping bugs away is a pointless pursuit, I decided to just let them be as I was too lazy to get a chair and get high enough to investigate. But, with the realization that literally fell into our lap, I decided to research this enemy a bit more.
Dog ticks have several life cycles. First, they hatch out of eggs as larva. They then seek their first blood meal, then molt into tiny nymphs. These nymphs, having only six legs, again torment an unlucky victim and drink their fill of bodily fluids. They then crawl up high and molt into full-sized, eight-legged adults. It turns out, those "beetles" were simply the ticks going through the final molt from nymph into adults. The adults then find a host one more time and find a mate. They both attach and feed and breed at the same time lodged into the skin of the poor animal. The female, swollen with blood and eggs to 200 times her original size, then drops off to lay up to 3,000 eggs which start the madness all over again. Honestly, I can't understand what purpose they serve in this world other than to make our lives miserable. I've heard guinea fowl like to eat them. I was tempted to get a flock.
Getting rid of the blood-sucking, disease-carrying pests was challenging. We immediately took our dogs to the vet and got sprays and the Frontline medication to put onto their back to turn their blood to poison. When both of those didn't work, we bought tick shampoo, which only resulted in very clean dogs carrying very clean ticks. Nothing worked. To make matters worse, the ticks like to lay eggs in soft bedding. So, the dog beds had to be washed many times. Our bed and sheets needed to be checked nightly, and sometimes they still were biting us by morning. One night, we even tore apart our entire bed looking for the invaders between the mattress and under the bed frame. They invaded our laundry hamper, laid eggs, and were crawling all over our clothes. Grenadians also don't bring dogs inside, so treating the yard to kill ticks is a waste of money for them. We could find nothing on the island. Also, the other lovely medications used back home are not available here. We used all our resources, and the ticks just sat up, clapped their hands, and smiled at our efforts.
So, this left me with only one option - squishing every tick until they were all gone. This resulted in tick checks on us and the dogs twice per day. I also routinely patrolled the house, looking on the walls, the baseboards, the ceilings, the floor. Ticks like to climb up in areas where they know there is a lot of traffic and will stand up and hold their front legs out like little children wanting to be picked up until their host comes along. Scientists call this behavior questing. There is a spot where Soren, our German Shepherd, likes to rub his body against the wall, probably due to his many itchy tick bites. The ticks seem to be able to sense this is the best spot to quest and will congregate there, waving their front legs, waiting for Soren to come by. One of Soren's many nick names is Mr. Chew - taken from his early puppyhood where, you guessed it, he chewed everything. But, we then modified it to Choo Choo Train, as he was always bowling through everything like a steam engine. So, now due to its popularity, we named this certain wall section the train station with the high supply of ticks clinging there with their front legs outstretched like hippies waiting for the space ship to another galaxy. We joke that the ticks are waiting for the Choo Choo train at the train station. Well, I would try to get there first and send them on the Glory Train instead. (You HAVE to have humor in this or you just sit in a pool of tears and cry like in the Looney Tunes cartoons.)
This infestation has also meant that I spent lots of time on my knees with a flashlight going through all the huge cracks in our bedroom, getting out the ticks hiding there and making sure no bloated females had dropped off to lay eggs. My theory was that if I continued to kill every tick I saw, and kept taking them off the dogs so they couldn't breed and complete their cycle, eventually the madness would stop. Over five months of doing this, it slowly began to work. Where I was once killing 400 ticks daily, after two months it was down to around 30 per dog. After two more months it was down to around 10 for the entire pack, and now I will maybe find 3 ticks every other day for the total quota. I know I'm winning... just slowly. This gives a whole new meaning to the saying, "An ounce of prevention..."
Now, I believe that every crisis in your life gives you an opportunity to learn something useful. God teaches us in everyday living, just like Jesus did when he walked this earth and told parables about gardening, fishing, shepherds, and sowers. To be clear, this is the most minor crisis compared to others we are currently facing, and even more minuscule compared to what others have gone through. But, it's one that God has used to teach me, nonetheless. He thrives on communicating in the simple stuff, and has used ticks to teach me about redemption.
Looking for something as tiny as ticks gives me lots of quiet time on my knees. I must be a sight running around the house with my bike helmet on my head where I have taped a flashlight, holding my iPhone flashlight in my hand, crawling around with bloody tweezers. It's a great time to talk to God and argue about the relevance of ticks and ask if He could please just make all of them extinct. Of course, I then also turn to more important conversations about weightier spiritual matters since I'm down there anyway.
These nasty cousins of spiders love darkness and secrecy. I have to move furniture and clean everywhere to find their hiding places and eggs. Cleaning out all the hidden areas of our home that no one sees reminds me of the cleansing process God does on my heart. No one else sees my heart's dirty corners under the bed, but God does. He knows that those areas are the prefect place for sin to grow. Moving the bed and cleaning up those spots isn't easy, but needed to protect me. The same idea can be said about the ticks themselves. Unless you get close to the dog, move the hair around, put your fingers to their skin, pull them close and feel them, you would never know the tick is there, growing in the darkness under their fur. Just like without God's healing touch, there is no relief from the sin in our lives. Ticks and sin have a lot in common.
Also, in studying my nemesis the tick, I have learned a lot about my enemy. I now know where they hang out, like the train station, and can get there and remove them before the dogs walk into their waiting little spindly arms. Sometimes, I call my dogs away from a spot that I haven't gotten to yet to clear out. If they obey me, they save themselves the pain of the tick removal later. If they don't, the tick count I pull from their bodies, and proportionally their discomfort, only grows. In the same way, God may call me away from an area I am moving towards. He knows my weaknesses and wants to protect me from an enemy that I don't understand, but He does. How many times I could have spared myself so many consequences if I had just moved away from a direction when I heard Him call me? Yet, even when I don't, He still helps disentangle me from my messy situation after the enemy has latched on when I finally do come back to Him and seek His help.
This tick infestation has really helped me bond with my dogs as well. I spend a lot more time with them removing the little parasites every day. It's not a pleasant process for either of us. Sitting on the floor with no AC in a pool of my own sweat, dog hair sticking to me, blood from smushed ticks covering my hands, with crimson tweezers, leaning over protesting pooches with my equally protesting back and neck joining in is not my idea of fun. The ticks especially love the most sensitive areas on dogs - the ears and in between their toes and paw pads. Sometimes I find forests of ticks deep in their ears or toes. The ears are the worst, as when many ticks are taken out there is a lot of bleeding due to the tick's special blood-thinning saliva, but thankfully not much pain on the dog's part. When the blood runs down the dog's ear it irritates them and they shake their heads, sending a shower of blood flying. Many times when I'm done, I look like I've just been through a massacre. Just like during the Old Testament times, when sin was committed, something had to die and blood had to flow to redeem the sinner. Now, to save my dogs, something has to die too. Unfortunately for me, something containing a lot of blood. Anyone who as flattened a bloated tick knows what kind of eruption can take place. Thankfully, ticks aren't very cute like wooly lambs, so I have no trouble killing them.
This process of removing the ticks from my dogs has taken our relationship to a whole new level, but no more so than with my youngest dog. Soren is my boisterous three-year old 75-pound German Shepherd. He is as strong willed and hard headed as they come - takes after me a bit. He has a low pain tolerance, punishment doesn't phase him, and high drive in every area of his personality. He constantly argues with me, barks at me when I tell him "No!" and challenges my position as the higher-ranking member of the house. He has yet to win any of these debates, but the hope of one day besting me still springs eternal.
Soren's tick checks have been an evolving process. First, it must be known that he has very sensitive paws and ears - apparently the only chinks in his armor. Though I tried to desensitizes his paws from puppyhood by handling them, he hates his nails trimmed and ticks pulled from his feet. In the beginning, I couldn't get rid of the ticks on his paws alone. I needed my husband to provide backup and hold him down while I tried to pull apart his writhing toes on his thrashing legs and snatch the ticks out with tweezers. The build up to the actual removal caused moaning and yowling from him as if I were slowly burning him alive. He fought to get up, he pulled his feet away from me, he moved along the emotional spectrum of getting angry and growling to whining and begging for mercy. Finally, in pure exhaustion, after fighting for almost an hour, he would let us get the tick, which took less than 10 seconds once he decided to hold still and certainly wasn't worth any of the drama.
However, soon, it was very inconvenient for me to enlist my husband's help as he was gone all day in school. So, I decided to tackle Soren's ticky paws myself. It was me vs. the Chewminator (another of his nick names), and all I had was a leather leash, tweezers, and determination. That first time took several hours. However, I tried to learn what would make the process easier for him. I noticed he hated the tweezers as his thrashing had caused them to poke him more than once. So, I put down the tweezers and used the one's God had given me - my nails. I started by slowly talking to him and massaging his feet instead of going right for the tick. This caused him to calm down enough for me to at least hold his feet - the very act of which had always started the cascade of panic. Then, I got him used to me looking for ticks without pulling them. Finally, I went for the tick. It was still hard and he moaned and cried through the entire process anticipating each tick pull, but I finally removed all of the little pests.
There were a few days Soren decided he would stand for this no more and growled and got up. I used the leash to persuade him to lay back down. He then proceeded to growl and bark right in my face, letting me know how life was just rotten and I was now enemy number one. I didn't get angry, just calmly stared him down, trying my best Cesar Milan impression until he finally collapsed into a huge pout - head turned as far away from me as possible - and let me finish his feet in stony silence.
Now, the funny thing is, pulling ticks from between your toes isn't really that painful. I know. They've chosen that lovely place to latch on to me as well, though thankfully they seem to prefer the dogs more. But, whether the process is actually painful or not doesn't matter. What matters is what Soren THINKS. Perception is reality. And, in his mind, this is the most painful process on earth and the fact that I torture him with it daily must prove that I don't love him anymore.
However, as the days of this have turned into weeks, he has surrendered more and more. A month ago, I could pull the ticks from his paws with just a slight whine and foot jerk. I didn't have to hold him down anymore. He would wait until I gave him a release word before he got up. Instead of a time to fight, it started to be a time he tolerated quite well, and actually enjoyed when I cuddled him afterwards.
Then, a few weeks ago, it happened. I got the tweezers, flashlight, and paper towel I use to squish them on. He knew what it meant, and he came to me. I didn't go for the leash, but instead just asked him to lay down. He did, of his own free will. What a feeling of pride I had for my baby boy! I praised him, did his tick check, got the ticks out of his paws without even a whine from him, and then brushed and cuddled him. God whispered to me, "Now you know what it feels like when you stop fighting Me. Once you realize I'm helping you, not hurting you, and you decide My way is best no matter how uncomfortable it may feel at the time, and you surrender... there is no greater love or worship you can give Me."
Next, there is my dear Keesha, the 35-pound fluffy Keeshond. Full of vibrant life and laughs, but also as flighty as a parakeet, our middle child seemed to tolerate being snuggled in my lap while I checked her for ticks. I had to go to her and pick her up. She didn't willingly come. But, once she was in my arms she went limp. She's learned to do this from puppyhood, as she's so cuddly she gave up having any dignity long ago. She knows her role as Teddy Bear and surrogate child for me. She will even put her paw around my shoulder and hug me as I hold her. Tick checks are an easy process. I simply roll her on her back, on her side, on her tummy, pick up her feet, pull back her ears, and put my hands deep in her fur and feel for ticks. I've gotten pretty good at feeling the difference between skin, tick bite, and tick. She closes her eyes while I do this, only sighing occasionally if I pull a particularly tough tick from her ear or paw. Her tick checks are not a strain on our relationship, because she surrenders to me immediately once I chase her down. After I'm done, I always give her cuddles and kisses and tell her she's been a good girl. However, she's small enough that she really doesn't have free will in the situation. I can easily hold her down and she knows it. Her surrender, while appreciated, isn't as special to me as Soren's. She has never believed she has a choice or free will. I understand a little better why God felt free will was so important. Surrender isn't really surrender if the participant doesn't believe there is any other choice. True love and surrender can never be forced. I know Keesha would never choose to do this if she felt she did have another option.
Mona, the oldest of our three, has worked with me a long time. She's a strong American Staffordshire Terrier, or pit bull if you want the slang term. We have taken our relationship of trust through obedience training, therapy dog training, and (DSR) disaster stress relief training, which is the highest level of therapy work enabling dogs to be sent by FEMA to disaster sites. She's trusted me around helicopters, horses, boats, hospitals, and high see-through bridges, so picking ticks is a cake walk. I don't need a leash or any other restraint. I ask her to lay down beside me and she comes to me happily and does so very willingly. Even though she could fight back, she never even considers it, but just allows me to pull ticks from any part of her body without any control needed. She enjoys leaning against me and hearing me speak happily to her, even though we are not doing something particularly pleasant. She does this because she has trusted me through so much worse, and sees this surrender as an easy process. Mona is like the Apostle Paul of trust and surrender. I don't have to go get her like Keesha, and I have never had to restrain her and persistently work with her to prove I am worthy of her trust like Soren, she comes to me when I call her to get clean. Why? Because of all my dogs, she knows me the best. I earned her trust long ago.
There is also another concept I've learned from this. Because we were unaware of the ticks for so long, they really infested our bedroom, where the dogs spend a lot of their time. Unfortunately, there are more cracks in the floor boards than any other room in our rental unit. Ticks get deep into the cracks of the floor and back behind the walls, where even fogs and sprays can't reach. Read any website on dog ticks: bad infestations usually require a professional pest control guy to come back about four or more times before they are gone. Because the ticks are most infested in our room, I have made the dogs sleep in the living room with tile floors to protect them. They don't understand why I would pull away from them like this. In their mind, being banished from the bedroom is punishment, but in mine it's protection. There is no way I can convey to them that I still love them just as much, but I have to distance myself for a time while I go around on the bedroom floor every night on my hands and knees with a flashlight and kill all the ticks which surface to jump on my dogs. I put my bare feet on the cracks, enticing them to come and and crawl on me. I'm the bait. I hate pulling ticks off my dogs because it's an uncomfortable process for them, and it's my goal to get the pests before they bite them. If they bite me first, that's something I'm willing to endure to protect them.
While I was thinking about their canine perspective as I heard them whining outside the door, God also reminded me of times when I have felt that He was distant from me. There were times when I truly believed He had forgotten me and pulled away. While I may not be able to understand why anymore than my dogs understand my nightly separation from them, I now know the intent behind His absence is the same as the intent behind mine. He knows what's best and loves me enough to do the hard thing even if it's uncomfortable for both of us.
So don't laugh my friends. I may see sin illustrations in tick eradication and Divine relationship parallels with my fur kids, but this is how my mind works and how God gets my attention. Thankfully, God knows me pretty well and speaks to me right where I am, no matter how strange the situation.
You see, the bigger faith test I am under parallels a lot with how I imagine my poor dogs feel about the ticks. I've had feelings that God doesn't love me, that He's punishing me unendingly, that He's teasing me with dreams that can never be realized, that He's pulling away from me. This goes against everything I know about God's character, yet the abandonment emotions of feeling unloved and rejected still surface. But, God has shown me things are not as I perceive them. He loves me so much more than I love my pets. He hurts so much more than I do when I see their pain as I pull a tick from a sensitive area. He got so much more bloody, sweaty, and dirty working to save me than I do when I work to help them. And, though He may pull away sometimes, He isn't doing it to reject me, but to get down on His hands and knees with a flashlight behind the closed bedroom door I can't see past to fight to protect me and remove dangers that I don't even comprehend. I don't know how it all works, and I don't believe I will until I see His face. But, I'm a step closer to understanding His heart. Just like Soren, I've gone from fighting Him, to laying down beside Him with no restraint, just quiet surrender. While surrender doesn't guarantee comfort, it does refine character, increase trust, and give peace.
As I'm writing this, our ticky situation is almost over. My months of persistence have paid off. Without sprays, chemicals, foggers, or poisons, I've removed thousands of ticks from our home with just tweezers and determination. The train station is now empty; the dogs rarely have more than one or two ticks per check; and I haven't felt the little legs crawling up my arm in the darkness as I'm trying to go to sleep for at least three months now. My husband has taken to calling me his lovely guinea girl, in reference to my desire to get some guinea fowl when this whole thing first started, then resigning myself to the fact that I would have to do the job of the flock. Past the teasing, I think he appreciates me a bit more. Also, my dogs trust me at a whole new level. And, most importantly, I understand God's heart a little more clearly. While I never want to be in a ticky situation again, I have tried not to pass up the wisdom in the journey back to normalcy, or to see the good that has come from the struggle. May we always go to God willingly to get cleaned up, no matter how uncomfortable the process. May we never let sin grow in darkness. And, may we always remember, God loves us even when we don't always feel it.
Oh, and the guinea girl has learned not let down her guard again. So just try to come back ticks! You won't last...
"But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." Isaiah 43:1-2
