Tick Season Is Here

[topt]

Another year, another tick season starting in May. Have been seeing a lot so beware out there. If our dog lays in the grass just for a minute, she brings a few back in the house with her. They seem especially thick this year.

I did not know there was a season - our dogs manage to pick up ticks all year round

It is just a permanent on-going battle.

[T_Dog]

May seems to be the peak month. I think the beginning rains stimulate the tick reproduction cycle. We normally don't see any ticks at all after September or October, but it must vary from region to region.

[cooked]

When I was first confronted with this problem, I started to look for a single magical solution to it. I tried Frontline, Ivermectin and so on. When you delve into the subject you realise that an adult female can lay up to 20 000 eggs at one go and that these can remain dormant for three years, these are difficult to eradicate. So once you have the problem, you are likely stuck with it.

I examine the interior walls of the house once a day and generally find a very small tick or two crawling up to find a place to metamorphose into the next stage on its way to being a happy mother. I spray inside and outside the house with Bayticol every few months and go away for the day. We get the dogs down and go over them looking for ticks, EVERY DAY,

I use tweezers to take them off, shake them on to a piece of paper and squash them. You have to look in the ears, between the paws and on their bum. We bathe them regularly with tick shampoo and alternatively apply Bayticol to the skin or dose them with Ivermectin. They are water dogs so any external application doesn't last long. Injections seem to be useless against ticks.

I am pretty sure that there is no magic bullet, you keep dogs, they will have ticks, even in a condo if a female has managed to lay eggs.

I do feel that they are the worst around the beginning and end of the rainy season.