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It is summer time and summer brings outdoor fun, hiking, cookouts, yard work, gardening, camping, and sadly … ticks. Ticks are a scourge on the earth, passing diseases and chronic illnesses such as Lyme disease. They can infest animals and cause anemia and infections.

Ticks range in size from the tiniest being the size of the head of a needle to much larger ticks that can be the size of a dime when full engorged with a blood meal. Ticks are prone to forested areas and drop from trees and climb up shoes and pant leggings as well, from tall grass meadows.

Using a deterrent for ticks is essential because of the sickness that they can spread. Lyme disease is very serious, for example.

Stopping Ticks in Their Tracks

On your own property, you can encourage opossums and guinea fowl to stay as they eat thousands of ticks per day. Guinea fowl can eat five-thousand ticks per day and will happily exist on them. Keep the grass mowed low as it reduces the tick habitat and wear a hat with a wide brim to keep them from falling on you and your hair.

Tuck pant legs into hiking boots to keep ticks on the exterior of your clothing when you are out in the woods and this will prevent them from getting to your skin. Shake your clothing out well and check for ticks when you get inside.

On your pets:

Make sure that you use flea and tick deterrents. It is essential to keeping ticks from your dogs. Using eucalyptus shampoos is also a deterrent but nothing works as well as the flea and tick drops or collars that are designed to keep these pests away. Monthly flea and tick control works very well, better for ticks than fleas sometimes.

Check them regularly for ticks, especially between their toes and in their ears. Use a tick removing tool if you spot one, and make sure that you get the head of the tick out to avoid infection.

If you use monthly prevention drops, then the ticks will die if they bite your dog and fall off on their own. Brush them well when they come in from outside and try to get rid of any ticks you find that are alive.

When you are going hiking or camping, using some spray on your dog for mosquitoes will also repel ticks and other types of creepy bugs. Since mosquito’s cause and transmit a lot of illnesses, I also like to use a bug spray on my dogs and feel that it is a double barrier in places where ticks are really bad.

It is said that wearing light colored clothing helps to repel ticks also. If you do not wish to use DEET sprays for ticks (which is truly the best method to keep them away but also very ‘chemical’ in nature and many people have issues with using) then you may want to try making your own sprays to keep them away.

Castor oil repels ticks very well. They hate it. Mixing castor oil with Dawn dish soap and water, and spraying it on is a decent repellant that you can use to keep ticks at bay.

Stay Healthy

Keep you and your dog healthy by taking dietary supplements that promote health and ensure that you’ll both be able to fight any tick borne illness if it happens to find you. For your dog, visit tindog Pet and read more ways to protect them from ticks and tick borne illness.

If you’ve been bitten by a tick and develop a bulls-eye or rash around the bite, see a doctor and be checked for Lyme disease as soon as possible. Dogs can also get Lyme disease so learn the symptoms for it as well.

The sooner you treat Lyme Disease the better. You’ll always have it but you can keep symptoms in check. At the present time there is no cure for Lyme and with ticks being more and more prevalent, we’re likely to see this illness becoming more and more of a threat to populations here in the US and around the globe.

Lyme Disease Symptoms in Humans and Dogs

Dogs can get Lyme and if they do, common symptoms include:

• Fever

• Lethargy

• Lameness

• Enlarged Lymph nodes

If they are infected, you won’t see the signs for 2 to 5 months after the bite and if you seek help for them, they tend to do well with treatment, which is typically Amoxicillin or Doxycycline. You can certainly supplement their treatment with organic oil for dogs to give them added antioxidant support as well. Also, many have some questions like  Do Ticks Jump From Dog To Human and so on.

In humans the symptoms tend to be very similar:

• Joint Pain

• Lethargy

• Fever

• Headaches

• Enlarged Lymph nodes

• Sensitivity to light

• Sleep disruptions/ inability to sleep

• Memory issues, cognitive decline

The testing for Lyme is a blood test for dogs or for humans. The treatment for humans is also antibiotics, sometimes in large doses and in combinations, depending on how bad the situation is. Some people respond well to one and some people tend to need a cocktail of combined antibiotics.

If you think that you are your dog may have Lyme disease, it’s very important to get checked. As the disease progresses, it can lead to very serious problems for both of you. The test is painless and you will know right away and be able to take appropriate action.

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This content is sponsored by Habib Khan.

Photo by garrett parker on Unsplash