The dreaded tick is my mortal enemy because I know that dogs can die from excessive infestation. And since our dogs stay in the house, 2 of them sleep inside our bedroom, it is horrorful to imagine that they have ticks in their body. We have that frisking hour in the morning and in the afternoon, just to check on the coats of our pets if they are free from ticks. And when we find an enemy, we announce it so everyone will know. This year is a good one because we haven't seen a tick. But in the previous years, there would be one or 2 ticks in our dogs that we find once a week or so. And when the attack becomes regular, we would fumigate the interior of the house and also the exterior. There was a year that our house was attacked by legions of ticks. Here is the link to that published article - http://petizone.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-great-tick-attack.html
You might want to consider a flea and tick collar. Yes, these aren't completely effective but they do help to eliminate some of the tick problems that can be faced when having a dog. I know how horrible ticks can be I have dealt with this same issue myself with my dogs over the years. As I said before these collars do help.
Interestingly, I live in Maine, where I know we have ticks, and I even spend time in the woods, clearing brush, cutting trees, and just walking through the woods, yet I have not seen a tick since moving to Maine. In fact, I haven't seen a tick since I left Michigan in 1971, but until I moved to Maine in 2001, I haven't lived in a place where they were common. Since I started feeding my cats premium foods, they haven't had fleas either, and I haven't had to use poisons.
Our vet advised us against the flea collar. I actually had bought 2 already before I asked the vet. All she said was the flea collar might be toxic and it is not natural. The only thing we can do is not prevention but contingent action like the regular monitoring of our dogs for the presence of ticks. When we moved in this house in 2001, we only had 1 dog then, our very first dog we named Jedi. She sleeps in our bedroom so it is easy to spot if she has ticks because she becomes restless. Gee, the ticks were as big as raisins and they are getting to be bigger and bigger in number as days go by. Well, the old owner of this house has dogs and that probably were the source of ticks hiding inside the concrete corners of the house. What we could do was to fumigate the house with malathion - this toxic chemical is our only defense against pesky insects. It is also good for termintes. It took us several weekly fumigation before our bedroom was cleared of ticks and our dog as well.
Once I moved into a house that had fleas from the pets which were still in the house once they moved out. It was necessary to have the house sprayed to get rid of the pests. It was not a good time for my family as the bugs got into our beds and bit my familiy.
I think I've mentioned this before but it may have been in another forum; either way, I don't mind repeating myself. I have had cats for all but a very short time in my life, and have had as many as five cats at a time, not counting kittens. Mostly, my cats have been allowed to go outdoors. Even now, I let them out during the day when I can be out there with them, or at least check up on them from time to time. Up until about thirteen years ago, I have had problems with fleas from time to time. One summer, I thought I might have to burn the house, it was so bad. We had the cats flea-dipped by the veterinarian, and moved to another house that belonged to a friend of ours for a month. During that time, I used sprayers, foggers, bug bombs, and pretty much everything on the market. We finally hired a pest control company to come in, signing a contract for them to come by once a month for six months. That got rid of the flea infestation, but I would still find a flea on my cats every now and then when I combed them with a flea comb. Around that time, one of my cats (Lydia) was having a problem with her fur, actually a worsening of a problem that she had always had. She would chew her fur wherever she could reach it, resulting in bald spots. Plus, she looked like she felt miserable. The veterinarian, at first, thought that it was perhaps related to fleas, but he wasn't finding any fleas on her. Then he put her on a steroid. That seemed to help for a while, but it never got rid of the problem, and I didn't want to keep her on steroids for the rest of her life. My wife found a job with Blue Buffalo, a premium pet food company, and I later went to work for them too. Learning more about pet nutrition, I came to realize the Science Diet was not the best that I could do for my cats, despite the fact that nearly every veterinary office pushes it. I began feeding them Blue Buffalo foods, which are primarily meat, fish or poultry, and are without corn, soy, wheat or byproducts. Within a couple of weeks, Lydia quit picking at her fur. It grew back, and looked very good. My other cats, including Cutie and Lydia's mom, began acting much younger than they had. They were all healthier and more active. Since then, I have fed only premium pet foods to my cats, and have had very few veterinary bills, this despite the fact that two of them are twenty-five. Bringing this back to the topic of this thread, I have only seen three fleas in the past thirteen years. I comb my cats whenever they come back indoors, and three times I found one flea on one of them. There have been no infestations, and the fleas don't seem to find a comfortable home on my cats anymore. Including summers where my next door neighbors were complaining about how bad the fleas are, my cats rarely bring a flea in with them. I believe that a healthy cat has a built-in resistance to such things but, whatever it is, it works. I have not had to use poisons on either the cats or the house since.
@Ken Anderson, that flea story was scary to imagine that you have to think of burning the house just to get rid of those fleas. I understand that fleas are so irritating because their bite is times 5 itchy than the mosquito bite. And sometimes the venom in that bite would cause a swelling and a small rupture in the skin such that people would mistake for scabbies. The only defense we could put up with fleas is the vaporub. When we see a flea, we would apply vaporub on our hand that can catch the flea that would stick on my hand. And that vaporub will soothe the flea bite so it has a double purpose. We are fortunate to have a heavier encounter with ticks that I think are far easier to eradicate than the fleas. Ticks have their origins like the tiny crevices in concrete while the fleas seem to come from nowhere, leaving us clueless.