Ticks in Georgia: prevention and safe removal
Where ticks hide, the diseases they carry, and how to remove one safely.
Ticks are not a summer nuisance in Adjara — they are a year-round risk that peaks twice. Batumi's humid subtropical climate gives them a long season: activity usually starts in March, climbs through May and June, drops in the hottest, driest weeks of high summer, then rises again in September and October. In a mild winter they never fully stop. If you walk your dog along the boulevard, in Mtsvane Kontskhi, up in the hills behind the city or anywhere with long grass and leaf litter, assume ticks are present.
What makes them dangerous is not the bite. It is what the bite can carry.
The disease we worry about most in dogs here is babesiosis. Babesia are microscopic parasites that get into red blood cells and destroy them, and a dog can go from apparently healthy to seriously ill in two or three days. The signs owners notice first are lethargy and refusing food, then fever, pale or yellowish gums, and — the sign that should send you straight to a clinic — urine the colour of strong tea or cola. That colour is destroyed blood cells being cleared by the kidneys. Untreated babesiosis kills dogs. Treated early, most recover well. Anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis and hepatozoonosis also circulate in the region, and Lyme disease (borreliosis) is less common but not absent.
Cats get bitten too. They suffer far less tick-borne disease than dogs, which is genuinely good news, but a bite can still become infected and a heavy infestation on a kitten can cause real anaemia.
## Prevention is the whole game
No product stops a tick from landing on your pet. What good products do is kill it before it can transmit disease, and that window is short — often 24 to 48 hours — which is why continuous cover matters more than reacting to the ticks you happen to find.
There are three broad options. Spot-on liquids applied to the skin between the shoulder blades typically last a month. Oral tablets and chews in the isoxazoline family last one to three months depending on the product and are unaffected by swimming or baths — worth knowing in a seaside city where dogs get wet. Medicated collars can give several months of cover. Each has trade-offs in duration, cost, and whether the pet tolerates it, and the right choice depends on your animal's size, age, health and lifestyle.
One warning that matters more than any other: **never put a dog tick product on a cat.** Permethrin, which is common and safe in canine spot-ons, is severely toxic to cats and causes tremors and seizures. Cats need products licensed for cats. If you own both and use a spot-on on the dog, keep them apart until it dries.
Dosing is by weight and by species, so let a vet confirm the product and the amount rather than estimating. Puppies, kittens, pregnant animals and pets with existing illness have real restrictions.
## Checking your pet
Run your hands over your pet after every walk. Ticks prefer thin skin with good blood supply: the ears and inside the ear flaps, around the eyes and lips, under the collar, the armpits, the groin, and between the toes. An unfed tick is flat and the size of a sesame seed and easy to miss; a fed one can be the size of a pea. Checking daily during the season takes a minute and is the single most useful habit you can build.
## How to remove one safely
Do it promptly, but do it properly.
Use fine-pointed tweezers or a tick hook — a hook is easier and less likely to crush the tick. Grip the tick as close to the skin as you can, taking the tick's body and not your pet's skin. Pull straight out with steady, even pressure. Do not twist, jerk or squeeze the body. Then clean the spot with an antiseptic and wash your hands.
What not to do: do not smother it in oil, petroleum jelly, alcohol or nail polish, and never touch it with a flame or a hot needle. Every one of those irritates the tick and makes it regurgitate into the wound, which is exactly the moment infection is transmitted. A tick that is killed slowly is more dangerous than one removed quickly.
If the head stays in the skin, do not dig for it. Leave it, keep the area clean, and let a vet look if it becomes red or swollen. If the tick is somewhere awkward — inside an ear, on an eyelid — or if your pet won't tolerate it, bring them in and let us do it. It takes seconds with the right tool.
Keep the tick in a sealed container if you can. Knowing the species helps, and it fixes the date of the bite.
## Then watch for three weeks
Most bites come to nothing. But tick-borne disease has an incubation period, so a pet that seems fine the next day can still fall ill a week or two later. For three weeks after a bite, watch for tiredness, loss of appetite, fever, stiffness or limping that moves between legs, pale gums, or dark urine. Any of those, especially dark urine, means come in the same day. Diagnosis is quick — a blood smear or PCR from our laboratory in Batumi usually gives an answer fast — and with babesiosis, hours matter.
If you have found a tick and you are not sure what to do next, phone us. It is a two-minute conversation that can prevent a very bad week.