The one sentence in a car park that changed how I think about ticks
By Claire Bennet · dog mum to one very muddy Australian Shepherd · about a 5 min read
Okay, so the thought I wouldn't tell you about in the caption is ticks. Obviously. If you're still reading this, you knew that already — and you've probably had the same thought I have, the one that doesn't really go away between April and October.
I'd been having that thought on every single walk for over a year. I'd tried everything I thought I was supposed to try. None of it actually fixed it. Then one afternoon, in the car park at the field she's running through in that video, a woman I'd been nodding at for months finally said something to me. One sentence. And it genuinely changed how I think about the whole thing.
I want to walk you through everything I'd tried before she said it, because I think the journey is the bit that matters. If you skip to the end you'll miss why it actually clicked.
The field in question. The car park is just out of frame on the right.
The nightly tick check, like a ritual
For months my whole defence was checking her on the kitchen floor every evening — ears, armpits, behind the legs, the lot. It made me feel like I was doing something. And to be fair, finding them is better than not finding them. But the truth I didn't want to admit is that by the time I'm pulling one off her, it's already on her. Possibly already attached. Possibly already started feeding.
The nightly check is damage control. It's not protection. That was the first thing I had to be honest with myself about.
Switching collars, three times
Personal note here, so you have the context: I don't go down the route of monthly chews or spot-ons with mine. Not a debate I'm having on a public post, it's just where I've landed. So I was working through the "natural" shelf instead, and let me tell you that shelf is a minefield.
The first one smelled lovely for two weeks and then smelled of dog. The second one claimed six months of protection, which I now know is a giant red flag. The third one came in beautiful packaging and did essentially nothing. By the third one I was ready to give up and just resign myself to the nightly ritual forever.
That there was more than one kind of collar
This is where the car park comes in. The woman I'd been nodding at for months — her dog is a lab, total sweetheart — finally said the thing as we were both loading dogs into boots. I'd just mentioned, half joking, that I'd basically given up. She said:
"Yours kills them after they bite. Mine just stops them getting on her in the first place. There's a difference."
That was it. That was the sentence. And it's so obvious in hindsight I felt a bit thick for never thinking about it.
It turns out most of the popular collars and spot-ons — the well-known ones, the vet-recommended ones — 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 it. It just doesn't spell out that the bite is part of the process. Which explained perfectly why a dog "fully protected" could still come home with one on her.
There's another category. Repellent collars. They give off a scent ticks won't climb through, so the tick lets go of the grass before it ever reaches the dog. No bite to begin with. The whole problem prevented, not managed.
I'd been buying the wrong kind for over a year and didn't know it.
The one she pointed me to
It's 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 this. I'm just telling you what worked. Repellent collars exist from other places too. If you go elsewhere, what to look for 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.
Two things made me trust them straight away. The first: they don't tell you it lasts six or eight months. They say two months, max. No miracle claims. Anything natural simply does not last longer than that — so when I see a natural collar promising six or eight months, I now assume someone's not being straight with me. The honesty is what tipped me over.
And I won't pretend the difference 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 and not just a good week.
This is the one I use →
So that's the whole story. The ritual that didn't fix anything, the three collars that didn't fix anything, and one sentence in a car park that did.
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.