What factors can increase my dog's risk of getting fleas and ticks?

Certainly if they go outdoors it increases the risk because your dog is going to get it there. If you go to parks, boarding, grooming, obedience school, and anytime they're around other dogs or they go inside someone else's house. But what can prevent it is just having dog flea and tick preventatives, either a special collar that you can get through your veterinarian, a topical product that we might want to put on once a month, or some of our new oral products that the dogs would eat. Those things will prevent either the flea or tick from biting them, getting on them, or, if they do, they'll be killed immediately, so they can't bring them into the house and spread them around.

If your dog is spending a lot of time outside or in the woods, maybe in fields with tall grass or things like that, and they're not on prevention, then they're at a higher risk for contracting these parasites.

The more time they spend outside, the greater the risk. It's really important to recognize that a lot of people go through their entire lives with their dogs and say, gosh, I've never seen any fleas. They've used a terrible flea product, and they're convinced that this product is working. But understand that fleas are not everywhere. They migrate. They move from neighborhood to neighborhood. They'll expand their territory one year to the next year because of weather conditions. They'll contract their territory, but they do continually migrate. So keep that in mind. You might go years without seeing any fleas, and all of a sudden, you have an infestation. Don't blame your neighbor. That's just the nature of the fleas' lifestyle and biology.

Of course, the more time pets spend outside the greater risk of getting exposed and the greater risk of getting fleas and ticks. With tick, there are a couple of considerations. They like more wooded areas. If you have hunting dogs or dogs that have some pasture, or you've got woods behind your house, and your dog is able to go back there, that's going to be prime ground for ticks. Obviously, that's going to increase the likelihood. It's not a bad idea to do a tick check on them. Check between the toes and the ears. Check pretty much everywhere. With hair, it's not always going to be easy to see the ticks, but it's certainly worth doing the check. It's easier to see ticks than fleas because they're a little bit bigger, and once they latch on, they don't move because they're sucking. Fleas will move around, but once ticks are attached, they're going to be stuck there for some days while they're continuing to feed.

Any dog going outside can be exposed to fleas and ticks, but dogs that go hiking a lot or often go to the park can be exposed to fleas and ticks.