It's a pest that continues to pose more of a health risk with each passing year, that is the tick.

With the number tick diseases growing in New York, State Health officials joined the Cornell Cooperative Extension for a tick prevention class.

According to the experts the best way to defend against ticks is to make sure your skin is covered. They suggest people should make sure they’re doing their daily skin checks all year long.

But if a tick does strike, specialists say you have to pull it out the right way.

"So you will want to make sure that you use very pointy tweezers and get as close to the skin as possible,” said Joellen Lampman, NYS Integrated Pest Specialist. “After you want to pull straight up, so that way you are going to irritate the tick the least which means it is less likely to pass those pathogens on to you."

At Thursday nights class everyone left with a tick removal kit that included a guide to help take of embedded ticks.

Lampman says the worst thing you can do is try and burn off a tick or put vaseline on it like back in the day.

“Those methods are actually the worst,” said Lampman. “Anything that can irritate the tick will make the tick salvavate or at worse regurgitate anything to pass on those pathogens.”