Was thinking of moving to Connecticut in the future. The cost

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We're a very outdoorsy family and we hike a lot, but if I can get away with just spraying the yard and medicating my dog and just sticking to more urban areas, I'll take it. I really don't want to fuck around with Lyme.

I'm looking forward to moving to Connecticut in the future but if my dog's going to have a shit time after living in Colorado, I'll rethink it.

I'm from ct myself. If you're going outside anywhere but a sidewalk you're going to get a tick. As far as for pets any reliable flea and tick med or collar is fine.

>>2471554
Do flea meds actually work (zero incidents of fleas and ticks) or are the fleas and ticks becoming resistant up there? I also heard my brand of heartworm med (heartgard) isn't as effective in areas that actually have lots of mosquitoes as they're also becoming resistant to its active ingredient

I dunno. I live in northern CT and my vet reccomends heartguard.

Ticks were insane this year. Using advantix didn't reduce ticks to zero for me. I might switch to something else next spring because I don't think ticks are a fact of life here.

I've never had fleas on my dog or the dog of anyone I know.

>>2471617
The thing about fleas is reassuring. We use k9 advantix II currently but mostly for ticks since fleas aren't really a problem here in the first place.

Do you spray your yard with pesticide or know anyone who does?

I've dealt with fleas before since my dog came to me with them as a puppy. I don't particularly like using pesticides and medication, but I'll do it because it's necessary. How are the ticks in winter? Do they still appear? Hide in warm places near homes?

>>2471806
I'll add that I walk my dog in a state park, so I am in the woods every single day. My friends who are more urban/suburban in their lifestyles don't have tick problems.

I also live surrounded on three sides by a big open field. The owner of the field cuts it a few times a year and then sells the hay to farmers. It's very nice in that my dog never poops in my yard. He goes in the field or on the walk. But he is exposed to a lot of ticks in the field. A nicely manicured lawn won't have many ticks at all. They love high grass.

I never see any ticks when it's cold. They seem to go into a state of suspended animation/semi hibernation though. So they will reappear during any brief warm snap in the winter.

>>2471818
Thank you, that's really helpful. Do you have the lyme vaccine? I thought about getting it for my dog last year since we moved to a more rural/wooded area in Colorado, but our incidence of lyme has been so low that no vets actually keep it in stock and told me it wasn't worth it. But it'd be worth it CT, yeah? Do you vaccinate your dogs for anything else besides the regular vaccines + lepto?

NH/Mass here. This spring the ticks were the worst I've ever seen in Mass. If I took a few steps in grass(even cut grass) I'd come out with no less than three ticks.

Just average bug spray helped me but my dogs back in NJ were on Advantage and two of them still got lyme disease. We switched to Frontline but I still found a tick or two on them so I'm not sure what tick medication works these days
My current dogs didn't get ticks or fleas here in NH so we have been skipping it for the past two years and instead after grassy walks or hikes I just go over them checking for ticks before we go back inside.

Flea collars don't work, by the way and they are awful for animals. Dawn dish soap will kill all fleas on a dog but it won't prevent them from jumping back on.

>>2471843
Also the ticks this year probably got so bad because it suddenly went from freezing to hot sunny days instead of gradually cooling. Freezing one day, hot the next few days, freezing again, etc. Oddly enough after spring they just seemed to all disappear. Never had an issue with fleas or ticks in the fall or winter anywhere on the east coast.

So after some research here is a tentative plan for if we move:

- medicate dog with topical flea/tick med year-round
- spray yard with acaricide in spring and fall
- xeriscape as much of the land as I can
- plant deer-resistant plants (rosemary, sage, and lavender seem like they'll do well especially in a xeriscaped area and supposedly ticks don't like the smell/oils they give off)
- mulch fence/home borders with cedar chips
- erect a large fence to keep deer off the property
- mow and keep the grass short, keep the yard free of decaying brush/leaves/vegetation
- trim tree branches to allow more sunlight across the yard
- check dog for ticks daily

does this sound like a thorough enough plan? I've literally never dealt with bugs/insects except treating my dog for fleas once when he was first adopted. I'm just a little anxious about a drastic change in climate for us, especially because of lyme and everything else ticks carry. I'm reading a lot of scary stats about ticks, like how supposedly over half of the ones found in maine are lyme carriers.

>>2472045
Sounds fine to me. Personally I've never had that much of a problem with ticks and only fleas once a long time ago.

>>2471314
>moving to Connecticut in the future. The cost of living is way better than where we are now
Connecticut? Where the fuck do you live now, Luxembourg?

>>2472115
Colorado. the cost of living is lower literally everywhere else except California.