Can we forget about ticks once we get a freeze?

I grew up in Texas.  It never stayed cold enough long enough for us to stop worrying about ticks. But the main ticks we worried about in suburbia were dog ticks.  Then I moved to Maryland.  For those of you not from Maryland, the deer are pretty much domesticated here. I can’t walk on the path from my suburban house along the river without encountering many deer, along with foxes, groundhogs, rabbits, and more.  It is a beautiful thing to be able to be near so much nature, but all those deer also mean we have abundant deer ticks.

This week I discovered a deer tick embedded on my back. it looked like it had been on there for at least a day, which means it survived a hot shower the night before.  Those of you who follow my social media know that I broke my collarbone in March and I have had not one but two surgeries to get it repaired.  Because of that I still do not have complete range of motion on my left side, and of course that was the side of my back the tick was on. Thankfully I saw it when getting cleaned up for bed that night when I caught a glimpse of a red swollen spot on my back.  I called my husband and he extracted it for me, and then I could not get to sleep because I was completely grossed out.

Now you might think that I must have been wandering through thick forest to get that thing, but I haven’t been. I have walked my dogs along the paved paths each evening, only straying off when a dog wanted to poo in some longer grass.  So the tick either climbed up my leg with me unaware, or jumped down from an over hanging limb along the edge of the woods. Either way is disconcerting because this is part of my normal daily routine.

Anyway, I put some antibiotic cream on the bite area and tried not to think about getting Lyme disease.  The next day, however, I had a faint pink circle around the bite area and decided I needed to contact the doctor, and now I am on a medicine to prevent Lyme disease.

I would like to think with colder weather coming (we are supposed to get below freezing tomorrow morning) that I can stop worrying about getting bit again, but that is not the case.  It takes long periods of subfreezing weather to kill ticks, and, frankly, they often survive by living on warm animals.  For most of the USA, there is not a time when we can forget about ticks.

That is why I keep my dogs on flea and tick preventative medicine year round. My little guy Leo would be pretty easy to find ticks on, but my poodle’s thick curly fur would make it nearly impossible. I use Nexguard for Maggie the poodle and Simparica trio for Leo.  But I will say my previous dog Oliver could not tolerate any of those medications, so I had to do a tick check on him every time  we came back from a walk. Vets generally discourage the use of flea and tick collars because they are not very effective for most dogs and give people a false sense of security. If you do not have your animals on some type of tick preventative, please make an appointment with your vet to get some before you or your pet end up with Lyme.