08/27/2026
Where Are the Ticks?
Something about Happy Tails has me curious. Ticks have become an increasing concern in Ontario. I've certainly heard lots of tick stories during my years of travelling to Nova Scotia, and later owning a vacation home there. Then there's that one visit with relatives near Marmora, where their tick stories were enough to make your hair stand on end. Yet I have never actually had a tick on me. And then I started thinking about Happy Tails. I started the business 30 years ago, and after searching for two years I bought this property on July 31, 1998. In the 28 years since, I have never knowingly found a tick on myself, our staff or volunteers, or one of the hundreds of dogs a year that have stayed here. That certainly doesn't mean there isn't one somewhere on these acres, but after almost every day here for 28 years... why haven't we been finding them?
That question sent me down quite a rabbit hole. Long before ticks became the concern in Muskoka they are today, we promoted K9 Advantix and later K9 Advantix II for protection against fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. Our own dogs have used it for years, as have many of our clients' dogs. With hundreds of dogs coming here every year, could all those protected dogs have reduced the opportunities for ticks to hitch a ride onto the property? Then I started looking at the land. Over the years we cleared a great deal of dense, boggy cedar and spruce underbrush in our parklands, not because of ticks, but to improve airflow and reduce mosquitoes, deer flies and other biting insects. I've since learned how much blacklegged ticks depend on humid conditions and moist leaf litter. Did opening those areas make a difference too?
Then there are the deer. Our enormous outer woodland parkland is surrounded by heavy, non-climb fencing that is 11 feet high, so deer cannot enter, although interestingly they weren't coming through our original six-foot fencing either. I always suspected that years and years of dogs marking those fence lines gave deer and other larger wildlife plenty of reason to go around us rather than through us. The small stuff, of course, can still get through. Now I've learned how important deer are to adult blacklegged ticks. Another piece of the puzzle?
Mice are another story. They can be important hosts for immature blacklegged ticks and the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, and obviously an 11-foot fence that stops a deer isn't going to stop a mouse. That is one reason our three new owl nesting boxes weren't simply put up wherever they looked nice. We strategically placed them inside the resort but closer to the outer perimeter where mice can travel in from the surrounding woodland where deer are free to roam, as well as one closer to our buildings where mice eventually try to find their way in. If owls decide to move in, we're hoping some very efficient natural mouse hunters will be living and hunting where they can do the most good. And the boxes aren't necessarily just for raising babies. Owls can also use nest boxes for roosting and shelter outside nesting season, including through the winter, so perhaps someone will decide Happy Tails makes a pretty good year-round address.
Then I discovered mouse nesting tubes. The idea is fascinating. Mice take permethrin-treated nesting material back to their nests, exposing the fleas and ticks on the mice to the treatment rather than poisoning the mice themselves. My handyman has already been looking at making the heavy-duty conduit tubes, but the more I learned, the more questions I had. What formulation is appropriate? What is approved for this use in Canada? What about an owl that later catches one of those mice? And what about our six spring-fed ponds with their frogs, toads and salamanders? The tubes themselves would be placed well away from the ponds, where mice actually travel and nest and where our dogs can't reach them, but I want answers to those questions before deciding exactly how we proceed. Apparently one rabbit hole leads to another.
And here is where the owl part became even more interesting. Permethrin is an active ingredient I've known for years through flea and tick protection for dogs, and it has relatively low toxicity to birds compared with aquatic organisms. Then I found University of Florida research where scientists actually treated barn owl nest boxes with permethrin to protect young owls from mosquitoes. They found far fewer mosquitoes in treated boxes and better survival during periods of heavy mosquito activity, without negative effects showing up in the health measures they studied. That doesn't answer every question about a predatory bird eating a mouse exposed to permethrin, and Florida isn't Muskoka, but I found it fascinating. Something I was researching because I wanted to protect the mice from ticks without harming their predators had actually been studied inside owl nests to help protect the owls themselves.
None of this started as some grand tick-control plan. The fencing was built for dogs. We opened the woodland for airflow and comfort. We protected the dogs because that was responsible pet care. We managed mice because... well, they were mice. :) The funny thing is that putting up three new owl boxes is what started me looking more closely at all of this. Yet 28 years later I'm looking back at all these separate decisions and wondering whether some of them have been working together in ways I never thought about.
Maybe there is one explanation, maybe there are several working together, or perhaps there is something else here I haven't thought of yet. I've even discovered there may be another part of the answer right under my feet in the soil... but that is another rabbit hole I'm still exploring. After 28 years and hundreds of dogs coming here year after year without knowingly finding a tick, I think “Why?” is a pretty interesting question... and after 30 years plus one summer at Happy Tails, I am apparently still learning from the land.
I love what I do, and someday I believe there will be someone who loves Happy Tails as much as I do, who will pick up the torch and keep learning, building and making it even better.
P.S. ...and the houses for the butterflies and the bats have their own stories too. Enjoy the photos. :)
