Scenario:

You find an engorged tick on your pet. 

It worries you.

Dogs, Cats and Humans can all get ticks.

What if this tick carrying a disease?

 What if it was free to find out IF that tick is carrying any disease?

It would be wonderful to know

and to share what you find with others.

This is important for a number of reasons.

1. We all freeze up when we pull a tick off our pet as we don't know if it's a carrier.
2. Because of this some choose to chemically poison their pet with serious insecticides that they give orally or as a spot-on or collar in the name of 'prevention'.
3. It's the 'common' thing to do but not the healthiest for your pet.  Nobody should 'wonder' why 1 in 2 dogs get cancer. Yet, many dogs who are on these poisons still contract a tick borne disease.
4. Many dogs who are not on ' preventives' get ticks once in awhile and never get a tick borne disease.
5. We also forget how important the immune system is. [This is a simple fix but is not going to be the subject of this newsletter.]

Let's get started.

The Pennsylvania Tikck Research Lab can analyze your tick, testing for tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosi, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

By the way, RMSF is not routinely tested at the yearly spring check-up. It's not one of the diseases on the 4DX test, requiring an additional test. {I believe RMSF tick testing incurs a charge.}

They have an easy-to-use online tick testing form .

Just go to www.ticklab.org and navigate to the form.

It's free if you live in PA. 

Free

GET THAT?

Free

I decided to test EVERY tick my dog gets in 2026!

He runs in different woods every day in his morning outings and gets about 50 ticks per year.  

He gets NO poisonous spot on or oral preventive products. I test him for tick-borne diseases 3 times a year for good measure.  Always negative.

So how many of these ticks actually carry disease?

I realized I had no idea.

I purchased these cheap tiny vitamin bags 

as you need to put the tick in a plastic bag [one tick per test] and enclose the form you filled out online in the same envelope.

All it takes is:

• Fill out the form
• Put the tick in a little plastic bag
• Address the envelope and put in the tick and the form
• Put on one regular stamp 
• Mail it

Here are my results:

They even tell you how long it was engorged for. I must say, I was not looking for ticks in March when it was so cold. This tick was engorged for 100 hours.

It does cost 50 bucks if you live outside of PA.

You can check if your state has the same kind of thing for residents.

If anyone wants to share what you find I will collect the results at the end of the season and share it with all of you. 

Factually, how many ticks are really carrying these diseases? 

How worried should we be? 

Please wait till you get several results back as a sending me one test at at time will be a bit much.  End of the season would be best.

Can you imagine if we find one out of 100 ticks actually carries disease?

If any one wants to volunteer to tally up the results, just let me know and it sure will be appreciated!

Hugs and Love,

Dr. Khalsa