Let me tell you a little story. It happened six months ago.

One night, I woke up with the feeling that bugs were crawling all over me.

I looked down on my pillow and saw a teeny tiny little brown bug. I assumed it was a bed bug. So I stripped the bed at 2am, chucked the sheets in the laundry room and slept on an unmade bed, all the while my husband stood beside me wondering if I had developed a meth addiction or had morphed from somewhat insane to clinically insane overnight.

The next day we opened our eyes to see these little black things all over the walls, ceilings and floor. Turns out they were ticks. Yep, ticks. F-ing ticks. And they were everywhere! Our dog is an inside dog but we keep up with her flea and tick prevention medicine (well…. we may have missed a month) so I assumed they must have come from somewhere else.

Nope.

One look over our dog and we discovered, I’m not even exaggerating here, well over 200 ticks on her.

Fortunately, they weren’t paralysis ticks but the brown dog tick variety but, nonetheless, it was a horrible thing to see and my heart broke that this was happening to my sweet puppy. They were everywhere! There were at least ten between each toe and at least ten in each ear.

The poor thing was literally covered head to toe in them and this infestation happened in a matter of a day or two. Some of the bloody ticks must have dropped off her, found a place to breed in our bedroom and viola, 3000 baby ticks later, our house is unlivable.

It took all weekend to clean the house, spray and try to remove as many as we could. It has taken four full months to get rid of them completely. And our poor dog had to go to the vet for assistance in removing the ticks and preventing them from using her as a breeding ground again.

Flea and Tick Prevention

So… why do I tell you this story? Because I wouldn’t wish this on any animal or any household.

And because it is actually quite simple to prevent ticks and fleas from taking up residence on your pet.

1. Wash beddings and vacuum sofas and carpets regularly.

2. Regularly check your dogs for ticks or fleas.

3. Keep their fur as short as possible.

4. Clean and groom your pets regularly.

5. When walking your dog, avoid tick-infested areas if you can.

6. Keep grass length as short as possible.

Those are some tips I have learned from my horrible experience.

Whenever I look back, I definitely should have prevented ticks and fleas from ever coming into our household than having to spend a lot of getting them removed from our home. Now I make sure that fleas and ticks can’t come to our house EVER. Pets can get tick treatments from the vet but of course, I don’t want them to get bitten in the first place.

So I have made sure that our garden and lawn have zero ticks with the help of PestXpert Pro Hose-On Tick Spray.

It is designed to kill any ticks present. Due to the behaviour and life-cycle of ticks a residual spray is not particularly effective. Therefore if you are in a tick prone area, checking your yard for ticks and re-spraying is important to keep your yard tick free.

Ticks, especially the younger stages live down at ground level in the leaf litter. Getting the product down into these areas is key to a successful treatment. In addition to preparing the treatment area correctly (see below), the hose-on delivery system ensures you can achieve complete coverage of the affected area and get the treatment to where the ticks are hiding.