I was feeding the dogs this morning, and I noticed that my old dog, Cammie, had something on her nose. I figured she might have gotten into something and looked at it closely.
It was a tick. A tick. From my yard.
It had to be from my yard. Cammie’s old, and we don’t take her away from the house much because she doesn’t get around very well anymore. She goes outside to the back yard to pee and poop and lie in the sun sometimes. So she had to have picked up the tick from my yard.
I know ticks have become a huge problem else where in the state, but NOT IN MY YARD!! I have your basic small suburban back yard, with a couple of trees and a patch of english ivy and some grass. We’re surrounded by other small suburban back yards (no big patches of woods or anything around.)
Any way to get rid of these dratted things? I HATE ticks with a bloody passion.
Your local hardware store will sell various types of insecticide that you can apply like lawn fertilizer. Don’t know how long that will keep the ticks at bay, and they advise you not to let pets or kids play on the grass for a while after application.
That said, I always figured that if you have a dog, ticks are pretty much a fact of life.
SPOOOOOOON!!!
why do you have a problem with the Mighty Blue Bug of Justice?, he’s cool, a bit thick, mind you, but he means well
oh, those ticks, yeah i hate 'em, and since at home we have 50 acres of land, mostly alfalfa fields, ticksd are a fact of life, i used to be tick phobic, hated to touch the things, now when the dog has ticks, i just grab the remover, sigh “frell, another bloody tick” (pun intended) and kill it
give it some time, you’ll be just as desensetized as me
I was going to suggest guinea fowl; but I reckon they’re not allowed inside the suburban area. For some reason I adore these birds. And you won’t have a problem with bugs or snakes (or it being too quiet) with them around.
MacTech, if it was the blue guy with the big muscles and little brain, I’d be fine, but nooooo, it was the icky-crawly-carry-disease-blood-suckers.
Homebrew, I wish I could have some guinea fowls around! They’re ugly, but I understand they’re great on bugs. And they’ve got neat feathers.
Thanks for the FDA link, Ellen Cherry. I went out today and mowed the back yard where the dogs hang out, and took down a bunch of honeysuckle vines hanging over the fence. I’ll look into getting some bug killer for the yard, but I’ve got 2 older dogs and one middle-aged dog, and I don’t want to put anything down that may cause them problems.
I am still really squicked out at the idea that there are ticks living in my back yard. We don’t even have FLEAS in my house. Jeezopete…
Hey what have you got against us ticks? Just because you think we’re a nuisance you want to squish us and pull out the Frontline. We weren’t hurting your dog, in fact we love your dog. We were minding our own business soaking up the sun, well I wasn’t because I’m nocturnal (duh!) and along comes some huge shnozz to take us away. It always the tick’s fault isn’t it?
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BTW, SPOOOOOOOOOOOON!
I love ya, MacTech
As the previous tick mentioned, get Frontline from your Vet. Don’t get the over-the-counter grocery store crap that claims to be like it, it’s not. There is also now Advantix, it is for dogs only and you can only get it through your vet…
I came to believe that ticks are even harder to get rid of than fleas. Several years ago I was using Advantage for fleas, and it’s great for fleas but does nothing for ticks, and I had an outbreak of ticks. Ticks climb up to lay their eggs, so they were crawling up the walls. It took a lot of insecticide and Frontline to get rid of the darn things. You need to treat the house, yard and the dogs. If you have cats, you can get Frontline Top Spot for them, too. And you need to keep treating until you see no more ticks or until winter, whichever comes later.
In case you’re wondering, no, I do not work for Merial or Bayer.
Yeah, ticks blow. Burn em off, and damn the folks who call you an evil bastard for harming another living being. “But ticks have FEEEEELINGS and RIGHTS, you EVIL BASTARD!”
I think this is going to be a bad year for ticks - we even found some over the winter (I live in NC).
I don’t like to put chemicals in the yard either because I’ve got one dog with health problems and I don’t feel comfortable doing it. The good news (if there can be any with ticks, I hate the little b@stards) is that a tick needs to be attached for 24 hours or longer in order to transmit disease (our vet told me this). So I check my doggies carefully every day, and while I’ve found ticks from time to time, none of them have gotten to the point where they’d latched on and started to feed, so just doing that is working for us. We keep a bottle of alcohol and a jar at hand, and when I find one I put some alcohol in the jar and throw it in there until I’m sure it’s good and dead. Overall it’s been a lot easier to deal with than when we lived in VA and got a flea infestation. That was before the days of Advantage and Frontline and what a huge pain in the butt that was.
Oh, and some folks that live about a mile away have all kinds of fowl on their property - turkeys, chickens, geese, and guinea fowl. And you can hear those guineas all the way over at our place. I’d not mind borrowing 'em, but I’d sure not want to keep 'em! And I’m sure our neighbors are very glad about that.
Count me in as having a problem with ticks. I used Diazenon on the lawn and Revolution on the pup, yet she still gets about a tick a week. And it’s freaky to find one as you’re giving your dog a scritch in bed and find one that detached onto your hand. The immediate reaction is “EEEEEEW!” then flailing the hand about wildly which leads to said tick being thrown loose and hungry into your bed causing several nights of sleeplessness.
If you have guineas around, you never have to worry about intruders sneaking into your house. They are louder and more sensitive to prowlers, human or other, than any alarm.
I picked three ticks off myself the day before yesterday, not to mention the ticks I’ve pulled off the dogs and the horse. I’ve just moved out to the farm and I have too many acres to treat. I’ve put a topical treatment on my horse. I’m going over my dogs every day. I just lost my job and can’t afford Frontline for 4 large dogs.
Alas, no - not for such a large, rural area. Other than maintaining due diligence and checking yourself and the dogs ( and any other susceptible animals ) every evening as a matter of course.
I won’t, but they are ;). I have a copy of that splendid monograph, Ticks of California, lying around here somewhere.
Tsk. You say that as if it were a bad thing ( and let’s all remember that ticks are arachnids, not insects, and therefore aren’t even remotely related to the True Bugs or Hemiptera ).
