How to Protect Your Dog and Cat from Ticks This Camping Season

Giving our crew the most enriched, adventurous lifestyle means everything to us. But the reality of exploring the great outdoors means there are also risks to consider.

One such risk that has been gaining a lot of attention is the growing tick population in Ontario.

According to eTick, a tick tracking platform backed by both Health Canada and Public Health Ontario, there has been a sharp increase in tick reports already this year.

Fortunately, a rising tick population doesn’t mean we have to stop exploring or cancel our camping trips. But it does mean that proactive prevention is no longer optional!

For our “pack,” this means a combination of vet-approved conventional preventatives, natural repellents, and careful trail routines.

Let’s talk about what you can do to keep YOUR pet(s) tick-free this adventure season.

This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click and buy, we will make a commission (at no cost to you). See our full disclosure policy for more details.

Understanding the Real Risks

Before we can effectively protect our pets on the trail, we need to know what exactly we are up against.

Ticks aren’t just an annoying creepy-crawly (although they do make me shudder); they are carriers of disease, carrying bacteria from host to host.

There are multiple tick species in Canada, none of which are pleasant to come across. But the two most common threats you need to be aware of are:

• The Blacklegged Tick (Deer Tick): This is the primary species of concern for Lyme disease. They are tiny, often no larger than a sesame seed, and thrive in the moist leaf litter and shaded tall grasses found along forest hiking trails.
• The American Dog Tick (Wood Tick): Larger and easier to spot (but still small), these ticks are approximately the size of an apple seed and have whitish or silver markings. While they don’t transmit Lyme disease, they can carry other serious bacterial infections like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Ticks do not jump, fly, or drop from trees. Instead, they use a behaviour known as questing.

This means they climb to the tips of long grasses, low-growing bushes, or shrubs along the edges of trails, and hold their front legs out. When a dog, cat, or human brushes past, the tick instantly hitches a ride.

Recent research has even suggested that ticks can use static electricity to help pull themselves onto a passing animal’s fur.

Risk of Ticks to Dogs

Dogs are highly susceptible to tick-borne illnesses.

Lyme disease in dogs often manifests as swollen or painful joints, shifting lameness (limping on one leg and then another), loss of appetite, or loss of energy.

If left untreated, it can progress to serious kidney complications.

It typically takes 24 or more hours for the bacteria to migrate from a tick’s salivary glands after it latches on and into your pet’s bloodstream.

This is why quick detection and removal are so important.

Dogs are also at risk for other tick-borne diseases, such as Anaplasmosis and Ehrlichia, which affect blood cells and the immune system.

Risk of Ticks to Cats

The good news is that Lyme disease is relatively rare in cats. However, they face unique dangers when it comes to these pests.

They are susceptible to skin infections and abscesses from tick bites.

Depending on the area of the province you are exploring, your cat may also be exposed to Cytauxzoonosis or Anaplasmosis.

On the Trail Prevention for Dogs

Whether you are deep in the backcountry or relaxing at a front-country campsite, protection requires a multi-layered approach.

For dogs, this means combining tick-defence measures (conventional or natural) with proactive steps to reduce exposure.

It is important to note that there is no “one-size-fits-all solution” for tick prevention.

You will need to do your research to find the right product(s) for you, your pup, and your lifestyle.

Conventional Veterinary Solutions

Modern vet medicine is the most reliable insurance policy against tick-borne illnesses.

While these products offer protection against ticks, they can also introduce other concerns for some pups. For example, dogs with the MDR1 mutation need to be extremely careful with what products they are exposed to.

That’s why it’s essential to discuss your lifestyle and your pet’s health history with your vet to choose the right fit:

• Oral Chewables: These are highly effective, monthly chewable tablets. When a tick bites your dog, it ingests the medication through the bloodstream and is quickly killed, well before the critical 24-hour transmission window.
• Topical Spot-Ons: Applied directly to the skin between the shoulder blades, these formulas spread across the skin’s lipid layer. Some vet-approved topicals not only kill ticks on contact but also contain compounds that repel them (and other pests), reducing the number of hitchhikers you have to brush off later.
• The Lyme Vaccine: For adventure dogs who frequently bushwhack through thick brush or camp in high-risk areas, the Lyme vaccine adds an extra layer of protection. It helps the dog’s body fight off the bacteria if an infected tick manages to bite, though it does not prevent the ticks from attaching.

Natural Defences and Physical Barriers

To minimize the number of ticks making it to your dog’s skin, you can use natural methods that block or repel the pests.

One approach is to outfit your pet with protective apparel. Lightweight, tightly woven cooling vests, bodysuits, or high-coverage belly bands can act as a physical shield.

By covering the chest, underbelly, and armpits (a tick’s favourite hiding spots), you make it much harder for them to find a patch of bare skin to latch on.

A great example of this is the Kurgo Dog Base Layer.

Of course, anytime you add gear, you risk overheating. Pay careful attention to the weather and watch out for signs your dog is getting too warm.  

There are also natural bug sprays and essential oil dilutions that have been found to repel ticks. They work by masking your dog’s scent and/or offering a scent that the ticks dislike.

Cedarwood, geranium, and lavender oils are widely used for their natural pest-repelling properties.

Always use pre-formulated, vet-approved sprays or properly dilute pure essential oils in a carrier oil (like fractionated coconut oil).

If you’re new to using essential oils, I recommend reaching out to a holistic veterinarian for guidance on safe use.

Alternatively, you can purchase a commercially available natural product, such as Citrobug or Atlantick.

We have also heard many positive reviews from members of our community about the Tickless Ultrasonic Tick and Flea Repeller and the FleasGone Flea & Tick Repellent Tag.

Proactive Trail Management

Beyond medicine and sprays, how you navigate the great outdoors with your dog can significantly impact their exposure to ticks.

Simple changes to your hiking and camping habits can lower the risk of trouble:

• Stick to the Middle of the Trail: As we already discussed, ticks wait for hosts by questing at the tips of long grasses and low shrubs along the trail. Train your dog to hike in a tight “heel” or to stay directly in the center of maintained, clear trails, rather than allowing them to brush against overgrown vegetation or, worse, wander off trail. In the same vein, avoid letting your pup wander off your maintained campsite.
• Avoid Popular Wildlife Paths: Deer and other wildlife are the primary hosts for adult ticks. If you spot a heavily used game trail or unmaintained backcountry path where wildlife traffic is high, these areas will often have a much denser concentration of questing ticks.
• Rethink Rest Stops: When it’s time to take a break, drop packs, or set up a temporary rest spot, look for exposed rocks, gravel, or areas with clear, hard-packed dirt. Avoid letting your dog rest or lie down in thick leaf litter, dense ferns, or tall grass when possible, as these areas are prime, moisture-rich environments for ticks seeking shelter from the sun.

Tick Prevention for Cats

Protecting your adventure cat from ticks when adventuring outdoors will require a completely different playbook than protecting your dog.

Why? Many common preventatives are highly toxic to our feline friends!

A cat’s liver lacks the specific enzymes needed to break down these compounds, meaning exposure can lead to serious trouble, including neurological distress.

Always ensure that any treatment, spray, or repellent you use is explicitly labelled as safe for cats. Keep your cat away from any dogs that have been recently treated with topical products.

Conventional Veterinary Solutions

Your vet can prescribe highly effective, topical treatments that are formulated specifically for your cat’s sensitive body.

These are applied to the base of the skull, where cats can’t lick them off, quickly spreading through the skin to reduce the risk of ticks and other pests.

However, these products generally require a prescription and can’t be purchased over the counter.

Gear Selection and Backpack Strategy

When navigating tick-heavy areas, physical prevention is your best defence for keeping a trail cat out of harm’s way.

• Properly Fitting Harnesses: When choosing trail gear in high-tick zones, opt for sleek, snug-fitting cat harnesses made from smooth materials. Avoid bulk harnesses with excessive straps or crevices, which create perfect hiding places for ticks. We see this often with small dog harnesses that aren’t designed for a cat’s unique body shape.
• Full-Coverage Body Suits: For cats that are comfortable wearing clothing, a full-coverage body suit (usually marketed to hairless cats) or a “recovery suit” can change the game on the trail. Covering the chest, belly, and limbs creates a physical barrier that prevents ticks from reaching your cat’s skin.
• The Backpack Strategy: If your hiking path leads you through narrow, unmaintained trail areas, dense ferns, or overgrown brush, it may be time to lift your cat up safely out of a tick’s reach. Using an enclosed cat backpack, like our Travel Cat Navigator, allows your cat to safely experience the sights and smells while staying safely up and out of the danger zone.
• Tick Repellent Tags: The Tickless Ultrasonic Tick and Flea Repeller is also available in a smaller size, ideal for cats (Tickless Mini). Tags like the FleasGone Tag are also safe for use with cats.

Proactive Trail Management for Cats

If your cat enjoys walking on a leash and harness, a few minor changes to their outdoor routine can help reduce their risk of tick exposure, just as with our pups.

When choosing a trail for your cat, try to stick to open, rocky clearings, sandy shorelines, or areas with short, dry pine needles.

Try to avoid letting them wander deep into deep, damp leaf litter or thick ground cover where ticks thrive.

When hanging around the campsite, consider setting up an elevated “lookout post” for your cat.

You can do this by placing their travel mat or a portable bed on a camp table or a smooth rock slab. Alternatively, there are portable catios with raised bed spaces or enclosures with covered floors.

This will allow them to be elevated, happy, and well away from the pests on the forest floor.

For the Pet Parents

Protecting your pets is only half the battle! As the ones handling the leashes, carrying the packs, and sharing the tent space, we are just as much a target for nasty ticks.

Staying safe on the trail requires a few smart personal habits to keep uninvited guests from coming back with you.

Personal Protective Clothing

Your first line of defence is what you wear. When hiking through areas with known tick populations, your “outfit of the day” should be focused on making yourself a difficult target.

Wear white, cream, or light grey clothing. Ticks are dark brown or black, making them incredibly easy to spot against a light background before they ever reach your skin.

Opt for smooth, synthetic fabrics when possible, like nylon or polyester, for your trail pants.

Ticks have tiny, hook-like feet designed to latch onto textured surfaces. Smooth fabrics make it much harder for them to grab on.  

It might not be a high-fashion look, but tucking your long pants directly into light-coloured, crew-length socks is the ultimate tick prevention move.

This closes off the easiest entry point to your legs and forces crawling ticks to stay outside your clothes, where you can spot and remove them much more easily.

Repellents for Pet-Friendly Travellers

When choosing a personal insect repellent to pack in your camp kit, look carefully at the ingredients.

DEET is a reliable, heavy-duty standard, but it’s also highly toxic to your pets. Wet DEET can also damage or melt certain synthetic materials, such as tent mesh, harness straps, or jackets.

Icaridin (Picaridin) is highly effective against ticks and mosquitoes and carries a lower toxicity profile for your pets.

NOTE: Lower toxicity doesn’t mean no toxicity!

These products should never be used directly on your dog or cat, nor should they be allowed to be ingested by your pet. If you have a dog that likes to give kisses or a cat who regularly grooms you, this could still lead to serious reactions.

If you’re looking for a truly pet-safe option, natural tick repellent sprays marketed as pet-friendly can also be used to keep ticks away from human members of the family.

What Tick Prevention Solutions Do We Use?

We get asked all the time how we handle tick safety with our own pack, here at The Kas Pack.

Both living in and navigating the woods with multiple dogs and cats means our routine has to be tightly dialled in, completely safe for both species, and practical for all our travels.

Here is exactly what we rely on to keep our family safe:

• For the Dogs: We use K9 Advantix II as the foundation of our prevention efforts. Before heading into high-risk, overgrown, or dense backcountry areas, we spray them down with AtlanTick spray (a Canadian-made product) as an extra layer of protection.
• For the Cats: We use Advantage II to protect our cats from fleas, but this formula does not provide tick protection. Because safe chemical options are more limited, we rely heavily on physical management and regular, meticulous tick checks.
• We keep a tick removal tool clipped to our leashes anytime we head out, ensuring that we are always prepared if a pest is spotted.

We are always researching new ways to safely level up our adventures.

Right now, we are considering exploring the Tickless ultrasonic unit as an added layer of prevention for our travel buddies. Stay tuned for more about that later this season.

Post-Adventure Tick Routines

No matter how many protective sprays you use or how carefully you manage your time on the trail, the hard truth is that you may still pick up an unwanted hitchhiker along the way.

The most critical part of a tick prevention plan is what happens when the adventure is done.

Establishing a strict, non-negotiable routine at the end of every hike or day at the campsite, right before you zip up the tent for the night, is how you catch and get rid of these pests before they cause any harm.

The 10-Minute Tick Check

Make it a habit to perform a thorough, head-to-tail physical inspection of your pets, yourself, and your gear as soon as you return to camp or your vehicle.

You want to feel through your pet’s fur down to the skin level, looking for small, smooth bumps.

Pay extra attention to these primary tick-hiding spots:

• Inside and behind the ears
• Around the eyelids and face
• Under collars, harnesses, or clothing straps
• Deep inside the armpits and groin area
• Between the toes and paw pads
• Around the base of the tail

Products like the TiCK MiTT are a great option for removing ticks from your clothing or the surface of your pet’s fur easily. But you will still need to do a more detailed check for any ticks that have made their way to the skin.

Proper Tick Removal Technique

If you do find a tick that has already attached to you, your dog, or your cat, stay calm.

Remember that the window for bacterial transmission is typically after 24 hours, so finding it early is a huge win.

Grab a tick removal tool, such as a “tick twister” style tool, a tick-removal key, or a set of fine-tipped tweezers, and follow these steps:

1. Part the fur so you have a completely unobstructed view of the tick and your pet’s skin. If your pet isn’t calm and relaxed, you may wish to have someone help hold them still.
2. Grasp the tick as close to the skin’s surface as possible.
3. Pull straight upward with steady, even pressure. Do not twist, jerk, or rock the tick, as this can cause the mouthparts to break off and stay embedded in the skin.
4. Never squeeze or pinch the tick’s main abdomen. Doing so can compress its body, forcing dangerous pathogens and bacteria back into your pet’s bloodstream.

Forget the old backcountry folklore you may have read online. There are many common and dangerous myths circulating.

Never use a lit match, dish soap, rubbing alcohol, or petroleum jelly to suffocate or burn an attached tick.

These methods stress the tick, causing it to regurgitate its stomach contents directly into you or your pet, thereby drastically increasing the risk of diseases being transmitted.

Using eTick on the Go

Once the tick has been safely removed, do not throw it away or crush it right away. Instead, take advantage of eTick, the public tracking platform, to help identify your tick while also contributing to the greater tick tracking efforts.

Place the tick on a flat, light surface (ideally next to a coin or ruler for scale) and take a crisp, clear, close-up photo of its back, showing both the back shield and mouthparts.

Upload the photo directly through the free eTick app, noting the date and the general area where you were travelling.

A trained professional will identify the tick species in your photo, usually within 1 to 2 business days, letting you know whether it was a blacklegged tick capable of carrying Lyme disease.

Keep the tick in a secure, sealed container (like a clean pill bottle or a ziplock bag) in your freezer for at least 5 to 10 days, if possible. If camping, place a slightly damp (not soaking) tissue in the container and store it in your cooler, or keep it out of direct sunlight.

If the eTick team identifies it as a high-risk species, they or your vet may request the tick itself for further testing.

Don’t Let Ticks Ruin Your Adventure Season!

At the end of the day, being aware of the risk ticks present doesn’t mean we have to let fear dictate our lives.

Our dogs and cats deserve to experience the joy of exploring outdoors right alongside us.

By staying informed, having open conversations with your trusted veterinarian, and building a solid prevention plan, we can confidently manage the risks while still enjoying our favourite outdoor activities.

What are your favourite tick prevention products or tips? Let us know in the comments!