The vets on the radio show yesterday all say a chest x-ray should be the next step. That can help diagnose any number of things that could be at work, and they listed too many for me to remember. They all agreed it is in no way tick paralysis, by the way! When I get the audio file from the engineer i will email it to you, okay? There are many things it could be ...

They also said it is nearly impossible to eliminate ticks in the environment outdoors, but there are good tick preventatives for your dogs on the market - and one other thing they mentioned is removing the ticks as quickly as possible. Did you know it takes up to 6 hours of a tick being attached to your pet for it to be able to transmit any disease? And as Andy is a fairly smooth-coated dog, running your hands over his body every time he comes in, and making a tick check just part of your routine, would be a good habit to get into.

Also, they mentioned that all indicators are this is going to be a bad year for ticks, even more than ever before, and in more areas, so this is habit we should probably all get into!