The 4 mistakes I was making with ticks — without knowing I was making any of them
By Claire Bennet · dog mum to one very muddy Australian Shepherd · about a 5 min read
Here's the thing nobody warns you about with ticks. You can do everything you think you're supposed to do — buy the well-known collar, check her every night, avoid the dodgy fields — and still pull a fat, engorged tick off your dog on a Sunday evening and feel like you've completely failed her.
That was me for over a year. And it wasn't until I sat down and properly traced back what I was doing that I realised I had been quietly making the same four mistakes the whole time. None of them obvious. None of them my fault, really. But all four of them were the reason I kept finding ticks no matter what.
If you're standing in a field somewhere right now watching your dog roll around and quietly dreading the evening, see if any of these sound familiar.
Her favourite field. Also the scene of all four mistakes.
Thinking the evening check is protection
For a long time my whole defence was checking her on the kitchen floor every night — ears, armpits, behind the legs, the lot. And honestly, the checks made me feel like I was doing something. The truth is they're damage control, not protection. By the time I'm pulling a tick off, it's already been on her. Possibly already attached. Possibly already started feeding.
That was a hard thing to admit, because the nightly check was the one thing that made me feel like a responsible owner. It just wasn't actually stopping anything from happening in the first place.
Avoiding "the bad fields" — as if there were good ones
I used to think ticks lived in woodland, or dropped from trees, or only existed in the long grass at the back of the meadow she loves. So I'd steer her away from "the bad bit". Turns out ticks sit near the tips of any grass and low vegetation, front legs out, waiting to grab whatever brushes past. It's called questing.
Knee-high grass in full sun is about as perfect as it gets for them. So is the verge at the edge of the path. So is the bracken on the moor. There is no "safe walk." There's just walks where you happen to notice and walks where you don't.
Almost going for the chewable tablets
At one point I almost went for the chewable tablets you give monthly. They're convenient, no question. But the more I read, the less comfortable I felt about giving her something systemic every single month, all year round.
And it wasn't only what I read. A couple of people I know told me about side effects their own dogs had after the chews — nothing I want to dramatise or claim is typical, but enough that I personally didn't want to risk it with mine. That's a personal call, and worth a proper chat with your vet if you're considering them. For me, I wanted something that didn't go inside her at all.
Buying the wrong kind of collar without realising there was more than one kind
This was the one that genuinely floored me when I figured it out. She'd been wearing a well-known collar the whole time — the one the vet recommended, the one that's meant to be the gold standard. And I was still pulling ticks off her.
It turns out most of the popular collars and spot-ons work by killing the tick after it bites. The tick has to attach and start feeding for the product to do its job. The label doesn't lie about that — it just doesn't spell out that the bite happens first. Which explained perfectly why a dog "fully protected" could still come home with a tick on her.
So I wasn't doing anything wrong. I'd just bought the wrong kind of thing without realising there was more than one kind. There's also a category called repellent collars — the idea is simple once you hear it: instead of waiting for the tick to bite and then killing it, the collar gives off a scent ticks won't climb through, so they let go of the grass before they ever reach the dog. No bite, no problem to begin with.
A friend at the park had pointed me to a small UK brand called SweetPaws. I want to be honest here — I'm not partnered with them, I don't get anything if you buy it. I'm just telling you what worked for me. You can find repellent collars elsewhere too. If you do, the thing to check is the ingredients. Mine is 100% natural — lemon eucalyptus, lavender, citronella and a few other plant oils, and that combination is what does the repelling.
One thing that actually made me trust them: they say a natural collar lasts about two months, and that's it. No eight-month miracle claims. Anything natural simply doesn't last longer than that — so when I see a "natural" collar promising six or eight months, I assume someone's not being straight with me. The honesty is part of why I went with them.
And I won't pretend it was overnight. It got gradually quieter — fewer each week, then the odd one, then walks where I genuinely didn't find anything. That slow, steady change is what convinced me it was real.
This is the one I use →
Those were the four mistakes, in the order I made them. The first three I changed in a weekend. The fourth one is what actually moved the needle.
Honestly though, looking back, the repellent collar made the biggest difference of all of them. Not because the other things didn't matter — they did — but because for the first time I felt like I was actually doing something before the tick ever got to her, instead of just dealing with it after. That shift, from reacting to preventing, is what finally let me breathe again on those walks.