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After the trail
How to do a tick check after Dogtown Common
Dogtown Common is 3,600 acres of woods, boulders and leaf litter, which is to say 3,600 acres of tick habitat. A tick check is not a glance at the coat in the driveway. It is a method, it takes five minutes, and it works best done twice.
What you need
What you need: fingers, a fine comb, a light and a white towel
The most important tool is your fingertips. Unfed deer tick nymphs are the size of a poppy seed and the same colour as most dogs, so you will feel them long before you see them. Add a flea comb for the feathering on legs and tail, a headlamp or phone light for ears and groin, and a white towel or sheet to lay a dark dog on so that anything walking off the coat shows up. Keep a tick tool or fine-pointed tweezers in the car, and a jar with a lid to hold whatever you find for the vet.
Have the prevention conversation with your vet before the season, not after the first bite. The CDC and the AVMA both describe how ticks find a host and what monthly prevention does and does not cover, and the point they agree on is that a product does not replace the check. Our page on removing a tick covers the pull itself. This one is about finding it in the first place.
- Fingertips first, eyes second
- A flea comb for feathering and tail
- A light for ears, armpits and groin
- A white towel for dark coats
- A tick tool and a lidded jar in the glovebox
The method
The method: head to tail, in the same order every time
Do the first pass at the trailhead, before your dog gets into the car. Ticks picked up in the last mile are still walking, and a car seat is where they walk to. Do the full pass at home, on the towel, in good light, with the dog lying on one side and then the other. The order below exists so that you never skip a zone, because the zones people skip are the zones ticks prefer.
Go slowly through the fur against the grain, with flat fingers, feeling for a bump the size of a grain of sand or a small firm bead. A tick that has been attached for hours feels like a skin tag with legs. Part the coat to the skin over anything you feel. Long or double coats take longer; a doodle after a wet afternoon on the Common can take fifteen minutes, and that is time well spent.
- 01
Head first: the muzzle, the eyelids, the folds of the lips and the chin.
- 02
Ears: inside the flap, the base where the ear meets the skull, and the fold behind it.
- 03
Neck and collar line: lift the collar off and run your fingers all the way round underneath it.
- 04
Front legs: the armpits, the elbows, then each toe spread apart and the webbing between the pads.
- 05
Body: the chest, the belly, the groin and the inner thighs, with the dog on its side.
- 06
Back legs and tail: the hocks, between the back toes, the base of the tail and underneath it.
- 07
Finish with the comb through any feathering and a last look at the towel for anything that walked off.
Where it goes wrong
Where it goes wrong: the eyes-only check and the six-hour gap
The check most people do is a look. They ruffle the back, glance at the ears and call it done, and the tick in the armpit stays put. A visual check on a black Lab is close to useless; the whole method is touch. The second failure is timing. A check at bedtime, six hours after the walk, gives a tick most of the window it needs to attach and start feeding. Check at the car and check at home, and treat the second check as the real one.
The third is stopping at the first one. A dog that carried one tick out of the Common carried several. Finish the whole sequence every time, and check yourself and your clothes too; the nymphs that came home on your socks will find the dog later. Ticks in a white bathtub are easier to see than ticks on a rug, so the bath after a wet trail day is not a bad idea either.
- Touch, not looking, on every dark coat
- Two checks: trailhead and home
- One tick found means keep going
- Check your own socks and cuffs
The Cape Ann version
The Cape Ann version: April to November, and the trails that carry the most
Tick season here runs April to November, with a spring peak of nymphs and a fall run of adults that stays active on any day above freezing. The leaf litter, stone walls and low brush of Dogtown Common, Ravenswood Park in West Gloucester and the Greenbelt trails are exactly where ticks wait, and a dog that pushes through the understory off the main path collects more than one that stays on the cart roads. Halibut Point State Park requires a leash, which keeps dogs on the granite and out of the scrub.
The beach is not tick-free either. Dune grass at Good Harbor and Wingaersheek on the legal dog days from October 1 to April 30 holds ticks well into November. After the beach the check is the same, with sand in the coat making the comb more useful than the fingers. Rinse the salt and the sand first, then check on the towel.
When to hand it to us
When to hand it to us: a bath after the trail, and the vet for anything embedded
A bath in the Dogtown Grooming studio is a tick check by another name. The coat is wet through, parted by the water and then by the high-velocity dryer, and a groomer's hands go over every zone above. Baths are priced by size, from $55 for a dog up to 25 pounds, and can be added to a daycare day or the last morning of an overnight stay, so a Friday on the Common becomes a Saturday groom. Tell the groomer where you walked.
If a tick is embedded and you cannot get a clean grip, if the site is swollen or oozing, or if your dog is limping, feverish or off its food in the weeks after a bite, that is your vet's job, not ours. Out of hours, the Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital in Woburn is open 24 hours. Bring the tick in the jar.
- A bath by size, from $55, doubles as a full-coat check
- Embedded, swollen or oozing: your vet
- Woburn's 24-hour hospital out of hours
At Dogtown
After the Common
A bath that reaches the skin, a walker who sends a note after every outing, and a daycare yard with no leaf litter in it.
Asked and answered
Questions people ask about this
Short, complete answers you can act on today. More in the full FAQ.
How long does a tick need to be attached to be a problem?
What does a tick feel like on a dog?
Do I still need to check if my dog is on tick prevention?
Does Dogtown check for ticks after a walk or a daycare day?
Should I keep the tick after I remove it?
More questions? Read the full FAQ
Sources
- CDC ticks
- AVMA external parasites
- Ravenswood Park, The Trustees
- Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital
Rules and dates change. We re-check every beach, licensing and ordinance page each spring and fall; the source above is the current word.
Keep reading
Next step
Trail day, then a bath day.
Add a bath to a daycare day, or book the free evaluation so your dog can join the group after the next walk on the Common.
- 01Free evaluationWeekdays 6:30 – 9:30 AM
- 02Book a dayOnline, in the app or by phone
- 03Play, rest, repeatReport card at pick-up
