Dog ticks — they’re creepy and disgusting. Their sole purpose in life is to get under your skin, sucking up as much blood as they can while possibly transmitting serious illness to their victim. Ticks spend most of their lives in shady vegetation, waiting for warm animal to pass by so they can catch a ride and start to feed.

Although they’re very small, ticks expand to about 50 times their original size after a feeding frenzy. Dog ticks, a variety so commonly found on dogs they were named after their favorite hosts, are large and brown. They sometimes spread Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but they haven’t been shown to spread Lyme disease. This isn’t much comfort, though, because Rocky Mountain spotted fever is sometimes even more serious than Lyme disease.

Fortunately, you can use several techniques to discourage ticks from feeding on your pet. Below are seven tactics to help keep ticks off your dog:

1. Ticks prefer to hang out in particular types of vegetation. They like tall grass,
where they can cling for days or months until a deer or your dog brushes through. Ticks don’t like short grass, and they especially dislike bright sunlight. To make your backyard less hospitable to ticks, always keep your grass trimmed below ankle height, and trim your hedges low as well.

2. Adult ticks prefer large victims, like your dog. But younger ticks, known as nymphs, typically feed on mice, birds and other small animals until they molt and become an adult. To help get rid of ticks both old and young, make your yard less inviting to rodents. Keep strong and secure lives on your trash cans, and remove any rock piles, leaf piles or brushy cover.

3. When you go on a hike with your pet, keep to the trails. Make sure your pet stays close by. Avoid shady areas and long grasses where ticks are probably waiting.

4. If you live in tick country and are headed to an area where you’re likely to encounter the nasty little creatures, protect your pet with an insecticide. Hunters have found this effectively protects their dogs. You can use either a systemic — the kind applied with drops once a month that travels through your dog’s entire system — or you can use a spray-on insecticide that performs a similar function. Frontline offers anti-tick insecticides in both forms, and both have been shown to work well. Just be sure that you don’t double up — don’t use a systemic and a spray on.

5. If you do detect a tick on your dog but it hasn’t yet embedded itself, remove the tick. Do not “squash” the tick and throw it in the garbage — ticks are about as tough as tanks, and it will probably crawl right back out when you’re not paying attention. Yuck! Instead, spray the tick with an insecticide, or drown it in rubbing alcohol. Or in a pinch, use soapy water. Now you’ve taken care of that, go back over your dog with a fine-toothed comb to make sure you’ve caught them all.

6. Dog ticks are large, and if your dog is a short hair you can often see the tick while it’s still feeding. If you do, remove it quickly. The longer the tick feeds on your dog, the more likely it is to transmit disease. Rocky Mountain spotted fever can be transmitted if the tick stays in for over 24 hours.

7. When removing a tick, don’t ever use a match, which could burn your dog — and also doesn’t work. The Vaseline technique doesn’t work either. Instead, you’ll need to pull it out with a pair of tweezers, aiming for the head and pulling gently. Once you’ve removed it (and made sure it’s met its demise), give your dog a little extra protection by rubbing the bite area with a topical antiseptic or some antibiotic ointment.