So, Zhukov comes in from his romp in the backyard, and right there on his back is a tick. I pluck it off and terminate it and then start checking for more. How the heck am I supposed to find them in all this fur? In particular, on his back legs, the fur is so thick that I can't even see his skin! I took the furminator to him, and after harvesting a bushel and a peck of fur, came up empty in my tick hunt. Maybe the fur is to thick for ticks? I have him on tick meds, but unlike Colby, who is easy to check, this freak's fur is like plate mail armor.

Any thoughts or experiences with this?

Mark, I'm with you here.  I typically don't use any tick / flea preventive since our weather kills them before any chemicals would. It seems as if they require some moisture and our 15-20% normal humidity with 100f heat keeps them way down.  However I was scratching Sasha's ear the other day and found a tick in the fold of her ear.  (( Bad daddy, couldn't get to it and she was having none of me playing deep in her ear. ))

It 'went away' and I've been watching Avalanche close since I can see through his much thinner coat and haven't seen any more; petting / brushing Sasha hasn't brought anything to the top, but like you, her fur is so thick that finding anything on her is nearly impossible - even the 'thinner' fur around her tummy is hard to look through.

Now, on that note, if you have him on flea / tick meds, it's probable that this was just one who took advantage of a passing dog for a ride.  The meds should have convinced him that he needed to be somewhere else even if you hadn't gotten to him first.  I'd, personally, be less concerned if I found it on his fur rather than embedded in his skin - that suggests, to me, that it's just a 'one time' occurrence where he picked up a 'rider'.

On another note, that tick had to come from somewhere, possibly it dropped off a passing cat / squirrel, if it re-occurs, I'd be thinking about having my yard sprayed.  Note, of course, that the chemicals professionals use would pretty much preclude Zhukov (or kids, I misremember) romping in the yard for a while.

While no one has said anything about my lack of meds for my pups, here's the reason I don't. 70-85f (not too much of my year falls in that range) and 70% humidity (and almost none of my year hits that) is the desired environment for fleas / ticks.

Thanks. Was just wondering if I was the only one having trouble checking their Husky. Thought maybe that there were some special top-secret glasses that everyone was using to check their dog for ticks and such. lol.

I used my fingernails to scratch my dogs all over. I start at one end and just start massaging with my fingertips over all legs, down the back, up the neck and under collar. If there is a tick my fingernails will hit it and I can feel them. When I hit one then I part the fur and pluck it. This is my routine early in spring before I give preventative or when it's getting close to the end of my preventatives life cycle. I give Fiproguard the rest of the time and never see a tick actually dug in on my dogs. I see hitch hikers hoping to make their way to my indoor cat or one of us humans in the house, but that is all.