Tick Fever in Dogs: The Signs We Missed

It starts as a dull day and a skipped meal. Four days later it can be over. What every Indian pet parent should know.

Spottail · 13 September 2026

We lost our dog Ludo to tick fever when he was a year and a half old. He stopped eating on a Tuesday. By Friday morning he was gone. The full story is here, and it is the reason this company exists.

This post is not that story. This is the practical version — what tick fever is, how fast it moves, and what actually prevents it. If you have a dog in an Indian city, please read to the end.

What tick fever actually is

"Tick fever" covers a group of tick-borne infections, most commonly Ehrlichiosis and Babesiosis. A tick bites your dog and transmits the organism; it attacks red blood cells and platelets. Platelets are what let blood clot, which is why the late stage of the disease looks like bleeding — from the nose, in vomit, in stool.

It is common across India, and cities like Hyderabad are particularly exposed because the climate supports tick populations more or less year-round. There is no dormant winter that clears them out.

The warning signs

The cruelty of this disease is that the early signs look like nothing at all. A dull day. Slightly less interest in food. Exactly the sort of thing you decide to watch for a day.

• Loss of appetite, or sudden dullness
• Lethargy beyond normal tiredness
• Pale gums or a pale tongue
• Fever — ears and paws feel hot
• Unusual bleeding: nose, stool, vomit
• Visible ticks anywhere on the body

Prevention, in order of how much it matters

1. Check your dog daily, by hand

Not a glance — a check. Ticks favour warm, hidden places: inside and behind the ears, under the collar, in the armpits and groin, between the toes, around the tail base. On a thick-coated dog you will find them by feel long before you see them. Thirty seconds at the end of the evening walk is the highest-value habit in this entire post.

2. Use a vet-recommended preventive, year-round

Spot-on treatments, oral preventives and tick collars all exist, and which one suits your dog depends on age, weight, coat and any existing conditions — which is exactly why this is a vet conversation rather than a shop recommendation. The important part is that in most of India this is a year-round routine, not a monsoon-only one.

3. Treat the environment, not only the dog

Most of a tick's life is not spent on your dog. It is spent in cracks in the floor, in bedding, in the corners of the balcony. Treating the dog while ignoring the house means constant reinfestation. Wash bedding hot, vacuum thoroughly, and pay attention to the places your dog sleeps.

4. Remove ticks properly

Fine-tipped tweezers, grip as close to the skin as possible, pull steadily straight out. Do not twist, do not burn, do not smother it in oil or petrol — those methods make the tick regurgitate into the wound, which is precisely the moment of highest transmission risk. Clean the site afterwards and note the date.

Why we built a social app in response to a disease

This connection is not obvious, so it is worth stating plainly. After Ludo died, the thing that stayed with us was not only that we had missed the signs. It was that we had nobody to ask.

We lived in a city of millions, we were first-time dog parents, and we had no pet community around us — no neighbour who had seen it before, nobody to say "that dullness is not nothing, go now". In India, where a large share of pet parents are the first in their family to keep a dog indoors, that knowledge gap is not a minor inconvenience. It costs lives.

A community of pet parents within walking distance is not a substitute for a vet. It is the thing that gets you to the vet a day earlier. That day is the whole difference.