Coming soon to long grass near you: Ticks

Tick season will soon be here.

Dr. Jordan Woodsworth of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan says it can be as soon as early to mid-April when ticks start showing up.

“Typically it’s when the temperatures are above freezing 24 hours a day and as we know, some years we get really lucky with warm weather earlier on and that’s when we start to see these little guys,” Woodsworth said.

They can show up on people, but they’re more common on our four-legged friends.

Woodsworth says your vet can hook you up with different medications that will prevent ticks on pets.

“Some of the medications are tick repellent so they work kind of like mosquito repellents do on people,” she said.

Another product is given by mouth, “and what they do is they get into the blood stream of that animal and then when the tick attaches and bites and gets that blood meal, they’ll get the product, they’ll die and they’ll fall off.”

When checking pets for ticks, check from nose to tail. Ticks love warm and moist areas.

“In our animals, that tends to be places like around their lips, strangely enough in their ears, under their armpits, in their groin and even around their tail,” Woodsworth said.

If you do find a tick on yourself or your pet, Woodsworth says the best way to remove it is to get a firm grip on it with tweezers and pull it straight out.

You can submit pictures of the ticks you find online at etick.ca and experts will be able to determine if it’s the kind of tick that could carry Lyme Disease.

There’s also an app you can download at etick.ca to check ticks all season long. In the hotter summer months, they tend to die off.