She was living on the NSW coast, where she said ticks were rampant.

"I was regularly pulling ticks out of my kids, myself and the dog," Ms Douglass said.

"My dearest Cedar, she got a tick and I didn't notice it because it was hidden where the whiskers were.

"...It puffed up and she died because of this tick, poor little thing."

Ticks are not uncommon in Canberra and local vets are warning pet owners to be on the look out for paralysis ticks, with concerns the ticks may have adapted to the capital's climate.

Until recently, paralysis ticks were largely confined to pets that visited the coast or came in contact with a tick brought back from the coast.

The Canberra local said she had a resurgence of her tick hatred when she was caring for an elderly aunt who lived in Sydney's northern beaches.

"Whenever I'd go up there it didn't matter if I had put on insect repellents, it didn't matter what I did. I would always get a tick - at least one tick," she said.

"There was really no good way to get rid of them."

After watching an episode of ABC's Catalyst program on a connection between ticks and meat allergy, she was inspired to create a product that would, she said, safely remove ticks.

"In the program they talked about how you should freeze them off - and I thought, that's absolutely brilliant, why aren't we doing that?"

Ms Douglass developed Tick Tox, a product that she says freezes the ticks and instantly kills them, similar to a product used in wart removal.

"Ticks have this hideous backward barbed spear that they poke into you and then they put a plug of cement around that - that's why they're so hard to get out properly," she said.

"When you freeze the ticks, the jaws relax and after five minutes or so, the thing falls out."

Ms Douglass said the product was tested on cattle, which are known to get ticks, on her sister's farm who is a doctor and a retired veterinary surgeon, and both said it worked a breeze.

During product development Ms Douglass, with help of a consultant, established that registration by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority was not required.

Ms Douglass is selling her product online, but it remains without official endorsement.

Fairfax Media attempted to speak to vets and tick experts about the product, but they said they were unaware of it and did not want to comment.

There are more than 800 species of ticks around the world, with 70 found in Australia and 16 species have been reported as feeding on humans.