Check Your Pet (And Yourself) For Ticks!

After spending the weekend pulling ticks off my dogs, it's apparent that the recent warm weather has hatched a whole new batch of them.

No exaggeration, I pulled 10 ticks off our dog Lola over the course of about an hour on Saturday. It felt like that's all we did over the weekend. Since we live in the woods, it's virtually impossible to keep the dogs out of the tall grass. So they pick up ticks like crazy.

I'm no tick expert, but the ones we've been finding are tiny. Does that mean they're young, or it's just that kind of tick? No idea. But it made it challenging. They were so tiny that, if our dogs were anything other than white/gold, I'm guessing we wouldn't find them until after they'd become embedded. Just thinking about handling all those little suckers has me itching this morning. Sorry if it's doing the same for you!

But I thought it was worth a heads-up. The season started with the dogs finding lots of ticks, but the bulk of the summer has been pretty light. We stopped looking quite as closely for them. Now, we're checking the dogs, and ourselves, every time we come in.

A couple of quick facts to keep in mind, as we work our way out of tick season:

• Lyme Disease is only found in Deer ticks
• Not every tick carries Lyme Disease
• It takes at least 36 hours embedded for a tick to infect someone with Lyme
• If you're not sure what kind of tick you've found, you can have it identified for free from the University of Maine Tick Lab
• Find more info on ticks from the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry