How to Prevent Dog Ticks

Regardless of what your vet tells you, dog ticks cannot be prevented. Walk your dog in long enough grass where ticks congregate, you’re likely to have to remove a dog tick. Collar or not. There are products that retailers and even vets claim prevent them, but read the guidelines, they’ll also state that you need to be actively checking for ticks, because guess what… the stuff that’s supposed to suppress ticks, don’t!

It’s like using citronella to deter midges – it does not work.

So how you do you prevent dog ticks?

You don’t! The only way to stop dog ticks from biting is to catch them before they sink their teeth into you beloved furry pal! Seriously. Every time you go for a walk in the wilderness, comb or brush your dog. Regardless if you have bought into the tick prevention collar, sprays or tabs.

Ticks can hitch a ride on your dog, but they don’t instantly bite. They surf ‘til they find an ideal spot to feed. That’s usually the neck, under the ears, or the pawpits (oxters).

Rather than trying to prevent ticks in dogs, focus on preventing them from biting. How you do that is to brush or pick them off before they engorge. (Engorgement, in the case of ticks, means it’s started feeding on blood).

Once a tick engorges, that’s when you need to use a pair of tweezers or a tick removal tool to unlatch the thing from your dogs skin. A comb or brush won’t do to remove it once it’s latched on. If you pull it without the right tools, there’s a risk – and likelihood – that you’ll only remove part of the thing.

If it snaps, (meaning you manage to snap the body of a tick from its head), the body of the tick will be removed, but the head will remain embedded on the dogs skin. That’s what you do not want to happen.

What are the best tick prevention products?

None! Apparently, the best tick prevention products are either oils or collars. The idea is that they prevent the ticks from biting. Don’t bank on it!

We have three dogs – all staffies, which are short haired dogs – and two of the three have had ticks.

One, the oldest is partially paralysed! What happened with him is that we found a tick in his neck that was massive. This was one that must have been feeding for a while. It was fully engorged – full of blood. Before we found it, he was active – like able to walk for miles. Then suddenly, he struggled to walk around the block. That was in the space of a week, and months later, he still hasn’t full use of his hind legs.

We just happened to be getting him on the lead when we felt a lump beneath his collar. It was a tick. The dog was panting, struggling to lift his hind legs, and could not muster his way up two steps into the house. He was having to be carried.

To this day, we believe that the tick we found on him is the reason he’s lost the use of his hind legs. Tick paralysis. The vets didn’t even ask if this was a possibility. That’s how rare these parasites are for causing ill health. In an old enough dog (ours is 12yo), the vets just put it down to muscle fatigue due to old age. Staffies can live for much longer – and remain active.

The petMD website shows that dog tick paralysis starts in the hind legs then progresses. That we can vouch for because it’s only Flash’s hind legs that are fatigued. It’s seemingly a neurotoxin that’s injected by the tick into the dogs bloodstream that then leads to all sorts of health problems, the most troublesome being Lyme disease.

Flash, our oldest, is the worst effected. One of our pups – Codi (1yo) – we found a tick on, too. He was just about to turn one year old. But, the tick we pulled from him – with tweezers – was flat. It must have just bitten, and herein lies the issue…

Ticks in dogs can be on their fur, just not yet bitten. They will surf their way through the dog until they find an ideal site to feed. They bite to suck blood. The parts of the dog with the most nutrients for ticks are around their neck behind the ears, and their oxters – under the armpits, like where their harnesses are strapped for their front legs – but rarely is anything strapped to their back legs.

For that reason, when checking for ticks, check their entire coat, their belly, oxters, paws (and between the nails) and behind their ears.

Ticks can be present on a dogs coat for a while before they begin feeding. The best time to get rid of a tick from your dogs fur is before they bite. The only way to do that is to find it early – before they bite. For short-haired dogs like ours, that’s as simple as using a nit comb. For a long-haired dog, I’d imagine a thorough brushing would be the way to go, after any walk among long grass.

Why long grass?

Because ticks don’t jump! They’re opportunistic. When you’re out walking, it’s the habitat of ticks that you ought to be aware of. That’s woodlands and long grass. They won’t drop from trees, but since they can’t jump, they’re more likely to be sitting on the lower portion of long grass, avoiding sunlight as they don’t like it, then move onto your dog as s/he brushes past.

Once on the dog, they’ll move through the fur until they find a feeding spot, then they’ll bite to start feeding. By feeding, we mean, they’ll start sucking the blood from the dog.

We have three dogs and one of our youngest – Codi – loves to roll in long grass. Not surprisingly – a tick got onto him.

The part of brushing after walks, I learned from reading reviews of tick removers.

If you’ve never removed a tick, tweezers are the only likely thing you’ll have around the house to use, and they aren’t exactly easy to work for such a small insect. That said, they’re better than trying to pull it out with your fingers!

One reviewer was talking about the size of the tick remover being too small for when he first finds them. When I read what he’d written, he’d clearly been checking his dog WHILE walking. That’s something I hadn’t been doing, but will do now, judging by the habitat of them.

Our younger one had a tick that’d had just latched, yet it was about week prior we had him out on a long nature walk. It’d likely been on him for a while, then after a week, bit into his skin – at the neck. It wasn’t buried and was still flat so it hadn’t been feeding for long.

Seemingly, the longer they feed, the more of a chance their is of it passing disease. For Lyme disease, the time frame is 24 to 48 hours.

Tick-related illnesses and pet insurance

Ever noticed the tick advice pages for pets advising that when you remove a tick from your dog that you bag it and refrigerate it for testing by your vet? You can guarantee that you’ll be paying for that test. All it is to determine whether the tick is carrying Lyme disease or not.

If you get bitten (not your dog) the UKHSA can provide laboratory testing but even they state that if a tick is carrying Lyme disease, there’s no guarantee that’d pass to a human host.

Even at that, it is only for people who are showing symptoms of Lyme disease, in which case it’s too late for testing to tell you anything, other than confirm what you already suspect.

There are 850+ species of ticks worldwide, yet only around 20 species that are endemic to the UK. Sheep, castor bean, and the deer tick are the most common.

We walk our dogs along trails that have likely hundreds of sheep and are lined with deer fencing – and we’ve spotted a few deer too – some dead. Going by the times we’ve found the ticks on the dogs, it’s always been when walking them among the fields with sheep or where deer frequent.

The castor bean tick, I’ve no idea what it is, nor do I think I need to. Regardless of the type of tick – hard or soft-bodied, both are classified as arachnids, meaning that they’re blood suckers. Not only that, but when they bite, they inject a venom that’s something of an anticoagulant, and at the same time, it has immunosuppressants, meaning you can’t feel it – they bite people too!

Whether it’s you or your dog that gets bitten, there won’t be a reaction to the pain. Just the side effects, which will be lethargy – due to the blood being drained, and possibly diseases being transmitted.

For that reason, it’s wise to know the habitat of ticks and to regularly check yourself and your dogs for ticks to hopefully get rid of them from you or your dog before they bite, or as soon as possible after they begin engorging.

Once a tick engorges, that’s when the problems arise. The venom gets injected and the blood starts to be drained. Preventing engorgement from ticks is the only way to prevent any disease associated with ticks.

Get them removed before they bite, they won’t be a problem. From the time a tick gets onto your dogs coat, you only have a couple of days to get it out before health issues become apparent.

To summarise:

Don’t focus on ticks alone, but rather, their habitat. Woodlands and long grass.

Any time your dog is among woodlands or when their running (particularly rolling) in long grass, give their coats a thorough brushing and then feel for any tiny lumps. Regardless how small the lump is, investigate it.

What to look for are a lump and legs – if it’s a scab, clearly it won’t move. And scabs are typically flat. They don’t stick out. Ticks do.

The mouth parts of ticks bury into the skin and the body sticks out like a clumped lump of fur. If it’s a tick, it’ll wriggle and won’t pull easily off it it’s engorged. Before it engorges, they’ll brush off.

Is it a tick or a skin tag?

To the untrained eye, a tick can look like a skin tag. How to tell the difference is the colour. A skin tag is typically the same colour as your dogs coat. A tick is either dark brown, black, or dark grey. If you have a light-coloured dog, a tick is easily identified by it’s dark colour. For dark-haired dogs, it’s trickier. Skin tags tend to only be an issue on older dogs so if yours is a pup, it’s more than likely a tick rather than a tag.

In the case of ours, Flash – the oldest – has skin tags on both his eyes, but none of the pups do. Skin tags are expected on older dogs. Not on pups.

If you have an incline that your dog could have a skin tag, then see your vet. Don’t pull a skin tag off. On older dogs, skin tags usually appear on the head, neck and chest regions. Ours has skin tags on his eye lids. Skin tags rarely pose pain, but removing them does have risk of excessive bleeding. If you aren’t sure if it’s a skin tag or a tick, see your vet before removing it.