5 Ways This 12-Month Pendant Helps Keep Paralysis Ticks Off Your Dog (Without Adding Another Chemical)

It starts as a hard little bump behind the ear. By midnight, your dog can't stand. A vet explains the "bite gap" every monthly chew leaves open, and the two layers Aussie owners are adding before the next walk.

Dr. Kate Murray, BVSc

Small animal veterinarian

✓ Verified

The first thing Sarah noticed was the bark.

Millie, her four-year-old kelpie, has a bark you can hear three houses down. That night it came out thin and hoarse, like something was stuck in her throat.

Then Millie got up from her bed and her back legs folded under her. She tried again. Same thing. She looked up at Sarah as if she didn't understand what her own body was doing.

That afternoon they'd done their usual loop through the bush behind the house. Warm eucalyptus, dry grass brushing Millie's chest, Millie crashing through the bracken after some smell only she could find. The same walk they'd done a hundred times.

At 11 pm Sarah carried her into my clinic, 22 kilos of dog gone soft in her arms.

I ran my fingers behind Millie's left ear and felt it straight away. A hard, warm bump the size of a pea. Grey, swollen, its head buried in her skin.

"But she's on the chew," Sarah kept saying, her hands shaking. "Every month. Right on time. I never miss it."

And she hadn't. That's the part nobody tells you.

Millie spent two nights on antiserum and oxygen, a drip taped to her front leg. Sarah slept in the car park the first night because she couldn't face the empty dog bed at home. On the third morning Millie walked out on wobbly legs, tail going, and licked her chin. The bill was just over $3,000.

"I did everything right," Sarah said to me at the desk. "How did this happen?"¹

We read 3,393 comments on 52 YouTube videos about paralysis ticks and tick treatments.² Two of them have stayed with me:

Somewhere on your walk, at knee height, one is waiting

A paralysis tick can't jump, fly or see. It climbs to the tip of a grass blade, hooks on with its back legs and stretches its front legs out wide. Then it waits, sometimes for weeks.

Those front legs carry a tiny sensor called Haller's organ. It tastes the CO2 in your dog's breath, smells its skin, and feels its body heat. In lab tests, ticks homed in on body heat from up to 4 metres away.⁵

Your dog brushes past. The tick lets go of the grass and grabs fur. Then it starts the slow crawl up towards the warm, thin skin of the head and neck.

The bite gap: why a dog on a monthly chew can still end up on antiserum

Chews like NexGard, Bravecto, Simparica and Credelio work from the inside. The drug sits in your dog's blood, and a tick only gets a dose when it bites and starts to drink. So the chew can't stop the bite. It kills the tick after the bite has happened.

Most of the time that's enough. But the paralysis tick pumps its toxin in as it feeds, and even with treatment, around 4 to 5 in every 100 dogs that develop tick paralysis die.³ The bill starts around $1,000 to $1,500, and climbs fast if your dog needs a ventilator.⁴

That's the bite gap: the hours between the tick climbing on and the drug reaching it. Nothing in your dog's blood can close it. You close it on the outside.

Here are the 5 ways the Coolabah pendant helps close it.

1. It works before the bite, not after.

Picture the walk again. The grass at knee height, the tick on the tip of a blade, your dog pushing through with its head down. This time a light cloud of plant oils is already sitting over its head, ears and neck, from the moment you clip the pendant on. It doesn't wait for a tick to drink. Keep the chew. This is the layer that comes first.

2. It confuses the tick's heat sensor.

A 2019 study in PLOS ONE found that citronellal, the main compound in citronella oil, disrupted ticks' ability to home in on body heat.⁵ Citronella is one of the six plant oils in every Coolabah pendant, with cedarwood, lemongrass, peppermint, geranium and rosemary. To you, it smells like a garden after rain. To a tick, your dog gets harder to find.

3. It sits right where paralysis ticks attach.

Most paralysis ticks are found on the head, neck and front legs. That's exactly where the pendant sits: on the collar, under the chin, its scent drifting up over the ears. Thread the collar through the two slots and you're done. It takes ten seconds.

4. 12 months on one clip. Salt water and mud included.

Wet dog, sandy paws, a roll in something you'd rather not know about. The waterproof silicone holder keeps working through the beach, the creek and the bath, for up to 12 months. That's about $4 a month for one pendant, or $3.54 a month with the 2-pack.

5. Nothing new goes into your dog.

In 2018 the US FDA warned that the isoxazoline class (Bravecto, NexGard, Credelio and Simparica) has been linked to muscle tremors, ataxia and seizures in some dogs.⁶ Most dogs are fine on them. But if you've ever stood in the kitchen with that chew in your hand and hesitated, you're not alone:

The pendant doesn't go in your dog. Nothing is swallowed and nothing goes on the skin. If your dog reacts to its chew, talk to your vet about the options; the pendant adds no new drug to the mix.

The 60 seconds that catch what gets through

No layer is perfect, so the last one is your hands. Every evening in tick season, sit on the floor with your dog and run your fingertips slowly against the fur, from the nose back. You're feeling for a hard bump that wasn't there yesterday.

"If this helps, why didn't my vet mention it?"

Because it isn't a drug, and it isn't a replacement for one. Your vet prescribes what kills ticks in the blood. The pendant works on the outside, before the bite, which is why we always say: use it alongside your vet's treatment, never instead of it.

And the nightly check? Every vet recommends it. Most owners on a chew quietly stop doing it, because the chew feels like enough. That, not the chew, is the real gap.

Where and when

The paralysis tick lives in a strip along the east coast, from far north Queensland to East Gippsland. Bandicoots carry it into leafy suburbs and backyards, so it isn't only a bush-walk problem. If you live anywhere on that strip, this is your season.

The evening you don't dread

Her head heavy on your lap. The TV on low. You did the check, and there was nothing there. The pendant sits against her collar, the chew is in her system, and for the first time this season you're not lying awake wondering what you missed.

Tick season offer

Clip it on before your next walk

1 pendant12 months for one dog$49.95 2 pendantsTwo dogs, or 24 months for one$84.95$99.90 4 pendantsThe whole pack, or 4 years for one dog$149.95$199.80

Protect my dog this seasonFree express shipping Australia-wide · 90-day money-back guarantee

Choose from 6 colours on the next page. Dogs only.

Questions people ask

Your dog can't check behind its own ears. It trusts you to see what it can't. Clip it on before the next walk.