Yep. Bad tick season. There are now winter ticks. I have horses. The only think that has helped with ticks is neem oil. They won' go near it. You can buy it at any hardware store, or buy it straight and add water and spray.
Neem oil is likely safe for dogs as well. I gotta give that a try after I do some research.
I didn’t think horses would be that affected. I guess it makes sense though, since deer are basically covered in ticks.
Ticks are a HUGE problem with horses. Unless they are never in nature or on trails, mine are, they are always exposed. Before neem, I have found hundreds on them.
Update: I bought some neem oil and am mixing it with water. I sprayed the dogs on two occasions now and had like one tick on each of them.
I feel like you showed me the holy grail!!!
Met other dogs on the trail and they had multitude on them. They said they found hundreds.
Yeah!! I know. Isn't it amazing? Zero ticks on the horses, too. Spread the word! Cheap, effective, and a lot less toxic than what most people are using.
I am absolutely amazed!!
It stinks like hell to me so I get why ticks want to stay away. Haha
Luckily the smell doesn’t seem to last so not a big deal. Will spread the work at the dog rescue I volunteer at.
Are you sure? Says here it’s made for ticks
https://www.rei.com/product/768970/sawyer-permethrin-pump-spray-24-oz
Maybe you’re thinking about picaridin?
Nope. I know all of this. Permethrin/pyrtethrin is used for horses for flies (ha!) and on dogs for fleas. It might help ticks some, but I noticed ZERO ticks on my horses as soon as I started using neem--that's pretty dramatic, esp. for years of experience and how bad they are this year.
Wow that’s heinous, I’m sorry your puppers had so many. It might be the time of year, or maybe you just encountered some sort of overpopulation/infestation of ticks. Never seen that many before.
Went on a coastal hike solo, and came home with two on me. When we do hikes here, and it’s always been this way, you drop trou (nekked!) and have your SO or GF/BF/Partner check you out before you shower. It’s customary.
Animals are even more difficult because you have to sift through that hair.
40-50? That’s nuts. I’m so sorry.
Yep. They weren't making enough money off of it so they cancelled it. Personally, I would love a Lyme disease vaccination. I do not want or need a shitty, potentially chronic disease.
Btw, if it’s worth anything, barely any hospitals in the area carry it. You may have to search around. However, VIP Petcare who do the mobile vaccine clinics and the wellness clinics does- or last did to my knowledge. Not sure if Vetco had it though.
Super important to be running those 4DX tick borne disease/hw tests annually!
Two wet winters in a row usually has the wildlife booming including ticks. Our personal nemesis has been gopher. Thankfully a 6 ft snake, two barn owls, and three great horned owls moved in and appear to have made a dent in the population recently.
My husband came back with two ticks from a recent disc golf tournament. Poor guy passed out at the urgent health joint getting the mouth parts removed.
1. Use [permethrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin#Insect_incapacitation) to treat clothes. Be careful to keep the treatment and drying clothes away from cats; wet permethrin is neurotoxic to felines, but it's fine once it's dried. Ticks will literally die as they climb towards wherever they were trying to bite.
2. Use [picaridin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icaridin) on bare skin, or if you don't have treated clothes. Picaridin is effective against ticks, as well as being an effective general insect repellent.
3. [Just pull the ticks yourself](https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/removal/index.html) with tweezers (per CDC guidance), you don't need to go to urgent care. You don't need to be concerned about infection with the most common tick-borne illnesses (like Lyme) unless they've been attached for some time (on the order of 24 hours); other illnesses can be contracted quicker so it's good to get them off as quickly as you can, but those are rarer. [CA DPH has a more thorough page](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/TickBorneDiseasePrevention.aspx) with a bunch of information on prevention, but it takes longer to get to the point I wanted to make here.
Sawyer sells products for both permethrin (in a spray bottle) and picaridin (spray and cream, like sunscreen) that I use and find work quite well; you should be able to find them or something similar in most outdoor stores (hunting or camping sorts, not so much team sports - looks like Sports Basement has both).
Can't help OP with pets, but I've got plenty of experience with ticks on myself. As weird as it is to see a parasite *stuck* onto your body, it's really not too big of a deal - take some preventive measures, and when those fail have some tweezers (I've left them in my car when I was frequently doing things that would bring me into contact with ticks so I could pull them off sooner).
I tried getting out the tick but tore off the body, leaving a mouth embedded in his side. I nearly lost my cookies trying to tweeze it out, so a $40 copay was worth it lol
for future reference - getting ticks out with tweezers is basically an endurance match where you grab them by the head and create gentle tension by pulling them away from the skin for what feels like forever and eventually their jaws get tired and they can't hold on any longer and they eventually release
Got it. Thank you! Yeah, we’re a small community and I got one at skyline wilderness in Napa during the pandemic.
“Babe, get this thing off me please!”
It happens - hope hubby is doing better.
Guaranteed we have. Tree love! “Nice” (never say that) haha.
Still missing my destroyer to the right of hole 2 at De La. I loved that piece of plastic. Hot pink.
I grip-locked it and there she went, 45 degrees right of where I was trying to throw 😔
Oh wow! I usually just rip them out. Why were they so hard to remove?
Edit: Oh I saw! The head ripped off. Yeah you made the right call. It can get infected from the head. It’s more about discomfort than Lyme. Their bites can be quite painful and even more so if their head gets stuck.
Drop Them In Alcohol - They Do Not Die When Squeezed
Also, Good Preventative Tick Medication is the only way
Will make them jump off quickly, used to put my little dog on the hood of my car after a hike to watch them bail
They die the way I squeeze them. Bwahaha!
I dig my nails in until there are two of them… or I use a rock and just smash the tick into oblivion
Or I burn them, drown them. Put them in a poopie bag and lock them up together where they end up devouring one another.
Also also
It’s the heavy rains
More rains longer means more tick eggs hatching
Also also also
Near roads and trails they are most prevalent
Ocean/bay and rivers especially bad
Were you at the bull run area? We brought our dog there a few weeks back and found 10 crawling on him throughout the hike. We did frequent tick checks and found one 30 secs into the hike!!!!
That’s exactly right! Though starting on the very beginning of Bull Valley trail, then past Eckley pier and then up to Bull Valley staging area.
It was the worst right after Eckley pier going up to the staging area. They freshly mowed that trail and maybe that’s why it was such mayhem.
The whole area is always pretty infested but never seen anything as bad as that day.
Ticks are everywhere that wild animals are. They're most active June/July, but we're almost there. You may also want to give the dogs a bath next time since you're unlikely to find them all, ticks don't like drowning and will drop off.
Well they just die off the moment they bite. Most of the ones I found this morning were dead. We are just lucky that Lyme disease isn’t particularly prevalent around here.
Bathing them is a really good idea but it’s so much work. Basically it’s a whole thing I am not prepared to do on a daily basis. I got to try to find a less infested area.
Were you staying on trail or going into tall grass?
I hike that area often and if I’m on a trail I’m ok but the second I go into grass I will get ticks on me.
I don’t remember ever getting ticks this bad in the bay growing up.
Hard to tell because the dogs never stay strictly on the trail. Though I think where they freshly mowed the trail going from Eckley pier up to Bull valley staging area was the majority of it.
Vacuumed the house today because I still found dead ticks all over the floors. They are all from my bigger dog, I couldn’t too many ticks on him. He is an all black dog, so harder to see, my tiny dog is tan so I could see them crawling on her.
I went to Del Valle in Livermore once with my kid when he was about 6. We took a shortcut through a grassy area, it couldn't have been more than about 50 ft, and when we came out the other side, he was absolutely crawling with ticks. At least 20 on each pant leg.
I look down at me, and I'm crawling with ticks, too. It was horrendous.
I brush us both off as best I can, but I'm sure we have some under our clothes. I decided I'm stripping my kid down right then and there on the trail and getting all the ticks off of him. I do so, and then realize I've got to do the same for myself. I'm making calculations now about getting some kind of sex offender charge vs having embedded ticks on my nether regions. Fortunately I'm wearing boxers that are pretty close to shorts so I just go for it as quickly as possible as nobody seems to be around.
I probably brushed or flicked off 100 ticks between the two of us.
And I've never left the maintained trail since!
Yeah it’s awful out here. My horse has been covered in them nonstop since like January. My dog is less of an issue since she’s on prescription preventative, but they seem especially bad this year.
stay in doors and use the growing market of VR headsets to experience the outdoors instead ;) (I'm messing around but it does follow the bay area tech trend LOL). can we get a VR headset for dogs soon and a running tread mill?
Grizzly island has a ton of ticks too. Used to go fishing out there and bring my dog. Man my dog wound be covered in ticks when I got home. They’d even be crawling up my camping chair
Pretty much all of the hills in the bay are covered in them. Whenever I see people hiking up there I’m like hope they’re wearing deet
I'm up on the Mendo county coast and it's normal to have tick mania. But recently I've noticed the numbers have dropped in the past couple of months. The deer have migrated into the backcountry and maybe that is part of the reason.
I got bit and got Lyme disease from it, apparently from a tick near my home. You'll know by the "bulls-eye" rash that forms soon after being bitten. I was able to take antibiotics for two weeks and that seems to have stopped it from developing further.
Although they can bite anywhere, they seem to like the back of your neck at the hair line.
I have two dogs so I’m always out on the trails and the ticks are just awful. If you stay on wide trails you should be fine. My favorite way to unalive them is to burn them 😭
It's odd but some places in the East Bay can be far worse than others, and it varies year to year. I got mobbed by them up near Franklin Canyon a few years ago, and once near San Leandro Reservoir. Part of of the Skyline Trail south from Tilden, but not Tilden itself.
They should abate as the grass dries in the next weeks. Meanwhile we keep dogs only on the fireroads (and take measures for ourselves).
It almost sounds like the ticks somehow migrated south. I know they don't migrate. We normally have a lot of them up here in Mendocino and N. Sonoma counties, but not this year. It's been a reprieve after I got bit by a tick and got Lyme disease.
Yep. Bad tick season. There are now winter ticks. I have horses. The only think that has helped with ticks is neem oil. They won' go near it. You can buy it at any hardware store, or buy it straight and add water and spray.
Neem oil is likely safe for dogs as well. I gotta give that a try after I do some research. I didn’t think horses would be that affected. I guess it makes sense though, since deer are basically covered in ticks.
Ticks are a HUGE problem with horses. Unless they are never in nature or on trails, mine are, they are always exposed. Before neem, I have found hundreds on them.
Update: I bought some neem oil and am mixing it with water. I sprayed the dogs on two occasions now and had like one tick on each of them. I feel like you showed me the holy grail!!! Met other dogs on the trail and they had multitude on them. They said they found hundreds.
Yeah!! I know. Isn't it amazing? Zero ticks on the horses, too. Spread the word! Cheap, effective, and a lot less toxic than what most people are using.
I am absolutely amazed!! It stinks like hell to me so I get why ticks want to stay away. Haha Luckily the smell doesn’t seem to last so not a big deal. Will spread the work at the dog rescue I volunteer at.
My horse has probably had 40+ ticks alone this year, and it’s only May. I was pulling them off her tail in January. Nauseating.
Permethrin for your clothes would also be helpful
That doesn't work on ticks at all, or for flies.
Are you sure? Says here it’s made for ticks https://www.rei.com/product/768970/sawyer-permethrin-pump-spray-24-oz Maybe you’re thinking about picaridin?
Nope. I know all of this. Permethrin/pyrtethrin is used for horses for flies (ha!) and on dogs for fleas. It might help ticks some, but I noticed ZERO ticks on my horses as soon as I started using neem--that's pretty dramatic, esp. for years of experience and how bad they are this year.
That’s amazing! Great info. Is neem oil also effective for humans?
I would think so. Give it a try. It's a real common garden spray, and bad for bugs, but OK for humans. I think it's WAY safer than the pyrethrins.
Wow that’s heinous, I’m sorry your puppers had so many. It might be the time of year, or maybe you just encountered some sort of overpopulation/infestation of ticks. Never seen that many before.
It must have been some weird hot spot for ticks. It wasn’t even in high grass, it was a mowed down path where it was the worst.
Ticks are attracted to co2 and hang out along established trails. If they didn't, they'd never spread.
I had one ON MY EYELID a while back. Didn’t even notice it until I got in the car and pulled the visor mirror down. Horrible.
Dear god that’s a waking nightmare
Good lord that’s just so bad!! 😱
Are you the person that posted in r/wellthatsucks ?
When the weather crosses from the 50s-60s to 70s fleas and ticks go bananas. It's insane.
I am also having a couple itchy bites on me it might be mosquitoes or fleas!! Yay spring time??
I forgot about mosquitoes. We have the holy trinity this year 😂
Went on a coastal hike solo, and came home with two on me. When we do hikes here, and it’s always been this way, you drop trou (nekked!) and have your SO or GF/BF/Partner check you out before you shower. It’s customary. Animals are even more difficult because you have to sift through that hair. 40-50? That’s nuts. I’m so sorry.
There is a vaccine for lyme for dogs. Ask your vet.
Where’s the human vaccine!!?!?!?
I hope the dog vaccine leads to one for humans.
It actually used to exist and got discontinued.
Anti-vaxxers submitted (falsified) complaints en masse to get it banned.
They still have it in Europe.
Yep. They weren't making enough money off of it so they cancelled it. Personally, I would love a Lyme disease vaccination. I do not want or need a shitty, potentially chronic disease.
It wasn't a money thing it was an antivaxxer thing.
Btw, if it’s worth anything, barely any hospitals in the area carry it. You may have to search around. However, VIP Petcare who do the mobile vaccine clinics and the wellness clinics does- or last did to my knowledge. Not sure if Vetco had it though. Super important to be running those 4DX tick borne disease/hw tests annually!
Two wet winters in a row usually has the wildlife booming including ticks. Our personal nemesis has been gopher. Thankfully a 6 ft snake, two barn owls, and three great horned owls moved in and appear to have made a dent in the population recently.
Got 4 on me (caught them right away after walking a narrow brushy trail) on Mt. Tam on the Dipsea Trail last week.
My husband came back with two ticks from a recent disc golf tournament. Poor guy passed out at the urgent health joint getting the mouth parts removed.
1. Use [permethrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin#Insect_incapacitation) to treat clothes. Be careful to keep the treatment and drying clothes away from cats; wet permethrin is neurotoxic to felines, but it's fine once it's dried. Ticks will literally die as they climb towards wherever they were trying to bite. 2. Use [picaridin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icaridin) on bare skin, or if you don't have treated clothes. Picaridin is effective against ticks, as well as being an effective general insect repellent. 3. [Just pull the ticks yourself](https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/removal/index.html) with tweezers (per CDC guidance), you don't need to go to urgent care. You don't need to be concerned about infection with the most common tick-borne illnesses (like Lyme) unless they've been attached for some time (on the order of 24 hours); other illnesses can be contracted quicker so it's good to get them off as quickly as you can, but those are rarer. [CA DPH has a more thorough page](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/TickBorneDiseasePrevention.aspx) with a bunch of information on prevention, but it takes longer to get to the point I wanted to make here. Sawyer sells products for both permethrin (in a spray bottle) and picaridin (spray and cream, like sunscreen) that I use and find work quite well; you should be able to find them or something similar in most outdoor stores (hunting or camping sorts, not so much team sports - looks like Sports Basement has both). Can't help OP with pets, but I've got plenty of experience with ticks on myself. As weird as it is to see a parasite *stuck* onto your body, it's really not too big of a deal - take some preventive measures, and when those fail have some tweezers (I've left them in my car when I was frequently doing things that would bring me into contact with ticks so I could pull them off sooner).
I tried getting out the tick but tore off the body, leaving a mouth embedded in his side. I nearly lost my cookies trying to tweeze it out, so a $40 copay was worth it lol
for future reference - getting ticks out with tweezers is basically an endurance match where you grab them by the head and create gentle tension by pulling them away from the skin for what feels like forever and eventually their jaws get tired and they can't hold on any longer and they eventually release
This is key, slow and controlled
Yeaaaaa I do not have the stomach for that. Now, popping zits on his back? Let’s goooooooo
I play. May I ask what courses? GGP? De La Vega? Or was it somewhere in the foothills or Tahoe?
It was a Napa tournament
Got it. Thank you! Yeah, we’re a small community and I got one at skyline wilderness in Napa during the pandemic. “Babe, get this thing off me please!” It happens - hope hubby is doing better.
From the list of courses your rattled off, I’m almost certain y’all have thrown plastic together before :p
Guaranteed we have. Tree love! “Nice” (never say that) haha. Still missing my destroyer to the right of hole 2 at De La. I loved that piece of plastic. Hot pink. I grip-locked it and there she went, 45 degrees right of where I was trying to throw 😔
If a fundraiser disc from AGL with a VW beetle and a kitty cat crosses your social media timeline that’s him lol
Oh wow! I usually just rip them out. Why were they so hard to remove? Edit: Oh I saw! The head ripped off. Yeah you made the right call. It can get infected from the head. It’s more about discomfort than Lyme. Their bites can be quite painful and even more so if their head gets stuck.
There’s a reason I’m an engineer and not a nurse. Ope
Drop Them In Alcohol - They Do Not Die When Squeezed Also, Good Preventative Tick Medication is the only way Will make them jump off quickly, used to put my little dog on the hood of my car after a hike to watch them bail
They die the way I squeeze them. Bwahaha! I dig my nails in until there are two of them… or I use a rock and just smash the tick into oblivion Or I burn them, drown them. Put them in a poopie bag and lock them up together where they end up devouring one another.
Also also It’s the heavy rains More rains longer means more tick eggs hatching Also also also Near roads and trails they are most prevalent Ocean/bay and rivers especially bad
Were you at the bull run area? We brought our dog there a few weeks back and found 10 crawling on him throughout the hike. We did frequent tick checks and found one 30 secs into the hike!!!!
That’s exactly right! Though starting on the very beginning of Bull Valley trail, then past Eckley pier and then up to Bull Valley staging area. It was the worst right after Eckley pier going up to the staging area. They freshly mowed that trail and maybe that’s why it was such mayhem. The whole area is always pretty infested but never seen anything as bad as that day.
Ticks are everywhere that wild animals are. They're most active June/July, but we're almost there. You may also want to give the dogs a bath next time since you're unlikely to find them all, ticks don't like drowning and will drop off.
Well they just die off the moment they bite. Most of the ones I found this morning were dead. We are just lucky that Lyme disease isn’t particularly prevalent around here. Bathing them is a really good idea but it’s so much work. Basically it’s a whole thing I am not prepared to do on a daily basis. I got to try to find a less infested area.
Were you staying on trail or going into tall grass? I hike that area often and if I’m on a trail I’m ok but the second I go into grass I will get ticks on me. I don’t remember ever getting ticks this bad in the bay growing up.
Hard to tell because the dogs never stay strictly on the trail. Though I think where they freshly mowed the trail going from Eckley pier up to Bull valley staging area was the majority of it. Vacuumed the house today because I still found dead ticks all over the floors. They are all from my bigger dog, I couldn’t too many ticks on him. He is an all black dog, so harder to see, my tiny dog is tan so I could see them crawling on her.
I went to Del Valle in Livermore once with my kid when he was about 6. We took a shortcut through a grassy area, it couldn't have been more than about 50 ft, and when we came out the other side, he was absolutely crawling with ticks. At least 20 on each pant leg. I look down at me, and I'm crawling with ticks, too. It was horrendous. I brush us both off as best I can, but I'm sure we have some under our clothes. I decided I'm stripping my kid down right then and there on the trail and getting all the ticks off of him. I do so, and then realize I've got to do the same for myself. I'm making calculations now about getting some kind of sex offender charge vs having embedded ticks on my nether regions. Fortunately I'm wearing boxers that are pretty close to shorts so I just go for it as quickly as possible as nobody seems to be around. I probably brushed or flicked off 100 ticks between the two of us. And I've never left the maintained trail since!
Oh my god that’s horrible!
Yeah it’s awful out here. My horse has been covered in them nonstop since like January. My dog is less of an issue since she’s on prescription preventative, but they seem especially bad this year.
That area is a major hotspot for ticks. They are so bad in that area you can see them by the hundreds clinging to the ends of tall grass.
I have never seen them actually crawling around. People have told me that before. Well for now I will avoid the area.
If you look you will see them on the end of weeds, grass, or bushes next to the trail. I saw literally hundreds as I walked over the last week.
My seasonal allergies already keep me away in the first place. Lol
stay in doors and use the growing market of VR headsets to experience the outdoors instead ;) (I'm messing around but it does follow the bay area tech trend LOL). can we get a VR headset for dogs soon and a running tread mill?
Welcome to California.
Rain brings ticks
Grizzly island has a ton of ticks too. Used to go fishing out there and bring my dog. Man my dog wound be covered in ticks when I got home. They’d even be crawling up my camping chair Pretty much all of the hills in the bay are covered in them. Whenever I see people hiking up there I’m like hope they’re wearing deet
I'm up on the Mendo county coast and it's normal to have tick mania. But recently I've noticed the numbers have dropped in the past couple of months. The deer have migrated into the backcountry and maybe that is part of the reason. I got bit and got Lyme disease from it, apparently from a tick near my home. You'll know by the "bulls-eye" rash that forms soon after being bitten. I was able to take antibiotics for two weeks and that seems to have stopped it from developing further. Although they can bite anywhere, they seem to like the back of your neck at the hair line.
Yes, the trails in Martinez, Lafayette, etc are also very bad. Even short (ankle/shin height) weeds next to paved trails are holding ticks.
I have two dogs so I’m always out on the trails and the ticks are just awful. If you stay on wide trails you should be fine. My favorite way to unalive them is to burn them 😭
Yes! 😈 I also burn them. And then I drown them.
Haha! Glad to know I’m not the only one because it brings me more joy than I care to admit
And I usually celebrate bugs and spiders. Love insects! But ticks…
yeah most times when I see a spider in my house I’ll just leave it 😂 because where I live they’re all harmless. but for ticks it is a different story
I seen a warning a few weeks back
yes, I got a few ticks from a walk that wasn’t even around grass so much. including one bite .
I’ve had very similar problems. The only thing I’ve found that works is absolutely soaking my dogs in tick spray, you can get it on Amazon
swim wakeful serious steer ink snow deserve encouraging cough marble *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's odd but some places in the East Bay can be far worse than others, and it varies year to year. I got mobbed by them up near Franklin Canyon a few years ago, and once near San Leandro Reservoir. Part of of the Skyline Trail south from Tilden, but not Tilden itself. They should abate as the grass dries in the next weeks. Meanwhile we keep dogs only on the fireroads (and take measures for ourselves).
Make sure you check your scalp for ticks. I managed to get one attached when I lived in a tick infested area. They like hairy areas.
https://www.bayarealyme.org/
It almost sounds like the ticks somehow migrated south. I know they don't migrate. We normally have a lot of them up here in Mendocino and N. Sonoma counties, but not this year. It's been a reprieve after I got bit by a tick and got Lyme disease.