Daisy Scouts and Wood Ticks

By Kim Everson, DVM

Tonight, at my daughter’s Daisy Scout awards ceremony, the troope leader (my sister-in-law) hurried over to me as I sat in the audience and dropped a wriggling wood tick in my hand.

“Ugh?” I grunted in confusion.
“I just pulled a tick off Tina’s hair!” she announced loudly. Then, “She’s a vet! She can handle it.”

Well, I didn’t fling away the disgusting little arachnid as my instincts screamed at me to do. Emboldened by her proud declaration of my abilities, I calmly clenched the tick between my fingertips, casually walked to a sink and flushed it down the drain.

Ticks give me–and pretty much everyone I know–the eebie jeebies. Who doesn’t have a creepy story about a personal tick invasion to tell? Even though I know it is tick season, it still surprised me that a little girl in a public library was carrying an eight-legged stow away.

Tick season in Wisconsin is a lot longer than most people think. As a veterinarian, I have pulled ticks off dogs as early as March and as late as December. My rule of thumb is “If there’s no snow, there’s a chance of ticks.” And if you travel with your dog, the season may be even longer. I treated a lovely red tick hound suffering from Lyme disease in January of this year! It was a surpise the see a clinical case of tick-borne disease in the dead of winter until the owner reported hunting in Iowa (a different climate zone from most of Wisconsin) a few weeks earlier. After an extended course of antibiotics, the hound is doing fine!

The take-home message is if you haven’t started using flea and tick preventative on your indoor/outdoor pets (cats included) you should. There are many types of preventatives available; some are safer than others. Ask your veterinarian for advice on choosing a safe and effective medication for your pet.

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.