Just about every open space in the SF Bay Area has ticks.

The only real good way to get rid of ticks it to comb your dog's fur after a hike and then drown them. Don't crush them because it can release their eggs.

Ok, I have to share my tick horror story. I have A LOT of experience with the little bastards.

I used to have a roommate that had a dog. She would take him for walks around the neighborhood. There was an empty lot a couple of blocks away and she'd let him run around out there. Well he picked up some ticks. She never bothered to remove the ticks. I didn't interact with the dog much since he kind of ill-behaved. Anyways, one of my friends came over and realized he was COVERED in ticks. It was awful. Well that roommate moved out and a couple of months later we got our first dog.

For the first 3 months we had him we would pull at least 10 ticks a night off of him! It was disgusting. We actually had a small jar filled with soapy water that was a permanent resident in our living room for the little bastards. It ended up that her dog had completely infested not only the backyard but her bedroom too. You could be sitting on the back patio and see them crossing the concrete there were so many.

We tried powders, sprays and collars on him but nothing really helped. The Frontline Plus only killed the ticks after they would burrow in. So really it was just about checking him over every day. We ended up doing a heavy duty spraying of the yard and house. We cut down a juniper tree, took out the grass (we had a large slope back there with grass that we would have to weed wack, we ended up just pulling it all out by hand) and cleared out a lot of the shrubs and limbed up all the trees. Eventually we eliminated all the ticks, but it was difficult and expensive.