The Monsoon That Almost Took Samrat From Us

There's a version of this story where I talk about ticks like an inconvenience , something you check for, brush off, move on from. I can't write that version. Not after what actually happened to Samrat, and not after the month that followed it.

I want to tell this properly, because I think there are other pet parents out there, maybe in a lush green society just like ours, who have no idea how close danger can be standing right outside their own building.

Where It Started

Back in 2022-23, the area in front of our building in South Bopal was full of greenery , the kind that looks beautiful, the kind you'd walk your dog through without a second thought. We did, every day, the way we always had. I had no idea that same greenery, especially through monsoon, was exactly the environment ticks thrive in. Warm, humid, overgrown , it's everything they need, and it doesn't take a jungle to create it. Sometimes it just takes the patch of grass in front of your own home.

Samrat picked up a tick bite somewhere in that greenery. I didn't see it coming. I don't think anyone would have.

When Everything Changed

He got sick. Not mildly sick , severely sick. I rushed him to the vet the moment something felt wrong, and what followed was a diagnosis I wasn't prepared for and a month I will never forget. Tick-borne illness in dogs , what many vets in India call tick fever , attacks in ways that don't look like a simple infection. It goes after the blood, the platelets, the whole system, and it can turn severe fast if it isn't caught in time. I've since learned that the fever, the exhaustion, the pale gums, and yes, the nosebleeds , all of it are recognised warning signs, the illness attacking his blood's ability to clot properly. At the time, I only knew that my dog was bleeding from his nose and I had never been more frightened in my life.

He was on IV drips and medication for more than a month. He couldn't eat properly. He cried during his daily IV drips , actually cried, in pain, and there is no way to prepare yourself for watching that happen to a creature who has only ever looked at you with complete trust.

What I Don't Usually Say Out Loud

I don't think I've told anyone this in so many words, but I will tell you here: I prayed to Bhagwan more in that one month than I think I had in years. I cried in front of him more times than I can count, asking for nothing except for Samrat to get better. And I remember, with complete honesty, thinking that I could have personally destroyed every tick on this earth if it meant he wouldn't be in that kind of pain again. I'm not a violent person. I have never meant anything more sincerely in my life.

That's what this illness does. It doesn't just make your dog sick. It makes you feel a specific, helpless kind of fear that I don't think anyone understands unless they've sat beside a hospital cage watching a daily drip go in, watching someone they love cry through it, and being able to do absolutely nothing except stay.

The People Who Brought Him Back

I want to say this clearly and by name, because he deserves it: Dr. Hiren Thakar at Sneh Pet Hospital in Ahmedabad saved my dog. He specialises in exactly this kind of illness, and he made sure , genuinely made it his mission , that Samrat recovered in time for his birthday on the 30th of April. I don't know how to properly thank someone for that. I've tried, more than once, and it never quite feels like enough.

What makes it more meaningful is that Samrat had always loved Sneh Pet Hospital before any of this happened , he's a friendly, easygoing dog, close with the staff on the hospital side, the spa side, even the shop. Going there used to make him happy. After the illness, that changed a little. He got scared of vet visits, understandably , his body remembers what happened there, even if the people there were the ones who saved him. The fear is still there, quietly, even now. He manages fine during his yearly vaccine visits, but I notice it, that small hesitation he didn't used to have. I think that's just what surviving something hard leaves behind, in dogs the same as in us.

What I Wish Every Pet Parent Knew Before Monsoon

If you take nothing else from this, please take this: tick fever is not rare, and it is not only a risk for outdoor or stray dogs. Ordinary apartment greenery, a lawn, a patch near your building , all of it can carry ticks, especially through monsoon when the warm, humid conditions let them thrive.

What actually helps, that I wish I'd known sooner:

1. A tick check, every single evening, especially through the monsoon months , ears, neck, between the toes, under the collar. It takes two minutes and it might be the two minutes that changes everything.
2. A vet-recommended tick prevention treatment, kept consistent, not just applied once and forgotten.
3. Watch for the quiet symptoms, not just the dramatic ones , a dog going off food, seeming unusually tired, pale gums, any bleeding at all. It can look like "just an off day" before it looks like anything serious. Don't wait to see if it passes.
4. Don't assume greenery is automatically safe just because it's inside your own society or in front of your building. Beautiful and dangerous can exist in the exact same patch of grass.
5. If you see any of these signs, go to the vet immediately. Tick fever caught early is treatable. Caught late, it becomes the month we lived through.

Where We Are Now

Samrat is well now , fully recovered, back to his gentle, cuddly, food-motivated self, still afraid of the vet in that quiet way, but still happy, still loved, still here. Every year on the 30th of April, his birthday means something a little different to me than it might to other pet parents. It's not just a birthday. It's a reminder that he made it, and that I will never again walk him through greenery without checking him over that same evening.

If you're going through something like this right now , the fear, the helplessness, the daily hospital visits , I see you completely. It does get better. Hold on to that, and hold on to your dog, and please, do the small daily check that I didn't know to do in time.