The four-layer plan:

Year-round vet-prescribed tick prevention — collar, oral, or topical.

Daily tick checks during peak season (April–November).

Yard maintenance — short grass, leaf litter removal, 9-foot barrier.

Weekly indoor cleaning focused on pet bedding and rest areas.

This article is for informational purposes only. For medical decisions about your pet, consult your veterinarian.

Why pets are the front line

If you live in Michigan and have a dog or outdoor cat, you have a tick problem — even if you don't know it yet. Pets are the #1 way ticks enter homes, by a significant margin. They walk through tick habitat at exactly the height ticks quest from. Their fur is the perfect grip surface. They don't notice ticks crawling on them, and they certainly don't strip down for a body check at the door.

That makes pet protection the single highest-leverage piece of tick prevention for most Michigan families. Get it right, and you eliminate most of the indoor exposure. Get it wrong, and even the cleanest home will have ticks in it.

Here's the complete plan.

Layer 1: Year-round vet-prescribed prevention

This is the foundation. Everything else is defense in depth.

Why vet-prescribed: over-the-counter tick products vary wildly in effectiveness, and a few have safety concerns (especially for cats — never use a product labeled for dogs on a cat). A licensed vet can match the right product to your pet's age, weight, breed, lifestyle, and any existing conditions.

Why year-round: Michigan's blacklegged ticks are active any time the temperature is above 40°F. That includes warm winter days. Seasonal-only prevention leaves real gaps. The American Veterinary Medical Association and most veterinary parasitologists — including the Companion Animal Parasite Council — now recommend year-round protection in tick-endemic areas, which now includes most of Michigan.

Common product categories (your vet will recommend specifics):

Oral preventives — chewable tablets that kill ticks shortly after they bite. Convenient, no residue, but requires the pet to be bitten before the tick dies.
Topical liquids — applied to the skin between the shoulder blades. Effective and broadly used.
Tick collars — long-duration prevention worn continuously. Some last 6–8 months.
Vaccines — Lyme disease vaccines are available for dogs. Talk to your vet about whether one makes sense for your pet's risk profile.

For cats: the options are narrower, and product safety matters even more. Indoor-only cats may not need year-round prevention; cats that go outside should be on a vet-approved program.

Layer 2: The daily tick check

Even with prevention on board, do a tick check every day during peak season. Why? Because:

Most preventives kill ticks after they bite — a tick check can catch them before
Pets carry unattached ticks indoors that drop off and find human hosts
It only takes 60 seconds, and it's the single fastest way to spot a problem

Where to look on dogs

Run your hands slowly through the fur, paying special attention to:

Around the ears, including inside the ear flap and at the base
Under the collar — this is one of the most common spots
The neck and jaw line
Around the eyes and muzzle
The chest and front legs
The belly and inside of the legs
Between the toes and around the foot pads
The base of the tail and around the rear

For dark-coated dogs, you'll feel ticks before you see them. They feel like small bumps or scabs that weren't there before.

Where to look on cats

Similar zones, but cats often groom ticks off before you notice. Focus on:

Around the ears and inside the ear flap
Under the chin and along the jaw
The neck and shoulders
The base of the tail
Between the toes

Make it routine

The easiest way to make this stick is to attach it to something you already do — feeding, evening walk, bedtime brushing. Sixty seconds, every day, during tick season. That's the whole job.

If you find a tick, remove it the same way you would on a person — fine-tipped tweezers, grasp at the skin, steady upward pull. Save the tick. Note the date, and if you'd like to know what species you're dealing with, our Michigan tick identification guide will sort it in a minute.

Layer 3: The yard

Your yard is the second-most-important piece of pet protection. The goal isn't a sterile, pesticide-soaked lawn — it's making your yard inhospitable to ticks while staying friendly for the pets who live there.

What works

Short grass. Mow weekly. Keep it under 3 inches.
Clear leaf litter in spring and fall. Leaf litter is prime tick habitat.
9-foot wood chip or gravel barrier between the lawn and any wooded or brushy areas. Ticks won't readily cross dry, sun-exposed substrate. This is the single most effective yard intervention you can make.
Move wood piles away from the house and stack them in sun.
Discourage deer. Deer-resistant landscaping or fencing reduces the tick supply.
Discourage rodents. Cluttered sheds, piled brush, and bird feeders that attract mice all bring ticks closer to home.
Tick tubes (like Damminix) — cardboard tubes containing permethrin-treated cotton. Mice use the cotton as nesting material, and the permethrin kills the ticks that feed on them. Effective, low-toxicity, and pet-safe when used correctly.
Professional perimeter treatment. A licensed pest-control company can reduce yard tick populations by 80%+ with targeted treatments. Worth the cost for high-exposure properties.

Pet-specific considerations

Designate a pet potty area away from wooded edges if possible.
Avoid letting pets lounge in tall grass or brush.
Keep pet bedding off the ground outdoors if your dog has an outdoor sleeping spot.
Inspect dog houses, kennels, and outdoor crates weekly — ticks can accumulate there.

Layer 4: The indoor cleaning routine

This is where most pet owners under-invest, and it's where ticks most often complete the journey from outdoors to a human host. The whole-home version of this layer is in how to keep ticks out of your house.

Wash pet bedding weekly

In hot water (130°F+), then dry on high heat for at least 10 minutes. The dryer is doing the tick-killing work — washing alone doesn't reliably kill ticks.

This applies to:

Dog and cat beds
Crate pads and blankets
Throw blankets the pet uses on couches and chairs
Removable cushion covers

Wash collars, harnesses, leashes

Yes, really. Throw them in a mesh laundry bag with the pet bedding once a month, or after high-exposure days (long hikes, kennel stays, time at the cabin).

Vacuum pet rest areas weekly

Anywhere your pet sleeps or spends time is a high-density zone for unattached ticks. Vacuum:

Floor around pet beds
Couches and chairs the pet uses
Throw rugs in their favorite spots
Baseboards in those rooms

Brush pets outside

A quick brush before they come in dislodges unattached ticks before they can drop off in the living room. Do it on a hard surface — porch, driveway, patio — where ticks won't survive.

Wipe down crates, carriers, and gear

Weekly during peak season. Hot water and a pet-safe cleaner. Pay attention to corners and seams.

Mid-season deep clean

Once or twice during peak tick season — late spring and mid-summer are good — give pet zones a deeper clean. Carpet extraction, upholstery cleaning, and a thorough sweep of soft furnishings catch what the weekly routine misses. This is the spot where a professional Deep Detox Cleaning earns its keep for pet-heavy households.

Special situations

Multi-pet households

The ticks compound. A single dog brings in some. Three dogs bring in a lot more. Multi-pet homes should:

Be even more disciplined about weekly bedding washing
Consider a mid-season professional deep clean
Run dehumidifiers in basements and pet areas (ticks need humidity)
Keep a single, dedicated pet entry point if possible

Working and hunting dogs

Dogs that spend extended time in tick habitat — hunting, herding, search-and-rescue — need a higher bar:

Permethrin-treated bandanas or vests during work (talk to your vet)
Tick checks immediately after work, not at the end of the day
Separate gear washing routine for work-only equipment
Annual Lyme screening at the vet

Cats that go outside

Outdoor cats are harder to protect because they range widely and don't tolerate frequent inspections. Strategies:

Vet-prescribed prevention (cat-specific products only)
Daily quick check around the head, neck, and shoulders
Wash cat bedding weekly
Consider transitioning to a catio or supervised outdoor time

Senior pets

Older pets often spend more time on soft surfaces — beds, couches, blankets. That makes their rest areas higher-density tick zones. Step up the bedding-washing frequency and vacuuming routine.

When to call your vet

You found a tick attached for an unknown duration on your dog
Your pet develops lameness, lethargy, fever, or appetite loss
You see a rash or unusual skin lesion at a tick bite site
Your dog tests positive on an annual Lyme screen
You've found multiple ticks in a short period despite using prevention

Many vets will run a 4DX or SNAP test annually that screens for Lyme, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and heartworm in one blood test. For Michigan dogs, this is worth doing every year.

A final word

Pet protection is the highest-leverage tick-prevention investment most Michigan families can make. Vet-prescribed prevention is the foundation. Daily checks are the catch-net. Yard control is the upstream filter. Indoor cleaning is the last line of defense.

You don't have to be perfect. You have to be consistent. A vet-prescribed preventive, a 60-second daily tick check, and a weekly hot-dryer cycle on pet bedding will do more to protect your family than almost anything else you can do during tick season.

The layer under the leash

Pet beds, shag carpet, and the couch corner your dog has claimed are the softest, most humid places in the house — which is exactly why a hitchhiking tick chooses them. Weekly vacuuming keeps them honest; a seasonal reset with chemical-free steam reaches the fibers underneath, without leaving fragrance or residue behind for a sensitive animal to breathe.

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Read next:

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC).

Pet Owner's Tick Prevention Guide: Home, Yard, and Vet Protocol