I actually take my dog to the same vet in Bigfork. I've been a forester up here for about 5 years now, and the deer ticks are getting thicker each year. After the first frost of the year, they are real bad. The doctor in Bemidji diagnosed me with Anaplasmosis this summer, and said that they've had more cases of erlichiosis this year than Lyme's. (All three are apparently deer tick borne bacterial infections.)
Frontline works great, I've only found 3 ticks (all wood ticks) embedded on my lab in three years. However, another thing to be careful with is that while most ticks won't embed on a dog with Frontline coursing through the system, they will still walk off of the dog onto, say, your five-year old son who's sitting next to the dog in the backseat after a hunt. (Six deer ticks on my son last weekend.)

I dont think it is very common here in SC but about 2 years ago I had a good friend in Longs almost die from Lyme Disease. He had the tick under his watch all day and didnt find it til he got home. About 2 weeks later he was in the hospital with 105 degree fever and in such pain they had to put him I cant remember the name of the bacteria but it took him 3 months to get well and nearly died and had excrutiating pain from this infection also.

Along with the visit to the Vet the other month, I received two kind of tablets my German Short Hair to take. One is for heart worms and the other for flees. But for the ticks, I must use a flee and tick collar. DARN! Good news, we haven't had a tick problem here yet!

Glad to see people are getting the vaccine and paying attention to this. I'm a vet in Virginia, and we see quite a bit of Lyme disease. Ehrlichia as well. Keep using Frontline and a heartworm preventative. Remember you still may find ticks, Frontline isn't a repellant. Tick collars other than Preventic are pretty much useless, found plenty of engorged live ticks under numerous collars.
The disease is spreading rapidly to the west. Supposedly, there is little chance of infection for Lyme anywhere south of Richmond according to a study just published this year.
Check yourself and your family. I picked a deer tick off my 3 year old after being in an apple orchard for about 2 hours.

We here in central Texas have seen a recent influx of American dog ticks, a lot of wet weather lately with spurts of cold weather. I found that a good spray of DEET and tight clothing works pretty well to keep them off of me. As for the dog Preventic as stated above does well but also a good once over before coming inside or into the truck with a brush helps keeping them from jumping from the dog to anyone else. Man those buggers give me the creeps.

I had Lyme as a little kid myself. My dog takes Frontline so it's not much of a problem for him.