Spring hike

Last week on my afternoon off it was a beautiful day; I got my errands run early and decided that Cory and I needed to go find a place to take a walk.

One of my favorite drives is out Middle Creek Road in Boone county. This time of year the wildflowers are beautiful, and it is always a good bet for seeing good birds. At the end of the road is Boone Cliffs, a little used park which is popular with birders but a bit steep for me with my bad knees (I have plans to make it to the top, but it will be on a day with no agility trials right afterwards and I will definitely need my walking stick!). So we started with a drive out Middle Creek.

Of course, I forgot my camera so these pictures were all taken with my Blackberry (whose camera is terrible). The detail is not great, but the drive was beautiful.

The entire ground was carpeted with wildflowers of many types. Wild phlox were prevalent, as were blue-eyed marys. Bluebells, larkspur, and a dozen other varieties I don't know the names of were all visible.

After driving down Middle Creek Road, I decided to head over to Middle Creek park. I had never hiked there, but had checked it out on the internet previously. A group of my dog training friends tries to get together on non-show weekends and find different places to hike with the dogs, and this was one possible site that we hadn't gotten to yet. There are about six miles of trails shared with horseback riders, and the overall traffic in the park seems fairly low.

Here's Cory in the midst of the wildflowers along the trail. The trails are very wooded and follow the creek; it was an absolutely beautiful walk.

Cory HATES being America's next top dog model ;-).

Here's a closeup of the blue-eyed marys. Aren't they pretty?


And here's some wild phlox, one of my favorites.

Here's Cory in the larkspur; can you tell he's had about enough of this posing business?

Here is a picture of the trail we followed; it was so pretty it was like being in a movie set. We had the whole park just about to ourselves that day. Unfortunately, wildflower season is also tick season. Yuck. I had found a tick two days in a row attached to Cory before the hike, but had forgotten to put his Frontline on before we went.

So I tried an experiment when we got home that night; I gave him his Comfortis, which is the once a month flea pill. We just started using it the end of the season last year and so far have had excellent results for fleas. It is not labeled for ticks; however initial reports seem to indicate that it has some effect on ticks but probably doesn't last a whole month. So I figured it would be a good experiment to see if I could observe any effect. (As of this weekend, I found one dead, attached tick on him 10 days post pill; I have found live ticks that he apparently carried in that crawled off of him and onto me or the floor, but no live attached ticks since giving it). Yuck. I hate ticks!

The trail meandered along the creek and eventually I realized that we were walking in the woods I could see from the road when I was driving. I wish I had known long ago there were trails there!

There were ample dead fallen logs to sit on and relax along the way. Cory gets impatient with my rest stops!

Even he was pretty tired though, it was quite warm (above 80) that day and after a long winter we weren't used to it! No gradual warming this year!

If you look closely at the picture below, you can see Cory in the creek. He was very happy when we found a spot where he could get down to it easily and promptly jumped in and laid down. Fabulous. He had just had his bath and groom out for a seminar that weekend...luckily he has a wash and wear coat, a quick rinse of his legs with the hose when we got home and a three minute brushing was all it took to get the creek stink off of him.

Spring is really here! My red headed woodpecker was back on Friday, much earlier than previous years! They didn't show up until May 16 last year, though they came back on May 4 and 5 the two years prior. Unfortunately I have not been home to watch my feeders much lately.

If you haven't started your flea prevention, it is getting to be time and if you have tick exposure you are LATE!

Ticks...ICK!

OH, UGH! Sunday night I found the first tick of the season attached to the inside of Cory's ear. No matter how long I have been in practice, ticks still give me the heebie-jeebies! Today I had my first client dog with a partially engorged tick, so I don't think the one on Cory was fluke.

It is earlier than I usually see them; with my dogs I usually start noticing them in April when we are out tracking in tall grass and especially along fencelines at the edges of fields where trees grow. Generally May and June are the worst months for finding them on dogs in the clinic, although in more rural areas they are seen all summer long. However, Cory insists on "doing his business" right at the edge of the woods at the bottom of the yard, (that's "his spot" in the picture above) and lately there have been lots of critters to flush out and he has been running into the woods a bit (he KNOWS he's not supposed to, but...). I leave the woods and underbrush untouched as it is habitat for the birds and other animals. Which, I suppose, includes ticks! Also today I planted some flowers in my front planters, weeded my flower beds and pulled out some dead plants, and raked out some of the dead leaves that had accumulated in the flower beds over the winter. When I came in I kept feeling creepy crawly, but I kept telling myself it was too early for ticks. WRONG!

Tall grass, underbrush, dead leaves...

all are perfect tick habitat. The best prevention I have found for ticks is Frontline Topspot. Tick protection lasts for approximately a month. According to the company, it will not prevent ticks from attaching, but it will kill them before they engorge. What I have found on my own, longhaired dogs, is that if I keep up with the topspot I rarely to never find a tick attached, but I may find them crawling on top of their fur. I guess they don't want to get down close to the skin where the topspot is. Last year we were doing a lot of tracking in the spring during the height of tick season. I KNOW the frontline worked well, because I kept finding ticks on ME, but none attached to the dogs and only one or two all season on top of the fur. Remember that you should not bath your dog for 2 days before or after putting on the topspot. Here is a link to the company's website for more info:

http://frontline.us.merial.com/home/

Ticks can also carry diseases such as Lyme disease, Ehrlichia, Babesia, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I don't see a lot of tickborne disease in my area, but I did have a dog who spent part of the year in New York state a couple of years ago that was tentatively diagnosed with Babesia. I also had a client with a tracking dog who exhibited symptoms of tickborne disease. He came in one day feverish, walking as if on eggs, and looking like every joint in his body ached. In addition, I was NOT his favorite person, and the fact that he was hurting but felt too bad to even object to an exam was an indicator of just how sick he was. Tickborne titers were a little equivocal, but suggestive of possible Ehrlichia. Based on his response to treatment, we are fairly sure that he had contracted this disease from a tick on one of his tracking expeditions. Interestingly enough, his owner had been noticing some similar symptoms in herself and was eventually treated for Lyme disease. This dog recovered from the Ehrlichia, but had some pre-existing health issues that worsened as a result of his not being able to move around much while he was sick and he eventually was euthanized as these deteriorated.

So it is official- tick season has opened, stock up on your Topspot and make sure to check yourself for ticks after working in the yard. Ick, ick, ick, nothing worse than a tick!