Assessing tick exposure during routine dogs walks

Walks are a habitual part of a dog’s life, but what are the risks associated with this quotidian activity, and are clients aware of them? Last week, Susan E. Little, DVM, PhD, DACVM, Krull-Ewing professor of parasitology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, sat down with dvm360® to talk about the lectures she presented at this year’s Veterinary Meeting & Expo. As January’s National Walk Your Pet Month nears its end, the team took the time to ask Little about the increased risk for ticks dogs who are not protected face when they are out on a walk.

As Little explained, every dog who is not on tick control is at risk for infection, and dogs who are walked for even a short period of time have a high likelihood of developing a tick infestation and becoming infected. Trends in data show winters are becoming progressively warmer, providing an environment for ticks to be active during the winter season when temperatures are above freezing.

Below is a partial transcript which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Susan E. Little, DVM, PhD, DACVM: Dogs are definitely at a high risk for tick-borne infections, and we see that in the serologic data; we see that in the survey data that's been collected; and we've seen increasing prevalence of tick-borne infections in dogs even though we have good tick control products and growing awareness about the tick problems.

A dog not on tick control just walked for a short period of time or allowed to roam in a wooded area is very likely to acquire a tick infestation and then become infected, and so we're going to see seroconversion and potentially disease if we're not doing anything to change that situation.

...Every dog is at risk. I think people have the impression that ‘it's not my dog or not my neighborhood,’ but ticks are just about everywhere they can be. Every available habitat has been invaded by ticks, and so it's almost a universal problem, and every dog is at risk of infestation.

I think the other thing that we battle is that impression that owners have that ticks are only a problem, you know, if they go out hiking in kind of a wilderness area. But no, they're in the backyard, they're in the understory right around the backyard. They're at home also, and so you don't have to go far in order to encounter ticks.

And then there's the impression that, well, ‘it's January, so there won't be ticks’. Well, that's certainly true for this week [January 19, 2025-January 25, 2025] because it's so cold, because we're experiencing this polar vortex right now. But if you look back through data from ‘23 and ’24, you know 2024 was the hottest year on record, and it was the warmest winter on record. 2023, the first week of January, many places in the northern US were in the 50°s and 60°s. And ticks are happy to be out looking for hosts when the temperatures are up to 50, 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

So we need to make sure that owners understand that winter is not always what winter used to be, and we can't predict that. You know, we didn't know that this January was coming. We didn't have much lead time into the cold weather. So we have to have tick control on board for when the warm weather comes, because as soon as it shifts, then the the melting snow provides a nice layer of humidity that keeps the ticks actively questing for longer, because they don't desiccate, they don't dry out, and so they're able to find a host and they've got that sunshine on them to allow them to warm up enough to look for a host there. Anytime it's above freezing, you can find ticks out.