Tick Season: What It Is, How To Prepare
It’s Tick Season!
Although, in some places around the world, tick season may be a year round thing (unfortunately for us in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are those people…). However, the Spring and Summer seasons tend to be when they are most prevalent and obnoxious. So what exactly is a tick? Where can you find them? What do you mean they latch?! How? How do you remove them from a human or a dog? How can you prevent them? Have no fear, Dog Tired Adventures is here! We’ve got tons of information and advice about how to deal with ticks to keep you and your dog healthy. They really aren’t as menacing as you might think.
What are those nasty little suckers?
Ticks are part of the arachnid family. They are typically pretty small, reddish or mahogany colored, about 3 to 5 mm, and they are what is called an external parasite.
*Dracula Accent* they suck your blood, bleh bleh bleh…
To make matters a bit worse, they are also disease carriers - most notably Lyme Disease - but depending on your region they can carry other diseases as well. Their bite is painless, so they can go mostly unnoticed when they have latched on.
Side note for history buffs: Ticks are old! They have been found fossilized in amber dating back to 146 to 66 million years ago. A notable tick, Deinocroton draculi, has been found in fossilized dinosaur feathers. These dudes have been sucking blood and surviving for a LONG time (feel free to use this information on your next trivia night).
Where can you find them?
Lucky for us, ticks cannot jump (or fly for that matter). Instead, their main form of attack is to climb tall pieces of grass or shrubs and wait for their unsuspecting victim. So BEWARE of the tall grasses and shrubs of our favored hills and trails! Ok, maybe that was a tad dramatic. A tick latching onto their host isn’t necessarily premeditated evil, they are just doing as any animal would do in the wild - fight for survival and reproduce.
They are most commonly found where a lawn meets a wood, or in other words the unmaintained line from the edge of the wood to the open area. Their migration zone is about 6 feet to either side of that line. In the East Bay, most of the ticks are found in grazing areas. While the ticks in our area prefer cows, goats, and deer, they do not discriminate! They would be happy to hang out with you or Fido and go for a nice adventure, all while enjoying snack time (a little gruesome, but I can’t help myself!)
How do they latch?
Depending on the species and stage of life, ticks can latch anywhere between 10 minutes to 2 hours. Most of the ticks in the Bay Area will wander around until they can find a good place to call home and feast. Scientists would call this home, thinner skin, like ears, arm pits, groin area.
Ticks find their host by detecting their hosts breath and body odors, or by sensing body heat. Ultimately, they have evolved so well to detecting potential hosts that the only thing we can do is to try to make ourselves as unappetizing as possible. But we will get to that in a bit.
How to Remove a latched tick
If you can spot the tick before it latches, just flick it or pull it off. If you can, squish it! Though that can be harder than you would think, their exoskeleton makes them pretty impervious to casual squashing. Other options are to wrap it in tape, drop it into some alcohol, put it in a sealed container, flush it down the toilet, or leave it for a happy possum to eat for dinner.
If you find the tick attached to the skin:
Step 1: DON’T PANIC!
Step 2: Try to remove it as soon as possible. The CDC has a pretty simple method for removing ticks.
Use fine tipped tweezers, and grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible
Pull upward with even, steady pressure.
Try not to jerk or twist, this can cause the mouth parts to break off into the skin. If the mouthparts do break into skin, try to remove with tweezers. If you cannot remove, leave it alone, the skin will heal and push it out
Wash your hands and the area the tick was in place
Dispose of the tick: wrap it in tape, drop it in alcohol, place in a sealed container, or flush down the toilet.
If you notice a rash in the area the tick was after several weeks, go to the doctor or vet and be sure to tell them about the previous tick bite.
Tick Prevention
For humans you can use a chemical free insect repellent, DEET, permethrin, or picaridin. A pretty safe bet is to tuck your pants into your socks, don’t go rolling down those natural grass hills, and when you get home do the famous tick check!
Check between toes, around your ankles, knees, underwear line, armpits and ears. Think of it as a “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” tick dance.
For our dogs, it’s a pretty similar procedure. Remove the ticks as soon as you see them on your dog, you can use tick preventative prescriptions, or natural insect repellent sprays, and ALWAYS do the tick check before getting in the car. A quick brush down often helps pull the ticks off without you even having to touch it.
Check between toes, under the belly, armpits, ears, and around the collar
*For dogs with long hair it helps to brush the hair in a backwards motion to help expose a hiding tick.
Prevention: The age old argument of Sprays vs. Prescriptions
It’s pretty standard practice for most groomers, vet offices, and boarders to require flea treatments, and some even require tick treatments. That being said, there are plenty of prescription, over the counter options, and natural remedies for flea and tick treatments. Most of which can prevent latching, and kill larvae so a literal brush or bath after an adventure would remove the ticks before they even enter your home. It’s always a good idea to consult with your vet for the best treatment for your dog but some of our favorites are:
Best topical: Frontline Plus
Best Collar: Bayer Seresto
Best Shampoo: Adam’s Plus
Best Natural: Wondercide
Best Prescription: Trifexis (requires veterinarian script)
Conclusion:
Don’t let the prospect of ticks hold you back from your desire to adventure. They are absolutely out there in the wild, and they do want to join either you or your pup for a pretty fun adventure (and maybe a tasty snack). It is pretty easy to avoid a tick latching, and if it does, removal is fairly easy as well. To keep your pup from bringing a tick home, there are plenty of options for preventative care. It’s worthwhile to be aware of the presence of ticks, take the necessary precautions to avoid them, and enjoy your time in the hills, mountains, and woods.
Written By: Gabby St.Martin
Gabby is a dog walker and writer for Dog Tired Adventures. She loves being active, the great outdoors, and loving on her Doberman.
Sources:
If you are interested on where we got our information from there is some nice websites out there with even more information about ticks, prevention, and products.
https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/removing_a_tick.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick
https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/understanding-and-preventing-tick-bites
https://www.caninejournal.com/best-flea-and-tick-prevention-for-dogs/