Get a cotton swab and douse the tick with Campho-phenique. It will retract and drop off. This is not an instant remedy, but it does work. If you force pulling the tick loose it will leave its sucker embedded and that makes for a much longer healing time and a lot of aggravation with it itching and possibly festering. I would let a Vet handle it before I made a mistake trying to use anything hot or with a flame, but that's just me. I doubt the Vet would charge you much and you can pick his brain about ticks, probably for more $ worth of knowledge about them than he is going to charge you for removing them. There are many kinds of ticks and they all dislike camphor. I have also used Hydrogen peroxide to cause a tick to retract and too the head of a straight pin heated with a match or lighter, but the later only on myself as dogs don't generally hold still long enough for that. Rubbing a bit of Chigger-X on the wound afterwards will take most of the itch out. Walmart sells Chigger-X for a coupla bucks and a can will last about two lifetimes. Its a small plastc can and easy to pack and have in your kit or glovebox for insect bites and such anyway. When younger I found that a few drops of Turpintine applied to a tick with an eye dropper is about as effective as anything to make them retract, but that is based on empirical doings only. I never tried it on a dog, but I can't see where the tick would be able to tell the difference.
