A Dog's Life

Every so often, I feel a need to tie this blog back to it's title, and so here is your update on the titular basset hound in the BVI. On Monday, we spent a lazy and satisfying afternoon on the porch with the dogs.

When HB went for a stroll through the garden, he took Roscoe with him

but poor Flash, who can't be trusted to wander around off leash without trying to dash through a privet and out of the garden, had to watch from behind bars.

I made it up to Flash later, though, by providing him with one of his favorite treats, a floor-dwelling human.

One happy basset.

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Happy to be back in the BVI. Happy to be back around my favorite creatures in the world. Hopefully, the same creatures are happy to be home again, after two weeks spent at the BVI Humane Society.

Roscoe apparently succumbed to some kind of wormy parasite while there, and it slowly recovering. Lots of sleep and good eats seem to be helping.

Both dogs received a thorough de-ticking on the porch before being allowed in the house. Roscoe seemed to relish having the 40 or so vampiric arachnids removed from him. Flash refused to sit still long enough for a thorough examination, but his naturally oily skin meant we only found about 20 on him.

Here's to many more tick-free mornings spent lounging in the sun on the porch.

Tick Update

I'm a little hesitant to write about this, as I'm afraid that I will jinx myself, but I am happy to announce that Roscoe and Flash have been tick-free for nearly three weeks now. It was a long fight that consumed almost all of May and June for us, but at last, I don't have to check the dogs and the floors for ticks every night.


I feel like in our battle against the vampiric arachnids, we tried everything we could think of. We bombed the house with these foggers, not once but twice. They were definitely effective at getting rid of live ticks in the house, and the fog on the floor ensured that we only found dead ticks around for at least a week afterward.

We gave the dogs flea & tick medicine that I had purchase at Petco in October. We checked them at least once a day for ticks. Finally we decided we had to shave Roscoe, but although the shave and tick dip gave us a respite, we started finding ticks on him again after about ten days. There were definitely fewer ticks than there had been before the shave, but four or five ticks a day is still unacceptable. 

Frustrated, we started using Revolution, which is a Frontline-like flea and tick medicine the BVI Humane Society sells. Four days later, with no diminution in the ticks, I did some more internet research, and found that most professional bug-zappers in the States use a commercial version of Preventic spray to control tick infestations in and around homes. Conveniently, Preventic also makes a flea and tick collar, and also happens to be the only brand of collar that the BVI Humane Society sells.

So we put the Preventic collar on, with little hope that it would make any difference: after all, very little else up to this point had, the foggers being the main exception. I found one tick on Roscoe the next day ... and we haven't found a tick on him since. In fact, we've only seen three ticks in the house in the last three weeks, all on the floor, attributable I believe to eggs that may still be viable and hiding out in crevices.

For anyone anywhere dealing with a tick problem, while I would recommend the Hartz Home Foggers, for real tick prevention on your dog and in your home, the Preventic collars are the way to go.

More Ticks

We thought we had the ticks under control. After I last posted about our infestation (about three weeks ago), I went to the supermarket after work and bought some Hartz Flea & Tick Home Foggers, and fogged the house that night. The foggers worked a treat; we found a few dead ticks in the following days, but after a while we stopped seeing them and everything seemed okay.

Since Friday, though, we've been finding five or six live ticks on the floor each day, and pulling three or so off Roscoe every day. Flash has been tick-free, although his crate had quite a few ticks in it on Saturday afternoon. While this round of "infestation" is nowhere near as bad as at the beginning of May, it's still quite frustrating to spend an hour each night scouring the house for ticks and picking them off the dog. The complete unreliability of our water during the Christmas and New Year's holidays was pretty bad, but of everything we've encountered in the BVI, I think dealing with these ticks over the last month has been the worst.

We're sure the rains during the middle of the month probably created a lovely outdoor environment for ticks, especially as the grass around the house grew 12 inches since the start of May. Now, every time Roscoe goes out for his walk, he likely drags several ticks back in the house with him. We've dosed him with tick-medicine multiple times, but it seems like we're probably going to have to shave him, apply some flea & tick dip, bomb the house again, and have the places we walk him treated by an exterminator in order to truly get this issue under control.

Infestation

Yesterday morning, I was petting Roscoe and encountered one of these:

Image Courtesy of: http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2008/clarin_bria/

A large, engorged deer tick attached to Roscoe's shoulder meant HB and I would be coming home and checking both dogs thoroughly for ticks, something we really hadn't had to do since the fall. This idea was only confirmed when I pulled a tick nymph off Flash about ten minutes later.

Once we got home yesterday night, we set about our business. You may imagine our shock when, upon examination of Roscoe, we found well over 20 ticks of various sizes embedded in his fur. Flash's short fur made him somewhat less desirable: we only found about 10 ticks on him.

We had planned on a 30-minute total once-over of both dogs, but ended up spending an hour taking ticks off the two dogs. After they were both cleaned up, we took a look at their crates, where we found literally hundreds of tiny ticks crawling all over their bedding and the bottoms of their crates. The bedding was discarded, the crates were bleached, and we cleaned the floors as well.

How we managed to get such an infestation of ticks I can only conjecture. I imagine Roscoe had one attached to him that we didn't notice, and it left its eggs to hatch in one of the crates, and the whole cycle just kept repeating itself. Still, two days ago, I had Roscoe's bedding out of his crate and there was nothing on it, so this explosion happened in just 48 hours.

Tonight, I'm picking up some tick bombs at the store and we'll be bombing the house, to ensure we don't have a repeat of last night's incident. The dogs will also be thoroughly checked for ticks again, since I found two more nymphs on Roscoe this morning.

So for those moving to the BVI, especially with animals, just a heads-up that the tick situation is far worse here than anywhere else we've ever lived. Flea & tick medicine like Frontline, along with tick collars, are strongly recommended.

Basset Burps

The topic of today's post is pretty unrelated to the BVIs, but since the blog is called Basset's View of the Islands, I figured I could talk a little today about that basset.

Flash, lovely basset hound that he is, has developed a little habit. I think it started in Florida, and has only gotten worse, growing more frequent and forceful over the years.

You see, Flash likes to burp.

Flash's burps are not quiet affairs, like I imagine they are for most dogs, since I have never before heard a dog burp audibly. Flash's burps are long, gurgling, resounding eruptions of gas. Perhaps belch is the word I ought to use, as they remind me of TV depictions of the way beer-drinking, couch-potatoing men sound when burping.

Not only does Flash burp audibly on a regular basis, but he seems to get a bit of ironic pleasure out of it, as he usually chooses the quietest possible moments to really let one rip. Occasionally, when we chastise him for his burping, he'll immediately let out another.

Is there anyone else out there whose dogs burp? If so, let me know, so that I don't feel quite so alone in Flash's weirdness.

Walking the Dogs

As long as I have lived with HB, it has been part of my morning routine to walk the dog(s). HB has always been one to wake up and leave the house within ten or fifteen minutes, whereas I like to take my time in the morning: have some breakfast, read my e-mail. Walking the dogs is just a natural thing for me to do.

In Florida, walking the dogs in the morning became one of my favorite things to do. I would get up around 7:15, which was usually pretty close to sunrise and stand on the sidewalk in the slightly cool, early-morning Florida air, watching the mourning doves on the telephone wires, or the ibises grazing in the field. Since I didn't have to be to work until 9:00, the morning walks for the dogs were never rushed, unless it was raining.

All that has changed since we moved to Tortola. What used to be a relaxing moment of pause in my day has become the most stressful part of my routine. The apartment building where we live does not have a yard. It does not have a grassy area nearby, or a field of any sort. Walking the dogs involves walking them along the road in front of the house

As you can see, the road in front of our house (house on the left) does not have any nice, relaxing, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, or manicured lawns. It has bush along one side, with some tall grass where the dogs can do their business. The other thing it has, although not pictured here, is a lot of traffic. After all, this is Ridge Road, the third busiest highway on Tortola (after the Coastal Highway and North Coast Road), and it is especially busy from 7:30 to 9:00 in the morning; about the right time for the dogs' a.m. walk.

The morning walk consists of dashing across the road between oncoming cars, and pressing myself and the dog against the bush. The dogs have a fondness for darting out into the road after they're done, stressful enough in itself. But recently, both of the dogs have developed a strong dislike of the roadway, probably because they're picking up on my stress and worry that they'll be hit by one of the SUVs thundering past. As a result, lately, when I try to walk them along the road, they do what Flash is doing in the picture below: they freeze up in the middle of the road and dig their claws into what slim purchase they can get on the asphalt, refusing to pass the centerline of the road.

With charming timing, they often do this when a car is barreling down on us, and so I have to run quickly back to the safety of the parking lot, dragging the dog behind me the entire time. Once I finally get the dogs to do what they need to do, I come in the house exhausted from stress, and sweating from the obstacle course that walking the dogs has become.

Amphibian Invasion

There is no accounting for taste. While I can stomach the majority of the decor in my new home, there are a few items and trends that I find a bit ... unpalatable. Today, I will be highlighting perhaps the most bizarre element, our resident frog.

The frog is a four-foot high statute, that ordinarily resides in the corner of the living room, but occasionally, likes to go exploring. In the photo above, he is taking the sun on the balcony, with his lily-pad umbrella protecting his sensitive, amphibian skin. The frog is joined from time to time by his amphibian pals:

From left to right, we have guitar newt, baby frog, and dancing newt. Their home is the wicker bookshelf in another corner of the living room. 

Suffice to say, what with his prowling nature, the frog has not made fast friends with the recently-introduced fauna. Flash and Roscoe generally give the frog a wide berth ... except when enticed with treats to pose:

I cannot fault the dogs their scorn of the frog. When I catch him watching me, I get a shiver down the spine myself.